Maybe there would be some way to cut almost completely the first 2 episodes and sum it up in the opening crawl? Like, leave the introduction of Baylon and Shin, mention in the crawl that the bad guys are in the possession of very important map to Ezra, and that Ahsoka, Hera and Sabine want to find it. The Ahsoka/Sabine stuff can basically start from the scene which was the recreation of the Rebels epilogue.

Then the stuff from 1x03 is enough to establish their master/student background and dynamics. Of course in that episode there is also some stuff that could and should be cut 😄

This way you could reduce the first 3 episodes into a 20-30min prologue.