The Real Reason Yoda's Species Is So Rare

One of the biggest unanswered questions in the Star Wars universe is the actual species name of characters like Yoda and Grogu. There hasn't been a single piece of Star Wars media that has gone into it, which is odd. The rest of the species have names (Jedi Master Plo Koon is a Kel Dor, Aayla Secura is a Twi'lek, and so on), but Yoda's species has been left unknown, which is unusual for such an iconic character. It's not just unusual for the Star Wars universe, but even media in general. Pick an alien and it has a name. Even the Predator species from the films of the same title have names.

They're called Yautja. There. Now you know.

But Yoda's species never got a name, and a big part of that might be: 1) the creators just never got around to it, or 2) they're rare, even in the universe. We don't even know what their home planet is. In the main canon stories, we've only seen three: Yoda, Grogu, and a female named Yaddle who shows up briefly in The Phantom Menace and doesn't have any speaking lines. However, just her appearance on the Jedi Council shows that she's a powerful Jedi in her own right, which lines up with the other two members of her species that we've seen.

Yoda's one of the most powerful Jedi who ever lived, and through Grogu, we're shown that a strong connection with the Force isn't unique to him. Grogu is, comparatively speaking, a toddler among his species. Even though we're told in The Mandalorian that he's actually 50 years old (however that's calculated in a galaxy with tens of thousands of planets, all of which have unique solar rotation cycles), he still acts like a toddler.

Toddlers, as anyone who has spent any time with them knows, are a rather helpless lot. And given the abilities of that species, combined with the long adolescence, means that they are comparatively weak against the dark forces of the universe. Any member of their species would be a high commodity for dark Force users, both for experimentation and assimilation.

This is likely the reason that their homeworld and even name are kept under wraps. It's for their own protection. Without privacy and the ability to keep to themselves while they grow into adults over the course of several centuries, the species might be endangered or even extinct. It's hard to say exactly how many of them there are, and indeed how many of them are hyper-Force sensitive, but the small sample size we've been given does seem to be indicative that the species is naturally in tune with the Force in the ways that other groups in the Star Wars universe are not.

For now, all we have is speculation. However, given the love for Grogu, it's not out of the realm of possibility that we'll see him at some point in the third season of The Mandalorian, or even that we'll get some more information in one of the other myriad shows and movies that are slated to happen. This could be good or bad. Good because we'll get to fill in some pieces of the puzzle, but bad because... well, do they really need to be filled in? The mystery is part of the fun, and it makes them seem more than the other species in the universe. If in some show it was revealed that they're called Grimbagorgs, or something ridiculous like that, a little bit of the magic would be gone.

No name or backstory would match the expectations for Yoda's species. It would be best to just leave it be.

Written By Paul Durbin

Source(s): Screen Rant

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