While it might have just been a storytelling shortcut in George Lucas’ mind, the newly appointed know-it-all of all things “Star Wars,” Dave Filoni, revealed that Frank Oz, one of Yoda’s co-creators and the iconic character’s puppeteer, had a different idea as to why the character speaks the way he does.
Speaking to Nerdist following the debut of Disney+’s anthology series, “Tales of the Jedi,” Filoni remembered encountering the issue while working with Bryce Dallas Howard, who voiced Yaddle, a female from Yoda’s species who speaks in a normal, traditional speech pattern. Making sure not to slip up on “Star Wars” lore, Howard asked, “‘Does she speak backwards?’ I’m like, ‘No, I don’t think so. I think that’s a Yoda thing.'” Filoni recalled. “Frank Oz told me once that Yoda speaks that way specifically in honor of his own master. That was what he had thought about it.”
The character Filoni is referring to is Jedi Master N’Kata Del Gormo, who trained Yoda in the Force, though the character is no longer a part of the franchise’s official canon along with a multitude of other characters and events that existed in the now defunct “Star Wars” Expanded Universe (now renamed “Legends”) — which is too bad. A Jedi Master that belongs to a race of snake-like aliens and has four arms and four legs is pretty awesome. Perhaps now that Leslye Headland has dipped into “Legends” in creating “The Acolyte” (even down to the show’s name), in the future learn more about Yoda’s teacher, we could?
