Star Wars: George Lucas Holds Baby Yoda in New Behind-the-Scenes Photo

The Star Wars universe has evolved in some pretty epic ways in recent years, especially with the launch of the franchise’s first live-action television series, The Mandalorian. The series quickly courted quite a lot of love from fans of the franchise, in part thanks to its pint-sized breakout star, Baby Yoda. The small creature debuted to a lot of fanfare when the series first premiered, and has quickly become a source of love (and memes) from viewers. The Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau recently took to Instagram to reignite the Baby Yoda love in a whole new way — with a behind-the-scenes photo of “The Child” being held by franchise creator George Lucas.

It’s unclear if this is an old photo from production on The Mandalorian‘s first season (which we know Lucas visited), or from their currently-filming second season. Either way, seeing Lucas cradle the Baby Yoda puppet is enough to make any Star Wars fans’ day.

“It’s heartbreakingly beautiful,” Werner Herzog, who portrays The Client on the series, said in an interview last year. “And I saw two technicians operating it remotely. One was for the eyes and the mouth, the other was for other facial expressions, it’s a phenomenal technical achievement, and beyond the technological achievement it’s heartbreaking.”

“I don’t know…but on the set it looked absolutely convincing,” Herzog continued. “It made you cry when you saw it.”

“I have to thank Disney and Lucasfilm, because the way the cat usually gets out of the bag with that stuff is merchandising and toy catalogs and things like that,” Favreau previously explained. “So they really back us up. We really wanted to have it be that you had to watch it yourself, so that every time you watch the show, there are new twists and secrets that come out. That requires a lot of restraint from the people who are footing the bill, saying they’re gonna hold back on certain things so that the public doesn’t know ahead of time. Part of that was holding back on some of the merchandise and holding back on some of the characters.”

What do you think of this photo of George Lucas cradling Baby Yoda? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Season 2 of The Mandalorian is expected to debut later this year exclusively on Disney+. If you haven’t checked out Disney+ yet and you want to give it a go, you can do that here.

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