The faith in their little green God was not strong enough.

That was the judgment of Werner Herzog, the imperious German filmmaker turned galactic space villain turned Baby Yoda fan club president, when he saw The Mandalorian creator and showrunner Jon Favreau and executive producer Dave Filoni removing the miniature creature from set during one of his scenes with the being.

They were preparing to shoot a blank slate of the sequence as a backup in case they decided during postproduction that the puppet wasn’t convincing enough and a digital version had to be substituted.

Herzog, known for films about pushing the limits of human ability and endurance, could not hide his contempt.

“You are cowards,” he declared. “Leave it.”

This story, recounted by Filoni during his introduction of The Mandalorian at its Hollywood premiere, got a massive laugh from the audience, in part because HOW COULD ANYONE DOUBT THE POWER OF BABY YODA?

This creature of unknown provenance, introduced at the end of The Mandalorian’s first episode, has become an instant and indelible pop-culture phenomenon. Its fandom is obsessive, transcending age and experience. In an era of bitter division on nearly all matters, there is seemingly unanimous adoration for this tiny alien creature.

The puppet, the realness of it, is a triumph of design. The inside of his sideways bunny ears is the color of a sunset on your happiest day. His supple green skin is the texture of pistachio pudding, and his bottomless black eyes are so massively dilated they can only see the goodness in us.

When Favreau tweeted a concept art image of the character by artist Christian Alzmann, it was liked 217,000 times and retweeted 34,000 times.

And yet, there were doubts. Uncertainty.