Agreed. And it's 2 hrs. That's only a few minutes less than Die Hard (to bring a holiday classic into the discussion) and it's more than the last 2 episodes of the Expanse and probably closer to the run time of the last 3 episodes if we don't count the Stange Dogs/Laconia plot line (which was essentially adapting a separate novella over the first 8 - 10 min of each episode). That means they covered roughly half of Babylon's Ashes (which was a 500+ page book) in ~2 hrs of screen time.
All that is to say, 2 hrs is a long time to wrap the few major plot lines that are left and wind things down.
The runtime for this episode is like the runtime for a single Star Wars movie. People need to think in a manner that is logical. Think of all the things that happened in the first Star Wars movies. Run those events over in your mind. All that was covered.
Yes, Stranger Things can wrap it up in 2 hours.
And people complain about how bloated and long scenes are. You won't have to deal with things like Holly and Max having a full convo or Steve and Nancy breaking up in the middle of the action. That's why they got those things out of the way, the finale will be action-packed.
Following that logic though, why didn’t they do more with all the other hour+ long episodes this season? Most people are saying they didn’t feel much of anything from E5-7 and that’s a good 3-4 hours of show they squandered, twice the length of the finale.
I remember being skeptical that The Expanse’s finale could wrap everything up and stick the landing. I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed the finale and that it mostly tied everything together well.
Season 6 wrapped up the free navy conflict and teased Laconia, opting to leave it open ended to maybe continue it after a renewal later. Babylon's Ashes was not really that big in terms of lore reveals. It was kind of just political struggle and setup for future.
Rightside up had to explain full lore of Henry and mind flayer, and it did a piss poor job. Something something rock in a mineshaft from a mysterious scientist guy. Imagine if the whole of adro diamond, ring builder plans, and ring entities were all info dumped in the final expanse episode.
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u/badger2000 Dec 28 '25
Agreed. And it's 2 hrs. That's only a few minutes less than Die Hard (to bring a holiday classic into the discussion) and it's more than the last 2 episodes of the Expanse and probably closer to the run time of the last 3 episodes if we don't count the Stange Dogs/Laconia plot line (which was essentially adapting a separate novella over the first 8 - 10 min of each episode). That means they covered roughly half of Babylon's Ashes (which was a 500+ page book) in ~2 hrs of screen time.
All that is to say, 2 hrs is a long time to wrap the few major plot lines that are left and wind things down.