A lot of filmmakers use a lot of the same actors when making movies. Whether they just like working together or get comfortable with the familiarity, you can often be confident that you'll see Samuel L. Jackson in a Quentin Tarantino movie or that Steven Spielberg will cast Tom Hanks in something. It seems that another director/actor pairing will be returning to the screen together as J.J. Abrams mainstay Greg Grunberg has all but confirmed that he'll be returning to play the role of Snap Wexley in Star Wars: Episode IX. While not mentioning the movie by name, when asked about it recently at San Diego Comic-Con the actor confirmed that he was growing a beard for some reason. According to Grunberg...
You know what --- we'd better or else my wife is going to kill me for growing a beard. I can't officially say anything, but this is getting itchy, and I'm getting itchy to go over there and do it.
Greg Grunberg has been one of J.J. Abrams constant companions on screen. He had significant roles on both Felicity and Alias on television and has also appeared in small roles in Abrams' film projects in everything from Mission: Impossible III to the Star Trek reboot.
He also appeared in the previous Star Wars movie that J.J. Abrams directed, The Force Awakens in the role of "Snap" Wexley a Resistance pilot who flew alongside Poe Dameron in the attack on Starkiller Base.
Based on Greg Grunberg's comments (via Yahoo) it seems that not only will the actor be back, he'll be back in the same role he played previously, as opposed to voicing a CGI alien or something of that sort.
Grunberg isn't the only frequent Abrams collaborator to reportedly be in the film as the word is Keri Russell is also on board the final Star Wars episode in an undisclosed role.
This piece of information is actually quite interesting because "Snap" Wexley never appears in Star Wars: The Last Jedi and considering that the Resistance is now small enough that the entirety of it can fit inside the Millennium Falcon, it's unlikely he got lost in the crowd. He certainly wasn't one of the pilots flying the speeder's on Crait at the end of the film, and considering how few pilots were left, they certainly could have used him. We would have written off "Snap" as one of the many Resistance members who died over the course of the last episode, but it seems that's not the case. Will Grunberg's character appear in Star Wars: Episode IX as if he was part of the surviving Resistance that we just never saw? If not, and he was actually elsewhere, how did he get away and why didn't he respond to Leia's distress call?
J.J. Abrams loves his mysteries, and it seems the first one for Star Wars: Episode IX is how will Greg Grunberg fit into this movie?
