The Mandalorian Season 1 just released Episode 5/Chapter 5 with an intriguing mystery character -- not to mention Amy Sedaris carrying Baby Yoda -- and left us with several questions. But we're also not done with last week's episode and its instantly iconic Baby Yoda meme.
The Mandalorian Chapter 4 was directed by Bryce Dallas Howard. She may have allowed a boom mic to slightly creep into a frame but she also gave us that new meme threatening to overtake Kermit the Frog's tea sip.
Variety asked Bryce Dallas Howard if she knew about the Baby Yoda sipping meme, and she delved into the whole story of creating that scene with The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal and Gina Carano as Cara Dune:
So I’ve heard, Baby Yoda sipping soup. When we were shooting that fight just before, so much rested on Gina because Pedro at that point was on rehearsal for another show. It wasn’t like I was working with Pedro on a day-to-day basis, so Gina was the face of the episode. Working with Mando’s stunt double and body double it was exciting because Gina was able to do all that action and we could lean into it. That day was all about that brutal fight: Gina and Mando’s stunt double were just destroying each other. And then it gets to Baby sipping his soup and everything else goes away, all these amazing feats of athleticism and martial arts, and all this stuff just becomes Baby with soup and all we wanted to do was a zillion takes of how Baby was going to drink his soup. Would he drink it with one hand? With two hands? Sipping it a lot? Sipping it a little bit? ... A Baby sip, a hearty sip, we had so many options to contend with. Baby just wins every scene he’s in.
Baby Yoda was almost done through CGI but they went old school with a puppet. So I can just picture all the ways they tried to test out that shot before landing on the now iconic meme sip.
Does Disney+ have deleted scenes, or any bonus materials for The Mandalorian fans after Chapter 8, which will mark the Season 1 finale? We're going to be hurting for more Baby Yoda content, and any extra sipping shots would help us through the winter until Season 2.
Interesting, though, that The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal wasn't around for that scene. He's under the helmet, but not when it comes to big stunts opposite Gina Carano's Cara Dune. But it sounds like the situation on set was similar to the one viewers had -- everything stopped the second Baby Yoda appeared on screen and the story became his, leaving Mando himself "ruthlessly outshined."
Bryce Dallas Howard is the daughter of Ron Howard and, yes, the Solo director had some advice for her before she took on an episode of The Mandalorian. She also told Variety about the difficulty of shooting the All Terrain Scout Transport (AT-ST) scene in Chapter 4. Sounds like Gina Carano was quite a trooper:
The hardest part was that Gina had a stomach flu, and we had been rained out for two nights which was brutal. Having the AT-ST be part of the episode was a particularly exciting opportunity for me because we haven’t seen those machines be as scary as that. I thought this is a total T-Rex opportunity. I had this little model of an AT-ST at home and I’d imagine how it stomped around like a dinosaur.
I wonder how Disney feels about everything with The Mandalorian. The Powers That Be must be thrilled at all of the interest, but I do wonder if they wish they had more merch available for Christmas and more episodes ready to go than the eight of Season 1.
That means we only have three episodes of The Mandalorian Season 1 left, including one releasing Wednesday, December 18, a special date that will come with a special sneak preview of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which arrives in theaters that Friday, Dec. 20.
