'The Mandalorian' Early Concept Art Reveals Baby Yoda Was Once Terrifying Looking

Baby Yoda is definitely the cutest Star Wars character ever introduced, but the latest episode of Disney Gallery revealed that it took series creators a while to develop The Child's adorable appearance. As reported by SYFY WIRE, The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau examined many, many designs for the puppet destined for worldwide fame until he landed on the perfect one. The Disney Gallery episode also unveiled some of the scrapped Baby Yoda designs.

One of the unused versions, which you can see below, has The Child looking like something that would crawl out of a sewer rather than the sweet, powerful being fans are introduced to in the show's first episode.

"We all, I think, had a vision for what [the] bad version of it was," Favreau said in Episode 5 of Disney Gallery, which details the show's elaborate practical effects. "We got lots and lots of drawings. Some of them were too cute, some of them were too ugly, some of them were the wrong proportions. But they were all informing, as we gave notes on each drawing, Dave [Filoni] and I started zeroing in on what it was."

The episode reveals that bringing Baby Yoda to life takes three to four puppeteers, each one controlling different body movements. "That's really when it became The Baby," Favreau added. Considering how many people it took to make the puppet seem lifelike, the end result is phenomenal!

"Even though there's maybe a person wearing a suit or it's actually a robot covered in silicon, it's still a creature that we all want to relate to and the audience will relate to," cinematographer Baz Idoine elaborated. "You shoot them like any other actor that's acting in a scene, where they have intent and meaning and a purpose and have their own arc. You want to be able to photograph that in the correct manner. The great thing was these creatures were fantastic." Fantastic, and thankfully, very adorable in the end! Seriously, I don't think the show would have been as big a hit without Baby Yoda's cuteness at the helm. It's amazing to see the process to creating a realistic creature from a galaxy far, far away.

Season 1 of The Mandalorian is available to stream on Disney+ with a subscription here, and you can check out what we know so far about Season 2 here.