The reviews are in, and Grogu is dead. His movie, anyway. The toyetic little critter popularly known as “Baby Yoda” co-stars with Pedro Pascal in The Mandalorian and Grogu. A theatrical spinoff of a Star Wars television show, one that way fewer people watched than any given Star Wars movie, was always going to be a heavy lift. By most accounts, director Jon Favreau and his co-writer, Disney Star Wars honcho Dave Filoni, have dropped it like Luke Skywalker trying to levitate his X-Wing. 

The headlines tell the story. “The Mandalorian and Grogu Probably Shouldn’t Have Been a Movie,” writes Vulture. “Latest in ‘Star Wars’ Franchise Makes Magic Of ‘A New Hope’ Seem Far, Far Away,” says Deadline. The Times of London has had it: ‘It’s time to kill off Star Wars for good,” proclaims a newspaper I believe is read by characters from Industry. The Force is not projected to be with the ticket sales, either.

I, however, am far less interested in this movie’s box-office death than I am in imagining a series of gruesome endings, perhaps thousands of them, for the little beast Grogu himself. I am not alone.

“The Mandalorian and Grogu have been found dead in what is believed to be a murder-suicide pact.” “Grogu killed in bear attack at Glacier National Park.” A picture of John Cena announcing the death of Osama bin Laden accompanied by the text “We killed that little grogu bastard. he is compromised to a permanent end.” Multiple iterations of the classic “Me and my friend would’ve killed [adorable alien from the Lucas/Spielberg Cinematic Universe] with hammers I can tell you that much” tweet, with Grogu instead of E.T. the guest of honor at the hammer party. In post after post, Grogu gets got.

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What is motivating this murderous impulse against a character who, to look at him, is no more offensive than Hello Kitty? I spoke to some of his killers to find out.

I wrote about the social media phenomenon of wishing death and misery upon Grogu for Defector.

Dril and the boys wallow in the same miasma from which all our era’s reactionary movements have emerged — the MAGAs and Pepes, MRAs and incels, GamerGaters and ComicsGaters, Sad Puppies and Proud Boys and all the other doofuses with unwittingly infantilizing sobriquets.

With “the boys,” the humorist behind dril has tapped into the overall vibe in this country that there exists, somewhere out there ― perhaps in a TJ Maxx ― a lost masculine ideal. No one agrees on what it is, least of all dril, whose psyche is as piecemeal as his punctuation. It could be yelling at NFL protesters to stand for the national anthem or screaming at Disney for committing white genocide in the “Star Wars” films. It could be having sex all the time or having no sex at all. It could be respecting the majesty of the law or flouting it or both, depending on whom the law is meant to penalize. It’s the nightmare superego-id hybrid, 10 pounds of Blue Lives Matter shit in a five-pound “Live free or die” bag.

When men fail to live up to the puritanical amorality of the boys, they’re less than men, which is to say — as women have a lifetime to learn — they’re less than human. Such men earn sexualized insults like “betas” and “cucks.” They’re reduced to contemptuous acronyms like “SJWs” and “NPCs.” They make the soy face. They listen to dad rock. This blend of macho aggression and childlike vulnerability cannot be resolved in the real world, where it results in a racist, revanchist, minority party controlling all branches of government and installing sexual predators in every available position of power yet still acting like the David to the Goliath of Me Too, female gamers and the theoretical casting of Idris Elba as James Bond.

Dril and the boys reside in this all-American astral plane where the Large Son–Libtard civil war rages, where misandry is real and must be guarded against with magic spells. We recognize our own reality in their incoherent but nevertheless militant search for reasons to hoot and holler. As such, their romance presents us with an opportunity to convert the problematic into the pleasurable, just as surely as antihero dramas or even halfway decent kink.

I wrote about Dril, the funniest writer alive, and “the boys,” his best recurring characters, for HuffPost.