Baby Yoda took the galaxy by storm when he debuted on Disney+ back in 2019 as the scene-stealer of The Mandalorian, with theories abounding, demand for merch growing, and memes spreading across the internet with every new episode. Apparently, even the U.S. Army is in on the Baby Yoda love. Take a look:
Yes, one of the U.S. Army vehicles for the 3rd Infantry was named "Baby Yoda." Hopefully Jon Favreau would be flattered by the name and post by the official Army Twitter account, even if the little green tyke is technically supposed to be known as "The Child" at the moment.
Unsurprisingly, the Baby Yoda pic has gotten a lot more attention than a lot of posts on the Army account with its 85 replies, 509 retweets, and 1.7k likes at the time of writing. Baby Yoda did more or less set social media on fire, to the point that even some people who couldn't care less about Star Wars knew the new live-action show added an adorable little creature.
The tweet may not have gone so far as to include a hashtag like #BabyYoda, #StarWars, or #TheMandalorian, but #MayTheForceBeWithYou gets the point across without the Army actually mentioning that galaxy far, far away. Personally, I'd love to know who had the idea to name the Army vehicle after Baby Yoda and who actually approved it. I guess there are a lot of Army vehicles, so why not? Nothing from the Space Force, as it happens.
I'm not sure how the peaceful Jedi would feel about an war vehicle being named after a character everybody associates with Master Yoda, but the Clone Wars revival on Disney+ is a pretty stark reminder that Yoda did a lot more with his life than teach Luke Skywalker the ways of the Force (and lifting stuff) on Dagobah circa the original trilogy.
Besides, Baby Yoda isn't actually a baby version of Yoda, who is long-dead by The Mandalorian's point in the Star Wars timeline. If he spends enough time with Mando growing up, he may wind up with more Mandalorian traits than Jedi traits, no matter how skilled he is with the Force!
All of this said, I'm guessing the people behind the naming of the U.S. Army vehicle weren't really thinking about the politics and cultures of the Star Wars universe when they decided to name it after Baby Yoda. It's just fun to see that Baby Yoda's adorable influence has spread all the way from Etsy to the U.S. Army.
As for the very expensive Baby Yoda of the Star Wars universe, he'll return to the small screen with the second season of The Mandalorian in October 2020 on Disney+. The Disney streamer started out very strong, likely at least partly due to The Mandalorian as Star Wars' first live-action TV show, but has reportedly dropped recently. Will the debuts of some of the live-action MCU series bring more people to the service? Or will Disney+ have to wait for The Mandalorian Season 2 for another boost?
For now, you can find the full first season of The Mandalorian and a whole lot of other Star Wars content streaming on Disney+.
