Jedi Master Yoda is perhaps the most iconic character from the “Star Wars” the franchise. The world knows him as the gentle green gremlin, the centuries-old alien who talks in an unusual object-subject-verb sentence structure that is either annoying or cute depending on how much patience you have.
It’s Yoda’s color, that turtle-green hue that makes up his skin, that distinguishes him most of all. But as hard as it may be to believe, there was a time during the production of “The Empire Strikes Back” when Yoda was supposed to blue. As The Guardian reported recently, the original screenplay for “Empire” wrote the following description for Yoda in his introduction scene:
“Mysteriously standing right in front of Luke is a strange, bluish creature, not more than two feet tall. The wizened little thing is dressed in rags.”
Further evidence of Blue Yoda comes in the early comics released for the series. The Marvel Comics tie-in book featured Yoda as being almost exactly the same in appearance and personality as he was in the movie, but with his skin a purplish blue. The comic was written and drawn alongside the movie being filmed, which means the artists were likely working off of studio notes for the movie. As the Guardian reported, “The [comic] depicts most scenes as they appeared on screen, suggesting the decision to change Yoda’s colour was made after most other character and set decisions were agreed.”
What makes green the perfect color for Yoda?
Nick Maley, a special makeup and creature effects designer for the original trilogy, gave The Guardian his take on why Yoda ended up green instead of blue:
“I mean, I assumed everybody kind of tended to think: ‘Oh, Martians are little green characters.’ Right? So, you know, the green alien is a classic in people’s minds… I never questioned the fact that he was green. I never asked any questions about it, but we actually put dyes into the foam latex so that we didn’t have to paint it too much. That was green.”
Sure enough, aliens in classic sci-fi have a tendency to be either green or gray, often with big bulging eyes and a human-esque body. With Yoda, the design team were seemingly attempting a balancing act between someone who looked clearly alien — hence the green skin — but also looked reminiscent of a kindly old grandpa. A few years later “E.T.” would pull off a similar trick, presenting an alien that looked scary at first glance but whose big childlike eyes helped viewers understand he wasn’t a threat.
Most interesting about Yoda’s blue origins is that the Disney+ show “The Mandalorian” may have (accidentally or otherwise) returned to them to an extent for Grogu, AKA Baby Yoda. Grogu may still be green like Yoda was, but there is a blue tinge to his greenness that we’ve never seen with their species before. Much like how some humans have blonde hair in their early childhood that turns dark, it seems that some members of Yoda’s species may start off closer to turquoise and become a strong green over time.
In the pre-Avatar days, blue aliens weren’t that common in sci-fi
Although we may have come to love green Yoda, it’s hard not to wonder what a world with blue Yoda would’ve looked like. For one thing, if he’d been blue there’s a slight chance that James Cameron would’ve picked a different color for his alien characters, the Na’vi, in his 2009 hit “Avatar.”
“Green was taken,” Cameron explained in a 2023 interview with Empire Magazine. “There was a long history of green aliens. Plus, the Hulk.” Yellow was taken off the board thanks to “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “The Simpsons,” which meant that it was mostly blue and purple Cameron had to work with. Cameron ended up making the aliens blue and using purple (his favorite color) for depicting Eywa, the god of the Na’vi.
While it seems likely that Cameron would’ve picked blue either way — he quite famously loves that color — maybe in a blue Yoda world the Na’vi would’ve been given a slightly purple tint to keep them feeling fresh. But in our current world, green Yoda helped leave the blue lane wide open for Cameron, and the director took full advantage.
