WARNING: This post contains spoilers about the Star Wars: Rebels series. If you have not yet watched the series (Why not?) and intend to but wish to avoid spoilers (Seriously, go watch it already), do not read this post.
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I think I'm in the minority when I say: I am not enthused about the live-action Thrawn, and it's because of how he was handled in Rebels.
Now do not misunderstand me. I am not saying he was a bad charactevillain in Rebels, nor am I trying to make some sort of bs gate-keeping argument of "If you like the Rebels thrawn you're not a real SW fan" or whatever. I will fight to keep the fandom open and inviting to everyone. Just because I like A, C, M, and X, while you like A, B, M, and dislike X does not change that and I will happily welcome a discussion on why you think X is bad or B is better than C.
Thrawn was a welcome change to the show. He was way more dangerous than Khallus had been with more resources giving him a broader range of threat, and he was easily 10 times more interesting than the Inquisitors. On a 1:1 comparison Maul was more engaging... but that engagement came at a price and had Maul shown up as much as Thrawn had, I think he would have gotten very annoying. So overall, I think Thrawn was the best villain the show had.
However, I feel the Thrawn we got in Rebels is a very different character to the Thrawn in legends, and between the two, the legends Thrawn is superior. And yes, I know current Star Wars isn't Legends so a lot of the characters have been reinterpreted. I get that. But in Thrawn's case, it's a little bit different. I don't feel that they reinterpreted him. I think they fundamentally misunderstood him from the start. Basically, Rebels wrote Thrawn performing the correct actions and mannerisms but without the context. It's almost like watching Luke battle Vader on the Death Star but without the context that it's father and son. Sure, the actions are the same, but without the context, it's not the same scene.
Here's the thing about Thrawn and how he appeared in legends: he lost, multiple times. Which isn't a problem in and of itself. We typically want to see the good guys win and thus the bad guys lose. But with Thrawn, that tends to twist sideways a bit. See with Thrawn, defeats actually made him even more dangerous later because he learned from them and frequently used the tricks his enemies had bested him with against them. So "Winning today" wasn't enough with Thrawn. An example of where I think Rebels failed to hit this point is the episode "Hera's Heroes". In it, Hera attempts to retrieve her Kalikori on Ryloth and is captured. When she and the others escape, they manage to do so by destroying the building the Imperials are in, and then Thrawn decides to not fire on them as they make their escape. Thrawn says the right things; "They have earned their victory today" and then later "I've found this whole experience to be very enlightening." Yes, that is typically the vibe and feeling Thrawn gave off in legends when he lost.
And you can absolutely make the assumption that he's referring to learning something about Hera personally, or perhaps about the Imperial commander or something vague like that... but that just adds to the problem. In Legends when Thrawn "learned" something, it became obvious later what that something was.
How do I think Rebels could have done this aspect of Thrawn better?
Well, let's take the same situation from Hera's Heros. Hera and company have been captured, the Thrawn is on station with the fleet, and Captian Slavin is on the ground. The charges go off, mass confusion, the Ghost comes in, Hera and Ezra leap aboard and the Ghost moves to fly off. But Thrawn moves his ships to cut off their escape. This is where the Ghost crew plays their ace in the hole.
Let's say they rigged up a sort of chaff screen. Basically, they put an explosive charge at the bottom of a bunch of barrels, then packed the barrels with strange of something like aluminum foil. Something light and cut into strips and small bits. The material futz when sensors but it's not enough for outright stealth capabilities and its ballistic strength is rather nill which is why it's not used for stealth treatment or armor on ships. But they assemble like a dozen of these barrels and then mount them on the outside of the Ghost.
When the charges blow the materials are flung out and float around so that the Ghost would be totally obscured for a few seconds in a massive cloud of sensor distortion. The sensors cannot lock onto the Ghost while the foil and debris is fluttering and floating around, the material is reflective so it's blinking reflected light everywhere making it hard to make manual shots, and with all the material floating around it's exceptionally difficult to actually see the Ghost. They can fire into the cloud of foil and debris sure, and there is a chance the Imperials would hit the Ghost, but the chaff screen would take it from a roughly 2:3 hit:miss to something like a 1:4 hit:miss.
It's a total one-time use hack that's only actually usable for a couple of seconds, before the foil and material float to the ground, and then afterward they have the now empty barrels on the ship that the rebels have to address, and prepping them is resource and time intensive.... but the couple of seconds of cover it buys is how they managed to escape. Not because Thrawn allowed them to leave, but because they managed to have one more trick up their sleeve Thrawn didn't know about. So we have the crew of the Ghost being adaptive, inventive, and wiley in their escape. Good. Thrawn has seen the trick and he says "He has been enlightened". Okay, he's seen this trick used and his mind is working on adapting, countering, and using it.
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Now to establish the payoff and demonstrate how Thrawn learns from his defeats, let's move to when Thrawn is pursuing Mon Mothma. In the episode, Mothma transfers to the Ghost, and to evade the Imperials, Hera takes the Ghost into a Nebula. Because of various factors, let's say that there are five ways out of the Nebula and Thrawn only has the resources to really cover three of them, at least to a degree that would result in capturing the Ghost.
He devises a plan and orders a flight of Bombers outfitted with a similar chaff screen, deploys them to one of the two courses that imperial naval doctrine wouldn't normally cover, and moves a wing of Star Destroyers to cover the other while leaving only a light Cruiser at the original location Imperials would typically cover. He then sends the Defender into the Nebula after the Rebels. As the Ghost makes its way through the Nebula, Thrawn orders the Bombers to detonate the screen. Since it's being used in space rather than on a planet here, the mesh doesn't fall to the ground and instead just floats outward creating an ever-expanding field of sensor distortion until it dissipates.
Hera see's the sensor distortion and reasons that Thrawn is using it to hide a Star Destroyer or an Interdictor. Something like "The chaff will blind our sensors if we try to fly through it giving the tractor beam operators time to line us up in their sights manually". And at first, she would opt to alter course to the original exit, the one now covered by a single light cruiser, and instead second-guesses herself reasoning Thrawn has set a trap there and so opts to go for the third way out... the one that Thrawn has a wing of Star Destroyers waiting at.
See how the earlier defeat actually helps him gain a later victory? or at the very least makes him more difficult for the heroes to overcome? Even if we want to add a scene where something else happens, let's say the second wing of Gold Squad and Kanan show up and do something to disrupt Thrawn's trap, you can easily continue forward here with Hera doubting herself as a commander since she flew right into Thrawn's trap. So even if Thrawn fails to capture Mothma and the Spectre Rebels, he would have a victory. I didn't get this feeling from Thrawn in Rebels.
But there were three other things with the Rebels' Thrawn that stand out for me as examples of how they misunderstood Thrawn.
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The first is, once again, in the episode "Hera's Heroes". Following Thrawn's capture of Hera and Ezra, Thrawn is commenting on Hera's Kalikori and Captain Slavin refers to the Kalikori as trash yet again. In response to the comment, Thrawn becomes visibly angry and grabs Slavin's collar as if he is preparing to throw him to the ground. After a brief moment of it looking like Thrawn is about to beat Slavin until his skin is bluer thanThrawns, Thrawn releases Slavin, apologizes, comments about how he forgets that not everyone appreciates art ashe does, and walks off, giving the entire exchange the vibe of it being a "moment of anger" or a momentary loss of control.
Here is the thing about Thrawn, as least as he appeared in legends, he did not get angry... well sort of. He wasn't emotionless, but he was cold and controlled. If something got him visibly irked it had to be a massive, far-spreading, very deep something. One moronic captain who doesn't see the value in art is not such a thing.
This also dovetails into other areas. In legends, the Empire was very human-centric. It had non-human officers and crew to be sure, but they tended to run in 2 extremes. 1- This is a crew of fuck-ups whom the higher-ups just flat out do not care about or 2- they were an 'exception'. Maybe they were a spec-ops team, maybe they had force abilities, maybe they hand anti-force abilities, whatever. They were given an 'exception' to the normal rules and it was policy to show them respect.
Now I will fully admit that this next part is somewhat head-cannony/fan-cannony/subjective but I still think it is valid. Thrawn was in a third category, that of the non-human that wasn't an exception or a screw-up but one who rose through the ranks on the virtue of accomplishment and in so doing was actually a metaphor for workplace racism/sexism. What do I mean by that? Well if the Empire was human-centric, then humans are going to be given more chances, fewer restrictions, and be less scrutinized than non-humans. Basically, if a human officer does well then "That is what excepted of [human] officers" but if a non-human officer does well it will either be "That is very impressive for someone from that species" or they will be held to standards that the human officer isn't so even though they did as well, they would be made to look worse in some capacity. Perhaps they would lose points for taking out target 6 after target 7, or for not performing a Temari roll maneuver properly, despite completing the simulation with a better outcome then the human officer did.
And likewise, if a human officer screws up there would be a far greater chance they would be given another chance or less harsh punishment compared to the non-human officer. If two human officers were caught brawling, chances are that it would be written off as something like an isolated incident brought on by stress. Maybe they would have notices put in their files for psych evals. But if a human officer and a non-human officer were brawling, it would likely be cast as the human officer was being attacked by the non-human officer and the incident would be reported and prosecuted as an example of how members of the non-human species are less controlled, more dangerous, less capable, etc. when compared to human officers.
So for Thrawn to have risen through the ranks under that system... it wouldn't have been enough for him to just be "Good" or "Capable". He would have had to have been 3x as good and capable as the human officers, and 4x as clean. If a human officer completed a tactical simulation in 9 minutes 45 seconds on their 5th attempt, Thrawn would have had to have completed it in under 8 minutes on his first try to be noticed. Grabbing an officer as he did in the episode would probably have landed him in the brig with a stack of demerits. So he would have needed to keep himself under the absolute tightest control. What might be considered general indifference from a human officer, might be regarded as insubordination from Thrawn.
Now I admit the new-cannon Empire hasn't been stated as being human-centric, at least not to the degree that the legends Empire was so I'm willing to give the Rebels Thrawn half a pass on this particular point and leave it at I think it was out of character for Thrawn to lose his cool over a moronic officer like that.
However, this means I need to bring up the inverse situation as well. Specifically, a time when Thrawn really should have lost his cool. And that time was following the death of Kanan and Governor Pryces' attempt to obscure the fact that she just crashed all Imperial production, including the development of the TIE-Defender, on Lothal by holding a victory parade. While I disagree with having Thrawn be in charge of the TIE-Defender development, at this point in the series I'll just roll with it.
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Thrawn's project as been called into question, so he has gone back to Coruscant to argue for the continued support of it. It's already going to be a close fight since he is competing with the Death Star for support and funding. And chances are he would be dealing with politicians. In legends, Thrawn had a general disdain for politicians. He knew how to work with and around them, but they tended to make situations more complicated and thus would require ten times the effort and resources to address.
And then he finds out that, no matter what happens on Coruscant, the Defender development will be delayed because the factories on Lothal can't operate at all right now because Pryce blew up the fuel depot. Oh... and what's this? Not only did she blow them up, but she's trying to hide the fact by declaring victory. If that isn't a "kill the patient to cure the virus" situation, I don't know what is. But on top of that, this will very likely hurt Thrawn on a logistical, political, and career level. If the project is already stopped due to a resource problem... why commit more resources to it? So Pryce has just roundly screwed Thrawn over.
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I think this should have been the moment where we see Thrawn lose his cool. Perhaps not in his conversation with Pryce, but if he was going to lose his cool this would be it. Perhaps he tells Pryce "I will address your situation upon my return." in his normally cool, calm demeanor, and then ends the transmission. But on the Chimera, as soon as the transmission ends, he is utterly fuming. Teeth gritted, eyes twitching. He tears off his uniform coat, activates the assassin droids, arms them with lethal weapons, and just goes to town fighting them. Where before he occasionally made grunts, here is full-on rage screaming. A means of showing the ferocity that is heading to Lothal and what is normally held in check. Don't make it a weakness. It's not a case of "Make him angry so he'll make a mistake", rather show us the passion that drives him. Make us genuinely afraid for Pryce, not because Thrawn might kill her, but because now we understand why she hopes that he will only kill her.
The last point that I think Rebels failed with Thrawn... okay look. I'm gonna be upfront and say this one is totally subjective. That's why I've waited till now to mention it. During the siege of Atollon, Khallus tries to goad Thrawn regarding Konstantine's glory hunting. Thrawn's response is to simply state " I do not require glory, only victory for my Emperor." This really gives me a feeling of the Rebels Thrawn being an Empire loyalist while in legends he was loyal to the Empire only as a means to an end. In legends, Thrawn's First priority was to project the Chiss ascendency and it is inferred that his second priority was to prepare to counter the Yhuzon Vong invasion... though this second point is somewhat subjective. Basically in legends, as long as the Empire was the best means to his goals, Thrawn was loyal to it. But I never got a feeling he would be loyal to the Empire over his own goals. In Rebels... yeah, it feels very much the opposite and that Thrawn's goals are secondary to the Empire, or more specifically the Emperor.
And just to be clear on that point I am not saying that Legends Thrawn was secretly some sort of subversive or that every action he ever took was exclusively for his own goals. He wasn't that short-sighted. He absolutely would support the Empire's goals today, even if they were to the detriment of the Chiss in the short term, if it meant Thrawn would be in a better position to protect the Chiss long term.
Okay okay, rant over. I've heard that Timothy Zhan is working with the writers of Ahsoka. If that is true that gives me some hope that the live-action Thrawn will be closer to legends Thrawn.

I've had a couple of incidents with my plants. It was a very cloudy day, so I just left them covered with plastic (I usually protect them with three layers of shade mesh, so they receive indirect light) but suddenly the sun came out, which here in the south of Spain It's scorching, and they were exposed for just over an hour. I don't know if it's just due to the heat, but it seems that some plant has darker colored leaves (I'm color blind, so it's hard for me to tell if the color is normal or not), some leaves are curled, others wrinkled, withered, and others just fell... The second one happened when I was taking the plants to a more sheltered place (I had them in a greenhouse structure covered with shade mesh so I guess they weren't too bad either). I took the styrofoam box in which I have the seedlings and loaded it into a wheelbarrow, but when I was on my way home, I tripped over a stone and the box fell, so that some plants were buried, and when I arrived home I had to manipulate them to remove the substrate. Since yesterday I have them inside my house, some seem to be withering while others are resisting. There are also some that are growing their first leaves but the seed has not yet fallen, should I help them? Any advice is welcome. Sorry for my English, as you may notice, I'm not a native speaker.