Jon Favreau On The Surprise Ending of The Mandalorian’s Series Premiere (SPOILERS)

Warning: Spoilers follow for the series premiere of The Mandalorian.

The Mandalorian ended its series premiere on Disney+ with a big moment, and show creator Jon Favreau has weighed in on it. The first episode of the series, which bowed as part of Disney+’s launch on Tuesday, saw the Pedro Pascal’s titular character accept a bounty from The Client (Werner Herzog). When he got to the client, however, he (and we) learned that the “50 year old” is an infant of none other than Yoda’s extremely long-lived species.

There’s very little that’s ever been revealed about Yoda’s people, and much of what has been revealed is no longer canon following Disney’s reset of much of the Expanded Universe material after they purchased Lucasfilm. We simply know that they are a small, three-fingered and long-lived race who age very slowly and (per Star Wars: The Clone Wars) have a “sub-brain” that is used in visions. George Lucas was always adamant about not exploring much of the species, to the point that it still doesn’t have a name as of yet. We’ve met one other member so far in Yaddle, who was a member of the Jedi High Council in Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace.

“I wanted to surprise people, and I wanted to — well, there are bigger arcs that go through the whole season and the whole throw of the show,” Favreau told Variety in a now-deleted video on Twitter (per Collider). “So as fun as it is to reveal new characters and surprise them, it also fits into a larger narrative about what’s going on in the galaxy after the revolution, and this is an important character.”

Talking about the reveal staying secret, Favreau said, “What I’m most proud of is that we surprised people. You know how hard that is to do that nowadays? And what type of commitment it took from everybody who was on set and from the studio to hide all the clues that people, especially Star Wars fans, normally tap into? Looking into toy catalogues, looking into marketing materials, looking into style guides, photography, and the fact that that secret was kept is incredible. It is exciting. It’s fun, because people are so happy when they’re surprised. They’re not used to being surprised now—not in a good way (laughs).”