Star Wars is an incredibly secretive franchise. That’s great for building hype and keeping twists under wraps, but it makes speculation much more difficult. In the run-up to The Mandalorian’s next spinoff, Ahoska, rumors are flying about characters like Thrawn and Ezra, but no actual plot elements have been confirmed.
But at least one fact is now out in the open: the runtimes. Though it’s a small detail, it’s a hint that Ahsoka could vary from The Mandalorian’s model. Instead, it may take after Disney+’s other Star Wars success story, Andor.
In conversation with Collider, Mandalorian co-showrunner and Ahsoka showrunner Dave Filoni revealed how the runtimes of Ahsoka would compare to The Mandalorian’s runtimes, saying:
“I would say they're in the same range as the Mandalorian episodes, maybe on average a little longer, but the most recent cuts are in the same range. I like a long episode as much as anyone, as long as it's moving.”
The Mandalorian had some huge swings in runtime throughout Season 3. Though the average episode in the first two seasons ran around the 35-minute range, Season 3 had episodes that clocked in at a half hour and episodes that were almost an entire hour long. By the end of the season, the “new normal” runtime seemed to be about 44 minutes.
Ahsoka running a little longer isn’t a huge surprise — the Mandalorian episode that introduced Ahsoka was 43 minutes long — but it does raise questions about the show’s format. The Mandalorian was created to be an episodic series, with each episode a standalone adventure. The implication of longer episodes is that Ahsoka will be more serialized, like Andor.
Andor ran about 45 minutes per episode, just edging out The Mandalorian, and told a serialized story that juggled multiple plots. If runtimes are all we have to speculate with, it’s more likely Ahsoka will take after its spinoff sibling Andor than its parent The Mandalorian. Mando often popped in and out of a weekly adventure, but Ahsoka could have several ongoing stories to monitor. We’ll find out the truth soon, but it’s an intriguing detail for impatient fans to ponder.
Ahsoka premieres on Disney+ in August 2023.
