I finally got time to sit down and start playing around with the second arc.

I’m happy with how my edit of the first arc fits, I’ve just made one alteration by re-instating Bix’s dream sequence given that it’s now a crucial part of her character arc. I have, however, repositioned it so that it happens after she sees the imperial ship arriving. This does 2 things - it provides a trigger for that dream sequence, and secondly it casts more doubt in the viewer’s mind as to whether the events are real.

So onto the second arc.
The main challenge with editing this season into 2 movies is going to be dealing with the time skip. And we have a major event that is referenced but not shown - the soldier killed by Cassian when he and Bix were on a mission.
I plan to deal with that by cutting together a continuous “Cyril on Gorman” sequence and have that as the first arc 2 footage. Cyril doesn’t appear in the finale of arc 1 and is absent in my edit for the last 15mins.
This gives a reasonable passage of time for him to be briefed by the ISB and sent out to Gorman. The continuous Gorman sequence then provides enough time for Bix and Cassian to get relocated to the Coruscant safe house. I’ll then edit their dialogue to turn the interaction with the soldier into a random event, rather than than a happening on a mission.

So then we have the rest of the arc.
The Gorman plot is the spine and can definitely be streamlined. But there are whole threads that don’t feed into the Gorman story - D’Quar and the bugged artefact.
Q’quar will almost certainly become relevant in subsequent arcs, but could be moved to movie number 2. The bugged artefact could probably be cut completely. The issue there is that it takes Mon Mothma almost completely out of the second half of the movie.

Lots to ponder and a plan won’t become clear until I’ve seen arc 3 and possibly arc 4.