'Star Wars' Sad Story of Yaddle, the Female Yoda Everyone Ignores

A recent episode of The Mandalorian featured the live-action TV debut of fan-favorite character Ahsoka Tano who you might remember from Clone Wars, Rebels, and grooving to Nicki Minaj alongside a Gamorrean Guard during your 2011 family vacation.

Not only does Ahsoka reveal Baby Yoda's real name (we're pretty sure it was "Greg"), but she also mentions that she's only "known one other being like this. A wise master named Yoda."

Well, a lot of folks on the internet were pretty pissed about this, mainly because it seems to disregard the existence of Yaddle, the female Jedi master who belonged to the same mysterious species as Yoda. We see her briefly in the Jedi Temple during The Phantom Menace -- she's the one who looks like an off-brand Yoda puppet with the cheap hairpiece of a 1970s game show host stapled to her head.

It turns out that Ahsoka probably wouldn't have known Yaddle for the saddest possible reason. When we first meet Ahsoka following the events of Attack of the Clones, apparently Yaddle had already tragically died -- not in an actual movie, but in the young adult novel The Shadow Trap.

Yeah, it sure seems like George Lucas quickly realized that a second Yoda was just too many darn Yodas. Yoda is a character who works best when steeped in mystery; we don't need a wigged doppelganger hanging around, torpedoing his mystique. Plus, the more Yodas there are, the more you're forced to consider that Yodas probably have sex -- and no one wants to think about Yoda getting laid; he's like your grandparents that way. This is probably why Yaddle died offscreen in a dumb kids book, and they waited over a decade before introducing a new (adorable toddler) Yoda into the franchise. 

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Top Image: Lucasfilm