Yoda is a very powerful jedi, with a special talent for seeing into the future - though as he always says, things that have not yet occured are "Always in motion". He is over 900 years old, and has trained jedi all his life, making him the wisest and most experienced member of the jedi council. He is also one of the few jedi to survive Darth Vader's jedi extermination, along with a jedi he himself had once trained, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Yoda was the only Council member who still had doubts about the training of Anakin Skywalker after the Battle of Naboo. The council allowed the boy to be trained, but Yoda was still troubled by the uncertainty of the boy's future.

After the jedi are all but extinct, Yoda takes shelter on a remote planet called Dagobah (check out the galactic map to see where that is). There he waits, shielded by the dark energy within a nearby cave where a Dark Jedi once dwelled, their energies "cancelling out" and hiding Yoda within. Undetected for many years, only Obi-Wan knew his location, and after Kenobi was struck down by Vader, he returned in spirit form to send Luke to Yoda. Here Yoda took up jedi training for one last time, trying to prepare Luke for his confrontation with Vader. He feared however that Luke was too old, in the same way as Anakin had been too old back when the jedi were still around, fortunately, this time Yoda was wrong.

Though Yoda did not live to see Luke confront Vader and the Emperor, he returns in spirit form to witness the celebrations of Luke and the rest of the rebels after destroying the Emperor and the second Death Star. He appears infrequently after this before disappearing forever, though his memory will live on in the jedi academy - Luke continues to use many of the techniques Yoda once taught him on Dagobah.