Star Wars Grogu | Grogu SPEAKS His First Words During Order 66!

Star Wars Grogu | Grogu SPEAKS His First Words During Order 66!

The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett are setting up a major reveal around how Grogu was saved from Order 66 with some concerning Star Wars canon implications for Anakin's. Ever since "Baby Yoda" was introduced in The Mandalorian, the potential impact of his character arc on the wider Star Wars story has been fascinating for both its storytelling possibilities and implications for Star Wars lore.

In The Mandalorian season 2, Din Djarin and Grogu's encounter with Ahsoka reveals Grogu isn't just any Force-sensitive youngling, but actually a survivor of Anakin's Jedi Temple purge on Coruscant during Order 66. Anakin infamously slaughtered all the Jedi younglings, destroying the future generation of Force users, and enabling Palpatine's rise to power without the threat of a Jedi Order to oppose him. How Grogu survived the Jedi purge, lived through Order 66, and his life up until he was rescued by Mando is a major mystery, and now that he's under the tutelage of Luke Skywalker, who's helping him remember what happened, the answers could be revealed in the finale to The Book of Boba Fett, or in the upcoming third season The Mandalorian.

The answers to these questions are sure to have major implications for Star Wars canon. Whoever saved him and where they took him will say a lot about what happened to Grogu Palpatine's reign as Emperor, and will surely mean big things for his post-Return of the Jedi destiny, potentially even recontextualizing the fall of Luke Skywalker's Jedi Academy and other events from the rest of the sequel trilogy.

Of course, any Star Wars story is going to have big ties to the larger Star Wars canon, but recent stories, especially The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett have stronger ties to established canon than would be expected from the shows' premises. The Mandalorian introduces Din Djarin in a story that seems almost totally disconnected from the Skywalker Saga and the events of the main Star Wars episodes, but his discovery of Grogu and eventual meet-up with Ahsoka and Luke makes both Din and Grogu integral figures in the story of the Jedi and Luke Skywalker.

The Book of Boba Fett is an even more surprising swerve into the core story arcs of the Star Wars universe since it initially focuses on Boba Fett and outer-rim crime squabbles on Tatooine, but a late-season swerve to abandon Boba Fett's story and continue where The Mandalorian season 2 left off with Din Djarin tracking down Luke and Grogu once again brings the story into the core of Star Wars canon in an even bigger way, directly continuing Luke's story after the original trilogy and planting the seeds of his journey to the sequel trilogy.

Regardless of whether or not this is the right approach for these shows, which could have served as major detours from the main Star Wars plot, it's very indicative of where Jon Favreau and Dave Filono's Star Wars storytelling priorities lie. The repeated swerves away from more fringe Star Wars canon into the heart of the Skywalker Saga means we can expect the answers to Grogu's past will lean in the same direction, meaning his Order 66 fate and how Grogu escaped the Jedi temple aren't likely to take us further away from the Skywalker family to more unexplored corners of the galaxy far, far away, but will fundamentally alter what we think we think we know about the Skywalker family.

Given what we know about Star Wars canon surrounding Grogu and the storytelling sensibilities of Disney's current Star Wars stories, it makes a lot of sense for The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett to be setting up a major twist where Anakin spares Grogu during his purge of the Jedi temple. Anakin's decimation of the Jedi Temple was his first act as Darth Vader and George Lucas was careful to establish that Anakin even killed the younglings, showing him ignite his lightsaber when he discovers them in the Jedi Council chambers, with Obi-Wan and Yoda later confirming they saw him murdering them in the security recordings.

There were other Jedi present, so it's certainly possible someone was able to sneak away with young Grogu without detection by the clone troopers surrounding the temple or Obi-Wan and Yoda when they arrive on the scene. It doesn't make much sense for either of those Jedi Masters to have saved him because there's not much of an opportunity for either of them to have discovered the baby Yoda-like alien and secreted him away with the timeline of events seen on screen, as well as the fact that their plan to hide Luke away on Tatooine and Leia on Alderaan likely would have also included plans for Grogu, which would also simply make him a tagalong character and present major questions for why the Jedi exiles totally abandoned him while still keeping tabs on the Skywalker twins from a distance. Sure, it would avoid disrupting existing canon too much, but would also make Grogu largely redundant to the other Skywalkers.