Even for Star Wars, a franchise that encompasses everything from laser swords to ghosts, Ahsoka is pushing the limits of what’s possible in that galaxy far away. Already this season, we’ve gotten everything from galaxy-hopping space whales to Clone Wars flashback hallucinations. But the show’s runtimes have remained surprisingly consistent. Aside from a short Episode 3, every episode so far has been 40-something minutes long, which feels consistent with a classic hour-long broadcast series (minus commercials).
If any episode were to be extra long, it would be Ahsoka’s Season 1 (or perhaps series?) finale, which presumably needs to wrap up all the loose ends established so far, from Thrawn’s ongoing threat to just how Ahsoka and company will return to their home galaxy. However, the leaked runtime of the episode suggests we may have to wait longer for all the answers.
Twitter user @Cryptic4KQual, who has correctly predicted the episode runtimes of both The Mandalorian Season 3 and Ahsoka so far, says Episode 8 episode will have a runtime of 49 minutes. After eliminating the runtimes of the Disney+ dubbing credits and the normal credit sequence, that leaves only 42 minutes and 43 seconds of actual episode.
This isn’t a short episode — it’s almost exactly the runtime of Episode 5, aka the Clone Wars flashback episode — but it’s not inordinately long either, meaning we may not get to tie up every plot line introduced in the series so far. Hopefully, this means we’ll get a big cliffhanger that will pay off in Ahsoka Season 2, or maybe even Dave Filoni’s planned Mando-verse movie.
Ahsoka has already painted a huge extra-galactic story, and now there’s only one episode left to fight out just what Baylan is up to, where Shin’s loyalties lie, and if those stormtroopers are actually zombies revived with Nightsister magic. But even if not everything is answered in that episode, it’s likely it’ll be resolved in some other part of the “Mandoverse.”
