‘The Mandalorian’ Fans Are Going Wild Over Baby Yoda Meeting A ‘Star Wars’ Legend In The Season 3 Premiere

WARNING: Spoilers for The Mandalorian Season 3 premiere below.

Heading into the highly anticipated return of The Mandalorian, Star Wars fans were already buzzing over reports that Babu Frik, the beloved character from The Rise of Skywalker could make an appearance in the bounty-hunting series. Turns out the rumors were true, and the Season 3 premiere almost collapsed under the weight of all that cuteness.

While reconnecting with Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) on Nevarro, Mando is hoping to restore the assassin droid IG-11 (Taika Waititi) to aid him on his perilous trek to the bombed-out planet of Mandalore. However, IG-11 is in pretty bad shape after self-destructing in the Season 1 finale, so Greef introduces Mando to the best droidsmiths in the galaxy: Babu Frik and his fellow Anzellans.

After squeezing inside the tiny Anzellan workshop, Mando learns from Babu Frik that IG-11 is going to need a new memory unit, but their conversation is cut short when Baby Yoda (Or fine… “Grogu.”) decides to just go ahead and pick up Babu like a stuffed animal. It’s freaking adorable. Unfortunately, Mando has business to attend to, so he busts out his best dad voice as he tries to get Baby Yoda to let go of Babu Frik. It works momentarily, but the little green guy is determined to go back for more.

Despite The Rise of Skywalker ending the Sequel Trilogy with such a whimper that Lucasfilm has been terrified to move forward with a new Star Wars movie, Babu Frik was one of the few highlights of the film. His presence is going over huge on social media, especially when you throw in the fact that Baby Yoda freaking hugged him. It was a scene designed to melt Twitter’s heart, and it worked like gangbusters.

You can see some of the reactions below:

https://twitter.com/conquercomics/status/1630852558536466433
https://twitter.com/HSW3K/status/1630874944102866946

New episodes of The Mandalorian stream Wednesday on Disney+.