Disney Marvel And Star Wars Series Have The Same Problem
Ever since Disney+ began streaming original series from Star Wars and Marvel, there’s been stuff that worked and stuff that didn’t work. But I’d argue that all of the streamer’s Marvel and Star Wars shows suffer from one consistent issue: the lengths of each episode tend to vary wildly, which is particularly problematic with a streaming platform that’s dropping episodes weekly rather than all at once like Netflix.
Like Night And Day
Take, for example, what is indisputably one of the most divisively received Disney+ streaming series of recent memory, The Acolyte. In the middle of the season came Episode 4 “Day” and Episode 5 “Night.”
Both episodes are 35 minutes long, tying for the shortest chapter in the Disney+ streaming series so far.
One common complaint about “Day” and “Night” is that the former episode felt too short, and that it was all exposition and build-up to an explosive cliffhanger. “Night,” on the other hand, wound up as one of the most universally embraced entries in the series, largely because of its dynamic and expertly choreographed lightsaber battles.
This would inspire fewer complaints if Disney released their streaming series all at once or in bigger chunks like Netflix—viewers could go straight from “Day” into “Night,” without really caring that there wasn’t much action in the earlier episode.
But because Disney releases its streaming episodes weekly, fans got one of the shortest episodes in the series, “Day,” were underwhelmed by it, and had to wait a week to get something that felt like a complete, well-rounded story.
Fans Are Used To One Thing And They Get Another
One of the benefits of Disney and other studios being able to put out content on streaming platforms is that they don’t have to build their content around commercials. But that freedom seems to have given the creators of these shows a little bit too much license to mess with fan expectations.
When it comes to a TV series, you get used to episodes being a certain length. Give the audience more time and they might feel like they’re getting something extra, or they might feel like it’s dragging on for too long. But when you suddenly give them shorter episodes, they’ll almost certainly feel cheated.
Look at one of the least successful of Disney’s streaming series—Secret Invasion. At 55 minutes and 58 minutes respectively, the first two episodes of the six-episode miniseries are almost an hour long.
Then the time drops. Episode 3 is 44 minutes long, and then all of the final three episodes are between 38 and 39 episodes long. How do you make your finale shorter than almost every single episode to come before?
Smaller Deviations
Disney certainly isn’t the only streaming service whose original content plays fast and loose with episode length, but other streamers don’t tend to vary length quite as wildly.
Take the latest season of Amazon Prime’s The Boys, whose most recent season concludes this week. In Season 4, the shortest chapter is Episode 2, “Life Among the Septics,” at 59 minutes; the longest is Episode 5, “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son,” at 68 minutes.
Compare that 9-minute difference to a Disney streaming series like Secret Invasion where the longest episode is 58 minutes and the shortest is 38. Or WandaVision, whose episodes ranged between 31 and 51 minutes.
You Can Vary, As Long As We Get A Full Story
Another problem isn’t just that Disney streaming series vary so wildly in episode length, but that far too many of those episodes are on the shorter end of the spectrum.
For example, Season 1 episodes of HBO’s The Last of Us vary in length even more than in your average Disney+ streaming series; length ranges between 44 minutes (the Season 1 finale) and 81 minutes (the series premiere).
So sure, that’s an almost 40 minute difference, but 44 minutes is still a good amount of story. Once you cut out commercials, a 44 minute episode is at least a little bit longer than your average network TV drama.
You can’t say the same about a 31 or 35 minute episode, which is all too common in Disney’s streaming series
Either Make Shorter Series, Or Shorten The Waiting Times
The solution? Disney’s streaming series need to either shorten their episode count, drop multiple episodes at once like Netflix, or both.
The Disney streaming series from Marvel and Star Wars are likely as short as they are because the VFX costs make them much more expensive. So either make the episodes longer and the series shorter, or copy Netflix’s release model.
I think fans would rather, for example, enjoy a 6 or 5 episode season of The Acolyte, than 8 episodes when only some of those episodes feel like a full meal rather than a light snack.
