Ding dong the fillers are dead! Which old fillers? The wicked fillers!! Hooray!!!

Anyway, this filler arc wasn't too bad up until the very last episode where Gaara ruins everything by reverting to his normal form, and somehow comes up with a one-hit KO attack - even when he supposedly has no chakra left. Pretty dumb and cliched ending.

I think they couldn't do an entire episode on saying goodbye to Naruto, just because there isn't enough material to fill 20 minutes. This part in the manga is like half a chapter I think, it would be stretched pretty thin to fill an episode.

The 2.5 years is manga canon; the 3 years I think was set by Orochimaru being able to prepare his jutsu to take over Sasuke's body. Naruto wants to prevent this at all costs, hence he needs to come back a little early and actually track down Sasuke in order to stop Oro. I don't get Jiraiya's mention of Akatsuki, I don't think they have anything to do with the 3-year time limit at all. I'm not sure where that reference came from, except that the writers maybe feel they need a bridge between Naruto and Naruto:Shippuden.

I think in the manga it happened pretty much like it did in this episode. It was like everyone had a feeling Naruto was leaving, but they didn't say goodbye to him. Naruto asking the Fourth to watch him was in the manga too, pretty much word-for-word.

Anyways, the real excitement for this episode was in the short preview. All I can say, dear non-manga readers, is this:

Prepare to wet your pants.