Star Wars Thrawn and Ezra actor casting leaked

This week casting has leaked for two key characters in the upcoming series of shows for Disney+, including Ahsoka and a potential Thrawn/Ezra standalone series. A report this week goes into detail on how two actors have apparently been locked in as actors for a future show or shows in the Star Wars universe, almost certainly set in the years during and immediately after what we've seen in The Mandalorian. We got a great big teaser about this future in The Mandalorian Season 2, Episode 5 – now it's time to get slightly more specific.

If you drop back to our Mandalorian S2E5 analysis you'll see how it was heavily implied that there'd be another previously-unannounced Star Wars series coming to our universe. They wouldn't just drop Rosaria Dawson in one single episode of The Mandalorian and have her speak the name Thrawn without implying they'd be back in action in a future Star Wars story of some sort.

Below you'll see a brief clip of the last time we see Thrawn in the canonical Star Wars universe. This took place before Star Wars: A New Hope. In our analysis we also took a peek at the timeline of the series The Mandalorian and the now non-canonical Timothy Zahn series, the original "Thrawn series", Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command. They line up!

Thrawn COULD be out there finding the lost fleet of Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers just like the books originally suggested. Some items would need to be re-adjusted, if we're attempting to line everything up with The Force Awakens and so forth, but no worries! You've seen Loki, right?

Today's big tip comes from insider LRM Online who are now "confident in reporting" the casting of actors for both Ezra Bridger and Grand Admiral Thrawn. As previously suspected, Disney will (reportedly) have Lars Mikkelsen play Thrawn. Mikkelsen did the voice for the Star Wars: Rebels version of Thrawn, and the look of the character isn't all that different from the actor (and likely based at least a bit on the actor's real-life face), so it fit.

The actor cast as Ezra is another big name – more of a rising star than the already established Mikkelsen. The actor Mena Massoud teased on Instagram that he'd be playing Ezra Bridger, though it wasn't particularly apparent at the time. He posted a shirtless photo of himself with the quote "Hey, just so you know, when I escape I won't hurt any of you." Bridger says this in the Star Wars Rebels episode Stealth Strike (Season 2, Episode 9).

Sound good to you? Would you have pegged either of these actors for these roles? Do you believe they'll appear in more than one Disney+ Star Wars series, or just the one?