The Mandalorian Star Pedro Pascal Poses With Baby Yoda At Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Premiere

Last night the stars hit the blue carpet at the world premiere for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth "episode" in the series and the final chapter in the Skywalker saga. As can be expected, the creative team and cast members from the film were present for photos, but the extended Star Wars family made appearances as well ranging from voice cast of the animated shows and even Pedro Pascal, the star of the first live-action Star Wars TV series, The Mandalorian. While there, Pascal posed with fans attending the event, one of whom happened to have a custom made, felt baby Yoda. Check out the photo below!

There's only a limited amount of official merch for the fan favorite new character as Disney and Lucasfilm were eager to preserve the secret of the character's appearance. That said, there are plenty of official toys and merch for the character arriving from Funko, Hasbro, and Mattel which will be available in the new year.

With the theatrical debut of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker arriving this Friday, Disney and Lucasfilm clearly don't want anything getting in the way of that event and as a result will debut this week's episode of The Mandalorian tomorrow, Wednesday, December 18. Since they don't want the penultimate episode of The Mandalorian's first season to be forgotten in the wake of its big screen counterpart, Disney+ is simply shifting the release of the episode in order to avoid Rise of Skywalker altogether. So if you're hoping to stay in the know about all things Baby Yoda, and you don't want anything spoiled for you regarding The Mandalorian, you'll want to be sure and tune in first thing Wednesday.

Of course, there is also a negative side to this release strategy. The seventh episode of The Mandalorian is arriving early, but the eighth is sticking to its planned release date. This means that the finale is being released on Disney+ on Friday, December 27th, a full nine days after the penultimate episode. That's a longer wait than most are used to with The Mandalorian, so we will all need to work on our patience.

The bigger wait will come at the beginning of the new year when The Mandalorian has finished its first season on Disney+. The second installment is already in production, but it will likely still be a while before we get to see Pedro Pascal in action again. Hopefully the offseason won't be too long.