Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley defends Baby Yoda’s egg-eating in Mandalorian

Daisy Ridley has defended Baby Yoda after the beloved character was ‘canceled’ on social media for eating the unfertilized eggs of another creature.

Now there’s a sentence we never thought we’d write.

Baby Yoda has without a doubt become the star of Disney’s Star Wars spin-off series The Mandalorian. Aside from all the viral gifs and cute merchandise, the character’s appearance in the show provides a welcome sense of innocence and plenty of comic relief.

But his character took a surprisingly dark turn in Chapter 11 episode ‘The Passenger’, where Din Djarin was tasked with accompanying Frog Lady to her husband so her eggs could be fertilized. The eggs were her only hope to continue her family line. So what did Baby Yoda do? He started eating them.

While most viewers took the scene at face value as a bit of dark comedy, not everyone was so quick to forgive the controversial moment. One fan compared it to “f***ing up someone’s IVF” and another argued that “genocide for [the] sake of ‘cute humor’ is never very funny”.

Daisy Ridley defends Baby Yoda’s egg-eating scenes

But one person who’s rushed to the defense of Baby Yoda is Daisy Ridley, who played Rey in the Star Wars franchise. As well as revealing that she’s an “avid viewer” of the new series, Ridley said she supports the adorable character’s egg-eating antics.

• Read more: Yoda actor slams fan who wished “pain” on Star Wars Last Jedi director

“Oh, cancel culture. Look, Mando’s gotta eat, Yoda’s got to get strong. That’s just that,” she told IGN. “I’m like, ‘Yoda, do your thing’. The creature [Frog Lady] got to be where she needed to be with the eggs. It’s all good. It was beautiful.”

With the runaway success of The Mandalorian, and plans already in motion for several Star Wars spin-offs including a Rogue One prequel series and an Obi-Wan Kenobi series, some fans have wondered what a spin-off for Ridley’s character Rey could look like.

But those hopes appear to have been dashed, with Ridley arguing there’s nowhere left for her character to go, story-wise. In fact, she’d rather see other characters get more screentime in the galaxy far, far away.

• Read more: Star Wars Solo director reveals what it would take for sequel to happen

“I feel totally, totally satisfied with how that story finished. I just don’t know what else she could do that I didn’t have to do,” she said.

“Also, there are so many amazing characters in Star Wars, that it’s sort of an amazing thing. I was watching the new episode of Mandalorian, and it’s just like the places it can go beyond even where it is now is so exciting.”

You can catch new episodes of The Mandalorian Season 2 on Disney+ every Friday. Hopefully, there’ll be no more attempts at ‘genocide’ from Baby Yoda.