Why is Finn's voice different in Adventure Time: Side Quests? Everyone else in Ooo sounds exactly as you remember
John DiMaggio is back. So are Tom Kenny, Hynden Walch, Olivia Olson, and Niki Yang. The hero is the only role that got recast, and it was the first decision the show made.
Adventure Time: Side Quests dropped all 20 episodes on Disney+ and Hulu on June 29, 2026, with an international rollout on Cartoon Network and HBO Max following on October 5. Finn is voiced by Sasha Knight, not Jeremy Shada. That is not a scheduling problem or a contract dispute — showrunner Nate Cash went looking for a replacement on purpose, because the new series is set early in the Ooo timeline, around the era of the original show's first two seasons, with Finn as a small kid and his bond with Jake still forming.
The problem with keeping Shada
Shada was 12 when he started voicing Finn in 2010, and his voice changed on the air across the original ten-season run, then again through Distant Lands and Fionna and Cake. That growth is baked into the character's arc. It is also unreproducible: you cannot ask a grown man to convincingly reproduce a voice he had at 12, and Cash decided not to try.
"Return to a kid voice. Recast Finn," Cash described as the founding note of the series, in a 2026 interview with ComingSoon.
He also conceded it was "really tricky casting," which is the part that matters — the show needed a child performer who could carry a 20-episode lead.
Who Sasha Knight is
Knight came to the role from live action, as the young lead of the 2020 independent feature Cowboys.
"Sasha is so amazing and kind of embodies the character... As a human, he's such a sweet, earnest kid, but as an actor, he really brings it," Cash said of the casting.
Everyone else stayed put
The rest of the voice cast is the original lineup:
- Jake the Dog — John DiMaggio, unchanged since 2010.
- Princess Bubblegum — Hynden Walch.
- Marceline the Vampire Queen — Olivia Olson.
- Ice King — Tom Kenny.
- BMO — Niki Yang, who also serves as an animation director on the series.
- Lumpy Space Princess — Pendleton Ward, the franchise's creator, who also storyboarded.
Behind the camera, Cash developed and runs the show, with Fred Seibert and Sam Register executive producing, Victor Courtright directing animation alongside Yang, Nick Cross on art direction, and Matthew Janszen scoring.
For the record: this is the third time the franchise has shipped a project without Shada in the lead chair, but the first where the recast was the premise rather than a consequence of one.
Previously we wrote: The Simpsons end date: Bart's voice actress just named a season
