After a massive two-episode premiere, Ahsoka Episode 3 was short and sweet. Clocking in around a half hour, it was actually one of the shortest episodes of Star Wars live-action TV so far. But within that tight runtime, it managed to contain a massively impressive space fight, shocking lore reveals, and the live-action debut of a beloved animated character. But with only five episodes left, half-hour episodes would make for a very short show. Thankfully, a glimpse at Ahsoka Episode 4’s runtime shows the short runtime is just a fluke.
Twitter user @Cryptic4KQual, who has correctly predicted the runtimes of The Mandalorian Season 3 and Ahsoka so far, claims Ahsoka Episode 4 clocks in at around 42 minutes, 38 minutes before credits.
This is much a more standard runtime for live-action Star Wars shows, with many of The Mandalorian’s episodes landing somewhere between 40-45 minutes, the standard range (after commercial breaks) for hour-long dramas you find on network TV.
This will only continue in Episode 5, which has a runtime of almost 50 minutes. Episode 5 is highly anticipated as it’s the only remaining episode showrunner Dave Filoni is listed to direct, so a long runtime is a great omen.
It seems like Episode 3 was an anomaly, a short transition from the introductory two-parter to the drama that will follow Ahsoka and Sabine now that they’re on the same planet as Baylan and Shin.
With the action heating up, it’s unlikely we’ll see another short episode like Ahsoka Episode 3 again. The precedent has been set: Ahsoka will have episodes that average about 40-ish minutes, much like its predecessors The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.
This is just an average, and there will be outliers thanks to the streaming model allowing for widely varying runtimes, but overall it’s great for Star Wars fans. The whiplash between long and short episodes can be disorienting, and the consistency shows uniformity across the Mandoverse.
Now that Ahsoka has a primetime premiere time (no more 3 a.m. drops for Disney+), it’s about time the episode lengths settled to be around the length of the regular TV shows broadcasting at the same time.
