When will Baby Yoda grow up?

Baby Yoda is a babbling, waddling, squee-inducing extraterrestrial designed to turn human adults into puddles of over-sweet spotchka. If we welcomed this super-powered swamp creature into our lives with open arms in 2019, his 2020 return for Season 2 of The Mandalorian feels like someone just threw a tiny green light into the Sarlacc pit of existence. Baby Yoda is a reminder that even now, there is pure, unadulterated goodness in this galaxy.

But at 50, he is also a very old baby.

And I for one can’t help but wonder how many years of bewitching, bug-eyed cuteness Baby Yoda’s got left. Eventually, his infantile charm will fade and Baby Yoda will grow up into, well, something like this. But when, exactly, will that happen? To scientifically answer this question, I turned to two authoritative sources: Wookieepedia, the fan-edited encyclopedia of all things Star Wars, and researchers who study the development of intelligent primates, including humans.

Caution: Mild spoilers for The Mandalorian ahead.

The Star Wars Wiki didn’t give me many clues. Baby Yoda, officially known as “The Child,” hails from a mysterious species with just three galactic representatives: the little womp rat himself, Jedi Grand Master Yoda, and Jedi Master Yaddle, a female who first appears in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. The home planet of these wrinkled green beings is unknown; their society and culture are an enigma. We do know that Baby Yoda’s people can live incredibly long lives — the elder Yoda died at the ripe old age of 900 — and based on the three individuals we’ve seen, they appear to be a highly Force-sensitive species. We also know that Yoda classic attained the rank of Jedi Master when he was about 100 years old, although whether he was full-grown at that point or merely a precocious youngster isn’t clear.