Josh Gad Has Perfect Response to What Baby Yoda’s Real Name Is in Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Fans managed to get through an entire season of Disney+’s Star Wars tie-in series The Mandalorian without learning the true name of “The Child,” better known to fans as “Baby Yoda.” Everyone from Disney CEO Robert Iger to series director Taika Waititi have chimed in with thoughts on the character, with everyone deferring to creator and showrunner Jon Favreau, saying that he will eventually release the character’s name when he is ready. Disney regular Josh Gad, though, had a strong candidate for the name — and one that would tie the world of The Mandalorian to that of the box office-dominating Frozen animated franchise.

That name? Samanta, of course. The gag, if you don’t know already, is from a scene in Frozen 2 in which, separated from the rest of the group of heroes, Gad’s character Olaf calls out to each of them in the forest. After calling out to Elsa, Ana, and Sven, he calls out for “Samantha,” then falls to the ground, rolling around and laughing as he chides himself, “I don’t even know a Samantha!” When he is surprised by a rapid succession of weather events, he finds himself peering down a sinkhole in the ground. Peering into it, he asks quietly, “Samantha?”

So when Fandom asked the internet to give it their best guess, Gad jumped in with his feedback. You can check it out below.

Baby Yoda is only the third live-action appearance of this species in the Star Wars universe, after Yoda himself, and a character named Yaddle, who appeared on the Jedi Council in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Little is known about the species, and since even the name has never been confirmed canonically, fans went with “Baby Yoda” out of simplicity. When the character became wildly popular, that became what the press and marketing folks used to refer to The Child as well.

“I think it’s exceeded our expectations, all of our expectations. But I knew, the moment I saw an early cut of the first episode, that we had something really special. And I just felt it,” Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed about the character to The Star Wars Show. “I’ve been in the business for 45 years, worked my way up through television mostly, [and I] remember times throughout my career in television when I saw either a character or an actor playing a character when you just knew.”

Even Iger himself couldn’t help but refer to the character with this shorthand, much to Favreau’s chagrin.

“In this particular case, The Child, or The Asset — because we don’t refer to The Child or The Asset the way the world is referring to The Child and The Asset as ‘Baby Yoda’ — that’s a no-no,” Iger joked. “I got chastised, in my early emails to Jon Favreau, I referenced in my emails, ‘Baby Yoda.’ It just seemed easy. And I got my wrists slapped by Jon a few times. ‘It’s not Baby Yoda!’ ‘Okay, okay!’”

The first season of Star Wars: The Mandalorian is available now on Disney+. Season Two is coming this fall. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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