Chapter Text
Din’s been to Tatooine with its two suns. He’s visited planets with one sun, and several that hardly see sunlight at all.
He’s never seen a sun with a face before. The rising sun resembles a golden human infant, and it squeals delightedly as Din soars his shining silver N-1 across the cloudless blue sky.
From his glass dome in the astrometric port, Grogu gurgles back.
The planet is tiny, more like the forest moon of Endor, but this is no forest. The entire surface appears to be covered in grassy hills with patches of colorful flowers.
Din starts to slow his ship down. It’s a peaceful place for Grogu to play and stretch his tiny legs.
The only signs of life are hopping, brown rodents with long ears. Grogu will have fun chasing them.
“It’s still just you and me, buddy.” Din tells Grogu, not counting the baby sun. “I don’t see any sign of civilization.”
Less than a minute later, he spots a hill that appears to have been fashioned into a dwelling. Its domed doors and windows have glass panes resembling the petals of the large flowers scattered through the field.
Din lands and climbs out of the cockpit, his boots hardly making a sound on the grass. He gets ready to lower Grogu to the ground, but Grogu jumps out and lands by himself. A trick he picked up during their time apart.
Grogu toddles through the grass, probably hoping for something amphibious to snack on.
Din glances at the hill house. Before he’s even stepped toward the door, an alien jumps out of a hole on top of the domed roof.
He’s a species Din’s never seen before, light green and clearly a toddler like Grogu, but the similarities end there.
He has a brown face and large, rounded ears. A straight antenna stands atop his head, and his stomach has an odd gray rectangle that resembles a screen.
A disembodied voice counts “one,” and the alien repeats it back.
Another alien, clearly the same species but red with a lighter face and a circular antenna, pops out after the first. “Two!”
The third one is yellow with a curly antenna. The three look around until the biggest- a purple alien with a triangular antenna- jumps out with a cry of “Four!”
Speakers rise out of the ground, announcing “Time for Teletubbies! Time for Teletubbies!”
The Teletubby aliens sing their names- Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po- and say hello by babbling “Eh-oh!”
The Teletubbies do a big group hug, then exclaim “uh-oh!” before racing away.
Grogu toddles after them, even leaps a few times, but can’t catch up.
The baby sun gurgles as a speaker rises from the ground to ask “Where have the Teletubbies gone?”
“Are you going to find them?” Din asks Grogu. It’s pretty clear they aren’t hostile.
The Teletubbies find them first. Po, the red one, is the first to notice Din’s shiny ship and armor. She waves at her own reflection in the N-1, giggling. “Eh-oh, Po!”
Grogu toddles forward, his tiny clawed hand reaching towards Po’s mitten hand.
“Eh-oh!” Po waves at Grogu, who coos but has never babbled.
“Grogu.” Din supplies, smiling under his helmet at the way Grogu perks up at his name.
“Eh-oh, Grogu!” Po waves, delighted. Grogu pokes at Po’s odd screen stomach, and Po giggles.
Dipsy comes tromping along. Like Po, he greets his reflection, though he points to the whole ship. “What’s that?”
“It’s my ship.” Din suspects this planet doesn’t get many visitors.
“What’s that?” Dipsy points to Din’s armor.
“It’s armor. It keeps me safe.” Din doubts that these Teletubbies have ever faced danger, even with the galaxy in the state it’s in. Their tiny planet is far too idyllic.
“Safe.” Dipsy repeats, gazing happily at the grassy hills and smiling sun.
Po joins in. “Safe!”
“The Teletubbies were always safe in Teletubby Land,” says the disembodied male voice.
By now, Tinky-Winky and Laa-Laa have joined them.
Po states Grogu’s name so the others can greet him and Laa-Laa looks questioningly at Din.
“You can call me Mando.”
“Eh-oh, Mando!” they all wave.
“Dipsy try Mando’s hat!” Dipsy reaches up towards Din’s helmet, and Din shakes his head.
“I don’t like taking it off.”
Grogu burbles, reaching for Dipsy.
“What’s that?” Tinky-Winky stares.
Din wonders when Grogu will reach this stage of constant questions. Different species develop differently, he’s heard. Grogu being fifty certainly proves that.
Laa-Laa picks Grogu up and cuddles him. She’s not much bigger, but big enough.
The narrator voice states “Grogu wasn’t a Teletubby.” Din thinks that’s pretty clear, but the Teletubbies all repeat it.
“I don’t know his species, but he’s my son.” Din hardly believes it himself.
“Sun!” Tinky-Winky turns his white face up towards the baby sun, blinking in its light.
“Not that sun.” Din chuckles. “He’s my son. We’re a clan. Family.”
It suddenly dawns of Din that he hasn’t seen a single parental figure here. Unless their father is the man broadcasting the disembodied narration. Din doesn’t know everything about parenting- Peli Motto claimed he didn’t know anything about caring for an infant- but he feels that would be a bizarre parenting practice.
Grogu wriggles out of Laa-Laa’s hold, hopping to the ground to look for something to eat.
“It was time for tubby custard,” the possible-parental voice reminds the Teletubbies, who lead Din and Grogu inside their domed hill home. The inside is mostly metallic like a spaceship, though Din doubts their home can fly. A pink slide runs down from the hole they’d jumped out of earlier.
Din watches their droid suspiciously. He no longer hates every droid on principle, but he still doesn’t like them all.
Like the rest of this planet, the droid is unfamiliar. It has a blue, cylindrical body and a long, black trunk-like hose to suck things up. It wiggles telescopic eyes around on smaller hoses as it slurps crumbs off the floor.
There are no adults cooking for the Teletubbies. Instead, they operate the Tubby Custard machine with switches and knobs and dials. A conveyor belt moves a clear bowl to be filled.
Grogu, of course, is enchanted with the controls, like he’d been with the silver sphere on the Razor Crest. He hops atop the Tubby Custard machine, pulling levers and whacking buttons.
“Uh-oh!” cry the Teletubbies, though they giggle.
“Don’t break it.” Din scoops Grogu off the machine. He wonders whether the Teletubbies have ever broken the machine, and if they could fix it before they starved. Maybe that’s what the droid is for? But it seems to primarily be for cleaning.
The machine fills the clear bowl with pink liquid, and Po cheers “Tubby Custard!”
Dipsy fills a bowl for Grogu, and Tinky-Winky offers one to Din, who sets it aside. “Thank you, but I can’t eat around anyone else.”
The Teletubbies sit around a table to slurp their Tubby Custard, and Grogu sits atop the table, drinking his bowl.
Outside the window, a windmill starts to spin.
“Uh-oh!” the Teletubbies abandon their meal, running out to huddle and collapse on a hill before marching to the top. Din watches as, one by one, their antennae and screen stomachs light up. Grogu waddles after them, leaping up the hill.
At last, only Dipsy’s screen is lit up, showing some sort of video that the Teletubbies crowd around to watch.
As the droid powers down, Din takes the opportunity to remove his helmet and quickly drink his bowl of Tubby Custard.
Dipsy’s video broadcast has ended by the time he puts his helmet back on and joins them outside.
Grogu flips backwards into Din’s armored arms.
“Eh-oh, Mando!” Po waves, as if Din has been gone all day
“Again, again!” Dipsy chants, and the other three join in.
The video replays. A dark-skinned human sings a song to babies of many species- humans, Rodians, Twi’leks, Wookies and Nautolans. There are no other Teletubbies in the video, and no members of Grogu’s species.
When the video ends, the Teletubbies wander in different directions. Po rides an obselete wheeled toy that she powers by pushing with her foot on the ground. She chants in another language as she rides her “cooter”
Laa-Laa bounces a large orange ball. She seems to favor it almost as much as Grogu loves the silver ball from the Razor Crest.
Grogu uses his powers to levitate the orange ball above Laa-Laa’s head. She gasps and flaps her yellow arms like wings. Po steps off her scooter to jump, trying to catch Laa-Laa’s ball.
Din’s own smile is hidden behind his helmet as he watches Grogu play with the others.
Somebody tugs Din’s cape. When he looks down, he sees Dipsy wearing a tall white hat covered in oddly shaped black spots.
“Dipsy hat!” Dipsy proclaims proudly.
“It’s nice,” Din tells him, though he’d never wear it.
“Mando try Dipsy’s hat!” Dipsy lifts it off his antenna, holding it out to Din. With a sigh, Din puts the spotted hat atop his helmet, making Dipsy laugh and clap.
Grogu waves his hand, sending Laa-Laa’s ball sailing to knock the hat off Din’s helmet. The Teletubbies and baby sun squeal with laughter.
Grogu and the Teletubbies take turns hiding among the hills and sparse trees and finding each other. The game is unhurried and simple, and Grogu clearly enjoys taking the time to relax and play.
Eventually, they head back inside the hill house. Tinky-Winky takes a silver blanket from his bed and wraps it around himself like armor. Laa-Laa drapes hers like a cape.
For supper the Teletubbies and Grogu have Tubby Toast instead of Tubby Custard. Each round piece has a simple smiling face on it. The Teletubbies keep glancing between the Tubby Toast, their own faces, and Din’s helmet.
Din isn’t going to appease their curiosity this time. He keeps his helmet on, and watches warily as the droid sucks toast crumbs off Laa-Laa. He holds Grogu as the droid slurps crumbs off his rough robe.
The Teletubbies head back outside to play, but soon a speaker rises from the ground. “Time for Tubby Bye-Bye. Time for Tubby Bye-Bye.”
The Teletubbies all groan in disappointment, but wave bye to the voice as they duck behind hills.
Dipsy pops up. “Boo!”
The others join him, and Grogu gurgles in Din’s arms.
“No,” chides the voice, and the Teletubbies mimic him.
They repeat the routine of saying goodbye and hiding behind hills.
A female voice says “The sun is setting in the sky. Teletubbies say goodbye.”
As Din climbs back into his ship, the Teletubbies climb atop their hill home. One by one, they wave and jump back in the hole. Po is the last to go, and she peeks out to wave to Grogu in his bubble as Din makes the ship lift off.
As they fly up into the planet’s atmosphere, the baby sun sets behind the hills.
“Looks like it’s just us again.” Din says. “Did you like that planet?”
Grogu coos, crawling out of his bubble to curl in Din’s lap as they soar into the stars.