Did 'Ahsoka' Star Rosario Dawson Just Confirm Live-Action Casting For Thrawn And Ezra Bridger?

Fans of the extended Star Wars universe have spent years waiting to see the characters of Ezra Bridger and Grand Admiral Thrawn make their debuts in live-action, and their wait might soon be over. Or not.

Rosario Dawson, who played the live-action iteration of Ahsoka Tano on The Mandalorian and will soon star in her own spin-off series, titled Ahsoka, shared an image in her Instagram stories which suggests that Mena Massoud (Aladdin) and Lars Mikkelsen (Star Wars Rebels) have been cast as Ezra and Thrawn, respectively.

But is that news legitimate, or is this all a big misunderstanding? Let's take a look.

Ezra Bridger is one of the main characters of the animated series Star Wars Rebels. He disappears at the end of that show, and the Ahsoka Tano character goes on a quest to locate him, leading many to speculate that he will one day appear in a different series. Grand Admiral Thrawn, meanwhile, is a villainous figure who has also appeared on Star Wars Rebels and has had multiple appearances throughout the canonical novels and comics. In some corners of Star Wars fandom, it's expected that Thrawn might become the eventual Big Bad of the Disney+ Lucasfilm shows.

Instead of breathlessly reporting all of this as fact, let's slow down for a second and take a look at what actually happened here. ComicBookResources took this screenshot of Dawson's Instagram story, which features the actress re-sharing a story from an excited fan who cites a rumor that originated at Latino Review about the Ezra and Thrawn casting. Dawson did not write that caption or add any of her own words to it – she simply re-shared this message in her own stories.

As the lead of the upcoming Ahsoka series, it seems reasonable that Dawson could know about casting news involving her own show. Massoud and Mikkelsen have been rumored to be playing these roles for a long time (Mikkelsen has already lent his voice to Thrawn in Star Wars Rebels), so the fact that Dawson shared this image could very well mean that she's excited about this and that the news is indeed legitimate.

The fact that these guys have been rumored for these parts for a while may actually be a reason to doubt the veracity of this claim. The original Latino Review report cited in that Insta story came from a YouTube video that was first published on July 23, which is a lifetime ago in Internet time. Since then, no big trade outlet (Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, etc.) has independently confirmed this story, which seems suspicious. With that in mind, and considering how tightly Lucasfilm likes to keep a lid on all things Star Wars, it may be just as plausible that Dawson simply saw this rumor and re-shared this post because she was excited about the possibility of these guys joining the cast.

Complicating matters even further is the fact that Dawson seems to have since deleted this Insta story altogether. Does that mean that Disney got mad at her for "confirming" news that the studio wasn't ready to officially announce? Or could it mean that Dawson realized the news wasn't legit and she deleted it so as not to lend it any credibility?

It seems likely that Ezra and Thrawn will appear in Ahsoka, and it's possible that these actors might end up playing those characters. But as of right now, all of this is too murky to accept as unvarnished truth. We've reached out to representatives of everyone involved, but did not hear back. I will update this article should they choose to respond.