Lucasfilm Defends Baby Yoda's Unbridled Hunger For Eggs In Last Week's 'The Mandalorian' Episode

Last week's episode of The Mandalorian featured plenty of antics from the show's breakout character, the Child (or Baby Yoda, as the internet likes to call him). However, some fans didn't find the Child's hunger for an alien frog woman's eggs to be all that entertaining. There has been some outcry from those finding the sneaky snacking of the Child to be a little careless when it comes to the life that they represent. After all, these are an alien frog woman's unfertilized eggs that she's desperately trying to get to her husband.

Lucasfilm has responded to the complaints that have been registered online about Baby Yoda eating eggs, but the answer doesn't exactly make the situation much more forgivable. But it depends on how you feel about a presumably unknowing child satisfying his hunger for eggs. 

One complaint about The Child's appetite expressed (via Entertainment Weekly): "I'm a mom. It's not funny at all to hear mama frog lady go into great detail about how important and beloved her eggs are to her and have to watch them get eaten on three separate occasions for shits and giggles."

Another fan on Twitter added, "The frog lady was very adamant about the fact that her eggs were important to her, and that it was her last and only chance to have kids, so it's actually closer to f***ing up someone's In Vitro Fertilization, which would be incredibly upsetting for a wannabe mom. It's not funny."

Here's what Lucasfilm's creative art manager Phil Szostak said on Twitter about their intentions with The Child's egg appetite:

"For the record, Chapter 10 of #TheMandalorian makes it clear that the Frog Lady's eggs are unfertilized, like the chicken eggs many of us enjoy. But obviously, chickens aren't sentient beings and the Child eating the eggs is intentionally disturbing, for comedic effect. Fans of horror know that disturbing things make some of us laugh and some of us squirm, or both. Your mileage may vary."

What the complaints probably boil down to is that for some it can be rather upsetting to see a creature that seems so innocent do something that is rather heinous. But at the same time, it's not as if Mando didn't try several times to keep the kid away from her eggs. Just like any child, this one doesn't listen very well when there's something they really want. Though the alien frog woman is sentient, to a child, the eggs are just food. He's not being malicious, but just mischievous, and he probably doesn't fully understand the gravity of the situation. He may be in tune with the Force, but he clearly has a lot to learn about civilization. After all, he tried to choke out Cara Dune when he mistakenly thought she was threatening Mando.

Everyone is going to react to something differently based on their personal experiences. These complaints are valid when taken from another perspective, and this is where it might help Lucasfilm to have more of a female perspective in certain situations. Then again, Kathleen Kennedy is president of Lucasfilm, and she has two children with her husband Frank Marshall. Surely if she thought there was some kind of issue there, then she would have flagged it. Again, that doesn't make these complaints invalid, they just come from a different perspective.

I think it's important to remember that fictional characters aren't created to be perfect either. Some of the complaints registered online these days think that any character's expression of a controversial issue or inappropriate behavior means that the creators are condoning it. That's simply not the case. That's where Lucasfilm's reference to horror comes into play, because plenty of people have experienced horrific things that have played out in many movies across the genre, but the intention of portraying those events is to convey fear and discomfort. For some it's disturbing, for others it's a entertaining adrenaline rush.

The good news is there might be the slightest sliver of hope for potential redemption. It has been theorized that maybe the Child is keeping some of the eggs safe because the Force has allowed him to foresee that the eggs will be threatened in some way, possibly with the tank containing them being destroyed. But considering Lucasfilm's explanation of the matter, that seems less likely. Plus, if that were the case, there'd be no real reason to sneak around to snarf them down.

We'll just have to chalk this up to nature. Not all creatures are so civilized as we, and animals eat other animals out in the wild all the time. Clearly the Child still has some more primitive impulses that he needs to be taught how to keep in check.