Oh, yes. I think they've explored "Yoda as toddler" sufficiently; so I think they're going to step up to "Yoda as tween or teen". And while I can't be sure, I think they'll want to pattern him on an actor who can be on set in a mocap suit, and one who can follow direction. Given size restraints, that actor will have to be as small a child as possible that can still be easily directed; (probably multiple children with similar builds; at least mocap means they won't be forced to find twins).
They could just cast a teenage little person.
Ugh. The darksabre Mandalorian stuff is too inside baseball for me. I'm not going to research it, and it's not grabbing me with the limited (none) info I have. I hope they don't do that.
Inside baseball, really? What do you not know that you need to know to understand the tension around the sword? Its a symbol of leadership, as noted in the first Bo-Katan episode and alluded to later, was stolen/taken by imperial monster Gideon, earned back by Din, and when he tried to give it to Bo-Katan, she didn't feel she could take it as a gift like that and be able to actually use it as a symbol of leadership of thier Proud Warrior (tm) culture.
That's...all in the show.
I've no idea what any of that is!
You know what Mandalore is, that the Empire strip mined it and made it next to uninhabitable, and Gideon was the guy who oversaw that, and that it's basically a weird lightsaber.
But honestly, even if you did need to know a few episodes of knowledge from Clone Wars and Rebels...that's a reasonable ask. IMO it isn't really reasonable to decry that very, very, very, small amount of interconnectedness in what has always* been a shared universe. I get you don't like watching cartoons, but it's really not a big deal for some detail of a show in a shared universe to reference and call back to another show in that shared universe.
The show establishes the stakes and importance of the darksaber on screen, with greater depth to it's history and import being found in other parts of the shared universe. There is literally nothing at all wrong with that, from a story telling perspective (just like its okay to reference MacBeth in a story about treason and the making of kings, without explaining the reference), or from a "how creators treat their fans" perspective.
*or close enough as to make no difference