How old was Yoda when he died?

Ever since he first appeared in 1980, Yoda has become a fan favorite Star Wars character. After hearing about a great Jedi master earlier in the movie, audiences were caught by the twist that the small, old creature was actually the great Jedi master Obi-Wan had spoken of earlier in the movie (a twist that would quickly be surpassed by an even bigger twist later in the movie).

As the years have gone on, and the Star Wars universe has expanded, the character of Yoda has still had an air of mystery. To this day, we still don’t know the name of Yoda’s homeworld or even the name of his species. Only a few other members of his species have appeared in all the years since, including Yaddle as well as Grogu in the recent Mandalorian TV series. Still one of the few things that we do know about this mysterious species is that they appear to have incredibly long life spans.

When we first heard about Grogu in The Mandalorian (then just called The Child) we were told he was 50 years old despite still clearly being a very young child. Yoda has also made some references to living hundreds of years at various points in the series. But what age was Yoda when he finally passed away in Return of the Jedi?

How old was Yoda in Episode VI?

There are a few instances in the original trilogy where Yoda makes reference to how long his life has been. The first is in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke first meets Yoda. Yoda says how he has been training Jedi for 800 years. The second time that Yoda mentions his long life is in Return of the Jedi when he says to Luke, “When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not.”

If we take Yoda literally at his word here, that means that the Jedi Master died at the ripe old age of 900. Of course, it’s possible that Yoda was rounding when he mentioned either of these two numbers. After all, when you’re looking at a life span of nine centuries, what’s a year or two off in either direction? Still, until we learn more about Yoda’s history, we will have to assume that Yoda passed away at nine hundred years old.

It’s worth mentioning that looking deeper into Yoda and his few references to his age reveals some interesting tidbits of information. After all, if Yoda is 900 years old by the time we see him in the original trilogy, and he’s trained Jedi for 800 years by that point, we can assume that he began training his first Jedi when he was around 100 years old. If Grogu is in fact 50 years old, then he is already halfway to being old enough to start training Jedi himself.

Of course, we don’t know how Yoda’s species ages, and we don’t have enough comparisons to know if Yoda himself is an especially gifted member of his species or not. But hopefully, this means that if we end up getting 50 seasons of The Mandalorian, by the time the show is over, we’ll get to meet Grogu’s first padawan!