Mandalorian Season 3 poster reveals a surprising Baby Yoda-Rey connection

Rey and Grogu are not related (probably) but they do have a lot in common. In addition to both being trained by Luke Skywalker, Baby Yoda and Palp’s grandaughter also share nearly the exact same Force-healing ability. In fact, just days before The Rise of Skywalker hit theaters, Grogu debuted Rey’s Force-healing in The Mandalorian Season 1.

But a new clue for Mandalorian Season 3 also suggests another big connection between Grogu and Rey. If one piece of promotional art is to be taken literally, Baby Yoda and Rey will both end up with the oh-so-rare yellow lightsaber. Here’s why and what it might mean for the future of Star Wars.

Will Grogu get a lightsaber?

Recently, a new piece of promotional art surfaced that suggested Luke will help Grogu build his own lightsaber. The officially licensed poster was created by Russell Walks and is titled “Size Matters Not.” It shows Luke in a soft brown Jedi robe using the Force to seemingly help assemble the parts of a smaller lightsaber, presumably intended for Grogu to wield.

At the heart of these parts, we see Luke levitating what can only be a Kyber crystal. If the poster is intended as a preview of the events of Mandalorian Season 3, or even perhaps things that occur off-screen, there’s a strong suggestion that Grogu will have a lightsaber at some point in Mando Season 3.

Now, here’s the thing. if Grogu is influencing the color of the Kyber crystal, then something interesting is happening here. According to the databank on StarWars.com:

“A lightsaber crystal is colorless until first attuned and connected to a Jedi -- at which times it glows either blue or green or in some rare instances, another shade. From that point on, it retains that hue.”

Right now, we have no idea what would happen if a non-Jedi tried to build a lightsaber without the Force. Nor do we know how the Kyber crystals that were used to build the super laser in the Death Star felt about being made to do something that wasn’t really a lightsaber. (Or is it?)

Anyway, for the purposes of Grogu and Luke, presumably, the Kyber crystal attunes and connects to a Jedi during the construction of the saber, so if Baby Yoda’s crystal is yellow — in theory — this is because the Force wants it that way, and the blade will be yellow, too.

Why a yellow lightsaber is a big deal

Prior to Rey’s yellow-bladed lightsaber, glimpsed briefly at the end of The Rise of Skywalker, the most prominent on-screen yellow sabers were carried by the Jedi Temple Guards in The Clone Wars. In Legends-canon, a yellow saber used to mean that Jedi was called “Jedi Protector,” which means they had kind of a scholarly flair.

In Legends canon, Yaddle — a long-rumored possible parent of Grogu — had a yellow lightsaber. In the 2020 ongoing Marvel in-canon Star Wars comic book series, Luke Skywalker himself briefly used a discarded Jedi Guard lightsaber, meaning that the yellow color was associated with him, too.

That said, in the contemporary canon, the color of a lightsaber blade is connected to the wielder’s personality. Red lightsabers are red because the crystal has been bled as a result of the wielder doing something bad. This is why Kylo Ren’s lightsaber started off as blue but became an unstable red blade. Not only did his crystal bleed to red, but it also cracked, too. Both of these things — the cracked saber and the red blade — reflect his personality. Presumably, if Ben had been all bad, his saber would have just been a solid red one like Vader’s. (Even though Vader turned good, too, but never mind!)

Now, green and blue are the defaults, while purple, orange and yellow are rarer. But, because yellow happens to be Rey’s color, if it does end up being Grogu’s color, too, there could be a hidden meaning. For example, Ahsoka, somewhat famously, has silverly-white lightsaber blades in Rebels and Mando, which signifies her rejection of Jedi dogma after the events of The Clone Wars. The TL;DR here is that anything that isn’t blue or green could mean something specific about the owner of the lightsaber.

How Grogu and Rey are united

The fact that Grogu and Rey both demonstrated the ability to use Force-healing isn’t all that strange. Like revolving lightsaber colors, Force-healing was a thing in Legends canon too, and not scrutinized as much then as it is now. But, if Grogu and Rey also both get yellow lightsabers, that feels like two too many commonalities to just dismiss as a coincidence.

If having a yellow-bladed saber indicates the user is non-traditional Jedi, a person who unites various aspects of the Force at once — both light and dark — then you can already see how Grogu and Rey have a lot in common. Like Grogu, Rey’s lineage was hidden from her, she resisted the idea of becoming a Jedi at first, and she felt pulls toward the Dark side.

Now, in fairness, practically every potential Jedi character in Star Wars is tempted by the Dark Side at some point, but Rey and Grogu are similar insofar as they both represent some kind of non-traditional stop-gap in the Force. It’s also interesting to note that during the events of The Mandalorian, Rey isn’t born yet, while Ben Solo is still a little kid. Is the Force in balance at this point? And is Grogu and his (hypothetical) yellow lightsaber keeping everything in check?

If Rey was needed to provide the ultimate balance in the Force nearly three decades after the events of The Mandalorian, then you really have to worry about Baby Yoda. Either he’s not going to complete his Jedi training or something terrible is going to happen to him.

Let’s hope he just drops out of Luke Skywalker academy!

The Mandalorian Season 3 is expected sometime in 2022.