With episodes 5 and 6, I get the feeling you could very easily cut out most of the Hera and Jacen subplot, as well as the New Republic arriving on Seatos, and instead intercut Ahsoka’s WBW journey with Sabine and the others on Peridea? That way, once Ahsoka rides the whales, the witches alert Thrawn about it. I think it could make it a lot tighter, and we could reduce the Jacen subplot to an expository line. I also feel you could cut out the New Republic arriving, and have Ahsoka depart with no interruption. If they are still on Seatos and that becomes a plot point, you could easily slot in their arrival after Ahsoka leaves.
Something like this could be doable. Just have Huyang alone be the one to find her instead. Keep the scene of the ship lights over Ahsoka, but cut it right before the female pilot jumps in to grab her. Than you could change the dialogue during the scene where they discuss it when Ahsoka wakes up.
I tried doing a mock-up of Huyang and Ahsoka’s conversation after he saves her. Not entirely satisfied with it, but it’s something that could be fleshed out:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/104Fzlcjm73AtwlizctAk790DRjRovFgv
Changed it to Huyang using a scanner to find Ahsoka out in the water, and changed all his "We"s to "I"s.
If we intercut between Ahsoka’s episode 5 plot and Sabine’s episode 6 plot, it’d probably be pretty easy to remove Hera and the New Republic’s involvement altogether. And with how the NR has been portrayed, the less of them the better honestly. We already have the NR shutting down Hera’s search in Episode 3, so we have a reason for them not to be involved further. But we will have to see how Hera’s story unfolds in the next two episodes to make a final call.