How Long Did It Take Yoda To Become A Jedi?

Grandmaster Yoda. Teacher of many. Avatar of Light. (Troll). Old guy that steals food and then complains about how it tastes.

He’s one of Star Wars greatest mysteries and that’s how George Lucas likes it. We may never fully understand him.

But we can put the pieces together to gain lore from canon and legends. (This will be largely guesswork from the Mandalorian, but it makes sense from a species perspective).

Yoda’s exact journey from Youngling to Grandmaster isn’t clear, but many sources state that he was about ninety-six when he joined the Council and began training his first Padawan.

How Long Did It Take Yoda To Become A Jedi?

Using legends as a backdrop (and applying some math skills), we know that Yoda was about ninety-six when he joined the Council. 

If we look at the Mandalorian (we’ll do this a lot), then we know that Yoda’s species grows at a much slower rate than humans.

Grogu (Baby Yoda) is fifty years old and is still acting like a baby. He can barely walk, can’t speak, has a penchant for wanting shiny knobs, and will try to put a lot of things in his mouth.

That gives us about thirty to forty years to work with. We know that Yoda (along with an unnamed human friend) were traveling together in space when their ship malfunctioned.

They landed on a swamp planet (highly believed to be Dagobah but we don’t know for sure) and crossed paths with their future Jedi master.

N’Kata Del Gormo told them that this wasn’t an accident. They were strong in the Force and he would teach them. This is unusual since a Jedi is only allowed to train one Padawan at a time.

The average training time is about ten years, though it’s unlikely that they stayed on one planet as the two Padawan would need to build their lightsabers. This is known as the Gathering and can only be done on a few planets.

We learn in the Clone Wars animation, that a droid named Huyang taught Yoda how to make his first lightsaber when he was still a youngling. 

Proving that Yoda had to have been brought to the Order shortly after the swamp planet incident.

This is an amazing detail because Yoda was around 800 during the Clone Wars. A generation is the number of people born in ten years. 

We can assume that two out of ten people are Force-sensitive and brought to the Order at a young age. 

That’s a lot of Jedi for this one droid to remember, and we have no reason to believe that Yoda doesn’t remember all of his Padawans.

How Old Was Yoda When He Was Accepted Into The Jedi Order?

We don’t know. George Lucas wanted to keep details about Yoda’s life hidden. There’s a possibility that even he doesn’t know all of them.

We know that Yoda was old enough to know what he wanted to be for the rest of his life (a humble merchant).

I’m guessing around seventy at least. This would give him enough time to learn how to fly a ship (we don’t know who was flying it), and learn basic life skills.

How Old Was Yoda When He Became A Force Ghost?

Yoda lived to be 900. In early scripts, it was 891, but this is the number we have. 

He had roughly 800 years of training Jedi and doing his best to keep the peace. Despite the many mysteries surrounding him, we know that Yoda wasn’t infallible.

He also wasn’t too proud to admit when he was wrong. We see this in his last conversation with Ahsoka Tano and when he burned the Ancient Jedi texts.

Sadly, most (if any)of his attempts to change things would be too little, too late. But now that Yoda is a Force ghost, I pity the future Jedi and look forward to seeing his antics surrounding them.

Other Points Of Interest

Yoda was nearly called Buffy and Yoda-Minch. The Grandmaster was almost many things including a monkey, smurf, and pink.

His face was mostly modeled after Frank Oz except for his top lip, which was meant to look like Albert Einstein’s without his mustache. 

This was supposed to make Yoda appear wise (I didn’t get that impression but Yoda is unforgettable).

Count Dooku (Yoda’s former Padawan) was convinced that Yoda had been trained in the Dark side and would be stronger than Palpatine if he ever fell to it.

Seeing the Grandmaster in that state scared Dooku like nothing else has before. 

Yoda was never intended to be in Return Of The Jedi. George Lucas wanted him to vanish after he finished Luke Skywalker’s training.

But a child psychologist convinced him that he needed to make Yoda’s fate, and Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker’s father, clear.

Otherwise, children under the age of twelve wouldn’t understand it (and we wouldn’t have had our heartstrings pulled so much).

In Conclusion

We need more information. The Mandalorian gave us a great foothold to work with, and it seems Disney is gearing up a lot of new shows.

Ahsoka Tano and Obi-Wan Kenobi are both making their way to streaming devices in the near future. Anything involving Yoda’s past would be a huge hit.

But we must also respect George Lucas’s intent. Thank you for reading and may the Force be with you.