Baby Yoda (aka the Yodaling, here at Tor.com HQ) has ::PUPPY-DOG-EYE STARE::-ed its way into our souls, and it shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
This was, of course, entirely by design. On Tuesday, The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau shared the original concept art for the Yod-let on Twitter, and it looks like the final version was carefully engineered for maximum cuteness.
As you can see from the tweet below, the original Baby Yoda looked a little closer to his age (50 years). You can see a lot more wrinkles, a furrowed little brow, jowls (!), and smile lines no doubt formed over 5 decades of constant uwu. (Plus, the whites of his eyes are actually visible.)
Original concept art. #TheMandalorian pic.twitter.com/4VWm6WUzFl
— Jon Favreau (@Jon_Favreau) November 19, 2019
Compare that to the current iteration of Baby Yoda, in all its shmuggly wuggly glory. It looks like they kept some of the wrinkles (possibly to reflect the aging conventions of Yoda’s species), but otherwise kawaii-fied everything else so he looks a little less Benjamin Button-y.
We are left with only question: Will the inevitable Baby Yoda Black Friday plushy be based on the concept art or the onscreen model? And will we protect it with our Mandalorian lives regardless? Yes.
