Solved a mystery, George Lucas has.

At the 45th anniversary screening of “The Empire Strikes Back” during the 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival, 80-year-old George Lucas, the creator of “Star Wars,” addressed a long-standing curiosity about why the character Yoda speaks in a backwards manner in the films.

Lucas explained that he made this creative decision because he believed that having Yoda speak in regular English would not captivate the audience’s attention as much. By giving Yoda a distinctive way of speaking, such as talking backwards, it would make people focus more on the content of his words.

Considering Yoda’s role as the philosophical center of the movie, Lucas wanted to ensure that his message resonated with the viewers, especially the younger audience members. By making Yoda’s speech slightly challenging to decipher, Lucas intended to engage the audience and prompt them to pay closer attention to the character’s profound insights.

Yoda is introduced in 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back” voiced by Frank Oz. He returns in 1983’s “Return of the Jedi,” all three movies in the prequel trilogy, and 2017’s “The Last Jedi.”

Oz, 80, told The Guardian in 2021 about how he originally brought the Jedi master character to life.

“I was just looking at the original script of The Empire Strikes Back the other day and there was a bit of that odd syntax in it, but also it had Yoda speaking very colloquially. So I said to George: ‘Can I do the whole thing like this?’ And he said: ‘Sure!’ It just felt so right,” the actor recalled.

When asked if he gets tired of Yoda imitations, Oz replied, “No I’m used to it. But people don’t understand, anyone can do a voice. It’s not the voice – it’s the soul.”

In 2018, Oz spoke to Collider about what the reaction to him playing Yoda again was like on the set of “The Last Jedi.”

“Well, I didn’t pay attention because I am very, very focused. I have to get the best job I can possibly get- that’s all I care about, is the quality,” he said. “But my wife was there, and she said, I guess this is true, but she said everybody was working and then when I came on the screen everybody completely stopped working.”

“That’s kind of exciting,” Oz added, “but I didn’t notice it because I’m too involved. But that’s a wonderful feeling, I guess. If I felt it.”

A “Star Wars” movie hasn’t come out since 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker.” But it was announced at “Star Wars” Celebration in Japan last week that Shawn Levy is directing “Star Wars: Starfighter” starring Ryan Gosling.

The upcoming film is set five years after the events of “Rise of Skywalker.” It comes out in theaters on May 28, 2027.