One of the most controversial actions of the old Jedi Order was its policy of taking Force
sensitive infants from their parents and bringing them back to the temple for training.
With exception of those taken in due to being orphaned, most infants were handed over by
their parents with permission, believing their child
growing up to become a Jedi Knight was the greatest honor in the galaxy.
While a vast majority were content with the choice of handing over their child to the
Jedi Order, there was one case when a family came to regret
their decision and even went as far as to hire
a bounty hunter to get their kid back.
It was shortly before the outbreak of the Clone Wars, when Mace Windu was comforting
Depa Billaba following her first retrieval of an
infant for the Order.
Although she felt conflicted with the idea of taking a child from its family, feeling
a momentary spark of inner sadness of never seeing her own family, Windu was able to convince
her the action served a greater purpose of ensuring the survival of the necessary peacekeeping
duties of the Jedi Order.
As the two left the Temple’s chamber which held the newly acquired force sensitive infants,
the bounty hunter named Vianna made her move to
retrieve the baby she was hired to reclaim for
the family.
Once she was able to get ahold of the baby, she made her escape, only to bump into
a conflicted Mace Windu who had returned with a data pad in hand.
In an instant, Vianna shot the Jedi Master with a stun blast, only for her to get force
pushed back as a result.
When Windu ignited his lightsaber, Vianna placed her blaster to the infant’s
head to use as a hostage for her escape, but Windu called her bluff, knowing full well
she had no intention of killing the child.
As a result, Vianna desperately attacked the Jedi Master, firing her blaster at him.
Although he was able to easily deflect all of her bolts,
one deflected bolt shattered the wall of the care room
of the other infants, causing a massive uproar as they all awoke from their slumber.
During this scene, on the bottom right of the panel, is an infant of Yoda’s species.
Now seeing how this story takes place in a comic released
in 2002, that is a part of the Legends timeline, it
is funny seeing a Baby Yoda at the Jedi Temple around the exact same time Grogu would have
been, as it was revealed in the Ahsoka episode of The Mandalorian.
Due to this taking place in a comic written 17 years before The Mandalorian, it is highly
unlikely this is Grogu, at least the intention of it
being him when the artist drew a baby Yoda for this
scene at the time, but it is cool how much of a coincidence it is to see one appear at
the Jedi Temple that can easily be retconned in the
minds of fans to actually be Grogu as it fits with his
current backstory.
Nonetheless, the baby Yoda in question only appears in this single comic
panel and does not return in any other Legends story afterwards.
Digression aside, the shouting from the disturbed babies only distracted Windu for a split
second, who was able to dodge another blaster shot from the bounty hunter and to finally
knock her down into submission.
Knowing she had lost, Vianna came to question the morality of the Jedi, claiming they could
not know love and that they only cared for power
as they enforced their wills over others.
Windu shut her comments down, only wishing to know who had hired her for this job.
He came to list off some of the most nefarious crime
syndicates of the galaxy as possible suspects, including the Black Sun and Hutts.
But to his surprise it was neither of them, instead only a family wishing to see their
child again.
Although the revelation shook Windu a bit, he continued to give the same speech he had
given many times before to those who questioned
the morality of taking infants from their families.
However, the bounty hunter did not buy it, still claiming the Jedi Master knew nothing
about the love shared between a child and its parents.
Slowly reaching toward her blaster in hopes of
making one last attempt of escape, she instead accidently picked up the data pad Windu had
dropped from earlier.
Upon reading it, she came to realize that the man before her was not the
emotionless monk she initially believed, but a conflicted man who did know the love parents
gave.
As a result, she left the child with him and abandoned her mission, but her goal of
returning him did not go in vain.
For perhaps one of the rarest moments of going against his strict adherence to the Jedi Order,
Windu was the one to return the infant back to its family, reuniting them at last.
On the data pad that Vianna had read, showed a saved message from Windu’s own parents.
They wrote to their son wishing to see him just once in their lives after they had given
him to the Jedi like many other parents before.
Unfortunately, Windu did not get a chance to give them their wish, as they were both
killed during a war on his planet.
Never having the opportunity to show his parents that their child
grew up to become a proper Jedi, and himself never being able to experience the powerful
love from his parents, led to this choice.
As granting another family the wish his own never received,
Windu was likely able to sleep easier at night over what may have been one of his biggest
regrets in life of never meeting his parents.