Yaddle

Yaddle!

Before Yaddle is returned to our collective Star Wars fandom tomorrow, some thoughts.

This is Yaddle from Star Wars: Episode I.

That’s all anyone got of this character in the live action universe until now. One acknowledgment that there were more characters like Yoda out there before we finally met The Child/Grogu twenty-years later.

Yaddle has been lightly touched on in peripheral materials, comics here and there, but in terms of the core story of Star Wars, there was a blink-and-you’ll- miss-her-moment and then nothing until Tales of the Jedi, hitting our eyeballs just a few hours from this writing.

That’s the fun of Star Wars. It constantly teases us with stories beyond the stories and it carefully guards its mysteries. The almost arbitrary mystery of Yoda, his species, his home planet, his origins, is one that has barely been punctured. And now, at last, extra Yaddle.

That’s all incredible and I cannot wait for it. But really, there’s one person I’m most happy for.

Pam Grossman, my patient spouse, loves Yaddle.

I was there, dear readers, when Pam first discovered Yaddle. I told her about a female Yoda. We googled it, and when Pam found out her name was Yaddle she…

freaked.

the fuck.

out.

I mean, she repeated the name Yaddle for hours, a near-manic episode. She could not stop laughing and delighting in the name Yaddle and the idea of Yaddle. She expressed an excitement that bordered on the uncontrollable. At a certain point, I could see in her eyes that she wanted to stop laughing and repeating the word, but was unable to. Her cackling, open-mouthed, weird thrill at the existence of something or someone named Yaddle became so all-encompassing that it was happening independently of her, as if she was relegated to the backseat of her body, no longer driving. She would say “Matt! I can’t stop laughing!” as if I might be able to help her. It’s like when someone has the hiccups and can’t seem to make them go away, but these hiccups appeared in the form of Loving The Concept of Yaddle.

Pam has always lived her joys out loud. On our first date, we went to dessert bar called ChickalLicious in the East Village and she cried while she was eating something chocolate that was served like a cloud of cream. She liked it so much that a tear trickled down her cheek. I, raised Protestant by people who wear glasses, had never cried eating a dessert. I was duly intimidated and impressed.

She is someone of deep enthusiasms, and she has made a career out of telling the world about magic and the things she loves. She feels big things, in big ways. I think an apt cartoon of Pam would be a drawing of The World and a tiny Pam Grossman straining to get her fingers to touch as she throws her arms around it’s waist.

So.

Yaddle cometh.

Yaddle ascendant.

Yaddle Run. Yaddle Redux. Yaddle is Rich. Yaddle at Rest.

Pam has tweeted about Yaddle. She’s tried to create hashtags about Yaddle. She gives a shit about Yaddle. She’s asked me why there isn’t more Yaddle.

Now, at last, there is.

Hey Pammy.

Here comes Yaddle.

Here.

Comes.

More.

Yaddle.