For a pop culture icon, Jedi Master Yoda is still a pretty mysterious figure.
From his shadowy origins to the real meaning behind his final moments with Luke Skywalker,
this is Yoda's story explained.
Linguists have had some interesting conversations on the subject of Yoda's speech pattern.
Talk the way he does, why?
His backwards way of communicating has left researchers baffled, and that might be the
way George Lucas likes it.
The creator of Star Wars was notoriously shifty when it came to any information involving
Yoda's species and homeworld.
There are others of his kind, like Yaddle, who became Jedi, or the as-yet unnamed child
in The Mandalorian, but Lucas has never so much as whispered the name of Yoda's species.
He's even joked that Yoda is the illegitimate child of Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy.
"To be really honest with you, I never even figured out where he came from, what his species
is called, it doesn't even have a name."
Before Yaddle's creation, Lucas discouraged anyone from making more beings like Yoda,
suggesting that he perhaps wanted Yoda to be the only one of his kind.
While that ship has sailed now, the story of his species is still wrapped in mystery.
Who knows?
Maybe his species really is descended from the Muppets.
In the non-canonical Star Wars Expanded Universe, now known as Legends, we got the closest thing
to a true origin story for Yoda that we're ever likely to get.
In Legends, before Yoda was a Jedi Master, he had a Jedi Master himself.
Centuries before the events of the films, Yoda and a human friend crash-landed on a
swamp world.
There, they found Jedi Master N'Kata Del Gormo, a member of the Hysalrian species.
Del Gormo told the two that they were Force-sensitive and trained them as his Padawans.
Eventually, Yoda went to Coruscant to continue his training at the Jedi Temple.
There, Yoda was trained by Huyang, a Mark IV architect droid professor, who also made
a canonical appearance in The Clone Wars TV series.
Once Yoda had his own lightsaber, he was paired with a mentor.
Some fans have theorized that Del Gormo returned to Coruscant to complete Yoda's training,
but the truth is that the lore gets kind of murky here.
In Legends, Yoda's early time as a Jedi Master was influenced by a story he learned about
the Jedi Masters K'ungfu and Chuang.
When Chuang died, his apprentice celebrated, saying that death is just a way that people
become a different part of the Force.
At the age of 100, Yoda became a Jedi Master.
He was surprisingly young and spry at the time if we consider that he only became geriatric
at the ripe old age of 900.
Those 800 years as a Jedi Master gave him a lot of time to pass on his own knowledge,
a role that Yoda became extremely comfortable with over the years.
Apparently, around 20,000 starry-eyed younglings called Yoda their "Master."
That's a whole lot of Padawans.
"You knew Master Yoda?"
"Yes, he taught nearly all the younglings in the temple at one point or another."
Having trained so many Jedi, Yoda became a well-respected member of the Jedi Order.
At some point in his very long tenure, he was honored with a seat on the Jedi High Council.
Made up of 12 members, the council ruled over the entirety of the Jedi Order.
Not all of Yoda's Padawans became exemplary Jedi.
Yoda's very last Padawan was a human man called Dooku.
Before he became the villain we know in the prequel films, Dooku was Yoda's pupil.
As Yoda's student, Dooku was impressed with his master but not entirely sold on the rules
of the Jedi Order.
Dooku was also something of a political idealist, and after witnessing the corruption of the
Galactic Senate and struggling with the Jedi Code, he abandoned his rank of Jedi Master
and returned to his home planet.
Home for Dooku was the planet Serenno, where he reclaimed his royal-ish heritage.
This is how he became Count Dooku, serving as the head of state for the Confederacy of
Independent Systems during the Clone Wars.
What was kept on the down-low was that he had a new master: Darth Sidious.
Dooku had fallen to the dark side.
During our first encounter with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, he seemed like an eccentric,
cranky, and incredibly wise creature.
However, in his heyday, Yoda was much more physical in how he solved problems.
There was a reason why he was so revered, and it wasn't just because he was quick to
dole out deep, merchandisable quotes.
"Do or do not.
There is no try."
Yoda was very close with the Wookiee race during his lifetime, having served as an honored
negotiator between the big furry guys and their neighbors, the Trandoshans.
He likely earned the Wookiees' trust when he and his young Padawan, Dooku, came to the
Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk to do some pest control.
At the time, the planet was full of massive, rampaging monsters known as Terentateks.
These venomous creatures craved the blood of the Force-sensitive, meaning the Terentateks
probably must have seen Yoda as a frog-shaped delicacy.
This, and his negotiation efforts, earned him the title of Defender of the Home Tree.
Has any other Jedi trained as many younglings?
Has any other Jedi served the Order so dutifully for so long?
Could any other Jedi prove to be so measured and wise?
Yoda made such a name for himself that he was the obvious choice when it came to appointing
the Grand Master of the Jedi Council, a title only given to the oldest and wisest of Jedi.
Yoda was the Grand Master when Naboo was invaded, which means he was the head honcho when a
small and slightly sassy Anakin Skywalker was presented as the possible Chosen One.
Yoda told him how fear can lead to the Dark Side, foreshadowing Anakin's eventual descent.
As Grand Master, Yoda had a lot of difficult decisions to make as the Clone Wars fell upon
the galaxy, but he was first and foremost a teacher.
He assigned a Padawan named Ahsoka Tano to Anakin in order to help the Jedi Knight to
get over his fears of losing loved ones.
Obviously, it didn't quite work out for Anakin himself, but Ahsoka seems to have done alright
from it.
In addition to his royal title, Dooku served as the head of state of the Confederacy of
Independent Systems.
This essentially made him the leader of the Separatist movement that fought against the
Republic and the Jedi Order during the Clone Wars.
Yoda would get to face his former Padawan head-on when he and a strike team went to
rescue Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, who were defeated and captured by Dooku.
Despite Count Dooku claiming that the Dark Side had allowed him to become more powerful
than any Jedi, Yoda quickly proved that his power was much greater than his diminutive
size suggested.
Yoda hobbled in with a cane, but he turned Dooku's Force lightning against him with ease.
When lightsabers were drawn, it was clear that Yoda was still the master in this fight.
Dooku only escaped because he distracted Yoda by nearly squashing Anakin and Obi-Wan, allowing
the former padawan the chance to jump on a ship and fly away from his old master.
Toward the end of the Clone Wars, Yoda began to hear voices.
Some council members wondered if the old Jedi was going senile when Yoda appeared distracted
during a meeting.
As it turns out, Yoda was just wondering how Qui-Gon Jinn could've contacted him from beyond
the grave, as he had during an earlier meditation session.
This was unheard of, and the other Council members were unable to hear anything or anyone
while meditating.
This led Yoda to undergo a procedure that would bring him as close to death, and the
Force, as possible.
Inches away from dying, Yoda heard Jinn again, who told him to go to Dagobah.
On Dagobah, Yoda was led to a cave strong with the Dark Side, where he saw a vision
of a Sith Lord slaughtering Jedi.
Having seen this horrible future, Qui-Gon Jinn directed Yoda to the Wellspring of Life,
home of the midi-chlorians.
There, Yoda met with a Force priestess who would help him to achieve life after death.
First, Yoda was forced to fight a sharp-toothed shadow-version of himself, his Dark Side motivated
by hubris.
He was only able to defeat his wraith when he accepted that he did have a Dark Side,
but that it was a part that he refused to give into.
He went on to undergo some trippy vision training in order to learn how to appear as a Force
spirit after his eventual death.
This ordeal had him fighting evil opponents on the original homeworld of the Sith, and
nearly being tricked by the illusions of some of his dead friends.
Before the Empire raised its ugly head, the Jedi Council wasn't entirely comfortable with
Chancellor Palpatine's growing power in the galaxy.
That made things even more uncomfortable when Palpatine appointed Anakin Skywalker to be
his representative at the Council.
Thanks to some Sith-level manipulations and creepy visions of Padme Amidala dying in childbirth,
this relationship between Anakin and Palpatine led to the creation of Darth Vader, the Sith
Lord that Yoda had feared would come in the future.
As Jedi were being slaughtered under Palpatine's Order 66, Yoda and Obi-Wan conspired to take
down Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, who were actually Palpatine and Anakin.
At the Galactic Senate, Yoda faced off with the yellow-eyed Emperor Palpatine and found
his opponent was super-charged with Force lightning.
At first, they seemed evenly matched, but eventually Palpatine gained the upper hand.
Yoda knew he was defeated and fled for his life.
Upon defeat, Yoda placed himself into exile, believing that he had failed.
Before he ran off to Dagobah, he witnessed the birth of Luke and Leia and the death of
Padme.
Sensing the twins' connection to the Force, Yoda helped come up with the plan to separate
and hide the babies.
Yoda also planned on training with the Force spirit of Qui-Gon Jinn, and he passed the
knowledge Qui-Gon gave him on to Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Because of this, Obi-Wan used his time hiding out on Tatooine to also learn how to maintain
his identity after death, which meant that like Jinn and Yoda, he would be able to pass
on wisdom long after he was gone.
While Obi-Wan made himself comfortable on the sandy desert planet, Yoda made the swampy
world of Dagobah his home.
He made a modest house there among all the little creatures of the muck, waiting for
the Skywalker twins to grow up and inevitably cause trouble.
Though he was physically stuck on the planet, Yoda was still able to keep an eye on surviving
Jedi throughout the galaxy, helping them to avoid the Inquisitors that sought to snuff
them out.
Around two decades after Yoda's defeat at the hands of Palpatine, a grown-up Luke Skywalker
came to Dagobah in search of a great warrior, the Jedi who had taught his own mentor, Obi-Wan
Kenobi.
He found Yoda, who didn't appear to be much more than a senile hermit.
But soon, Luke would find out that Yoda was the stuff of legend.
Despite his cryptic speech pattern, Yoda proved to be an excellent teacher as he mentored
Luke in the ways of the Force.
However, their relationship had its ups and downs.
During his training, Luke ignored Yoda's advice and went to confront Vader when he sensed
his friends were in danger.
He didn't return to Dagobah until a year later, when he found Yoda ill and dying.
With Yoda gone, Luke would become the last of the Jedi, so Yoda asked him to pass on
what he knew to others and become a mentor as Yoda had been for centuries.
Upon his death, Yoda became one with the Force.
But he wasn't gone for good, because no one's ever really gone in Star Wars.
His training to maintain his identity after death also helped.
Yoda appeared one last time, years later when Luke was at his lowest during his own exile.
In classic Yoda fashion, he dispensed some necessary wisdom to one of his students, restoring
Luke's faith in the Force when he, and the galaxy, needed it most.
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