It is these expressions that make Grogu such an entertaining POV for the majority of the latest episode. We’ve seen him display a range of emotions before, but not to this scale — thanks to the robust facial movements constructed by Legacy Effects, Grogu conveys happiness, fear, sadness, and curiosity in an absolutely adorable way. The same goes for his bodily movements. While those were enhanced with CGI, he still moves in a fluid yet distinctly mechanical way that can only be achieved using a real, physical puppet.
It really makes you wonder if this amount of nuanced detail would have been apparent had Grogu been entirely rendered in CGI. That is probably the case, but just depicting emotions and movement isn’t the same as creating character attachments. Grogu seems so adorable because he actually is there on set, being held by Din (Pedro Pascal) or walking around in a fully-constructed background. You can actually imagine the amazingly lifelike animatronic existing to a certain degree in the real world, something even the most well-rendered CGI creations can’t achieve. That, ultimately, is at the core of Grogu’s appeal – he’s just so adorable, we would want one for ourselves. Thank goodness Legacy Effects and the “Mandalorian” team understand this.