LEGO Avatar 75578 Metkayina Reef Home review

LEGO Avatar 75578 Metkayina Reef Home is a well-designed set, but ultimately lacks the style and display appeal of the rest of the Avatar: The Way of Water range. 

James Cameron’s Avatar, released in 2009, is the most successful box office movie of all time, so it felt like a sequel was inevitable. However, we’ve had to wait 13 years to get one, and now Avatar: The Way of Water has finally hit the silver screen, it’s met with mixed reviews. Critics have been fairly harsh in their assessment, whereas fans seem to be more favourable to the three-hour epic. 

The LEGO sets to tie in with the film are less hit and miss, with most of them delivering stylishly-designed models that work both as a playset and a display piece. 75578 Metkayina Reef Home is a departure from that trend, feeling a lot more like a traditional playset and somewhat lacking when it comes to its display appeal. 

75578 Metkayina Reef Home is also considerably more expensive than 75577 Mako Submarine, but it contains fewer parts. This can be explained through the use of much larger pieces, but will it feel like you’re getting more from this set, or just larger parts to build with?

— LEGO Avatar 75578 Metkayina Reef Home set details —

Theme: LEGO Avatar Set name: 75578 Metkayina Reef Home Release: January 1, 2023

Price: £69.99 / $79.99 / €79.99 Pieces: 528 Minifigures: 4

LEGO: Available now

— Where to buy LEGO Avatar 75578 Metkayina Reef Home  —

75578 Metkayina Reef Home was released on January 1, alongside the five other sets that make up the full Avatar: The Way of Water wave. It’s available worldwide in LEGO Stores, from LEGO.com and through third-party retailers.

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— LEGO Avatar 75578 Metkayina Reef Home build —

75578 Metkayina Reef Home is a brick-built recreation of the homes that the semi-aquatic Metkayina inhabit, and the place where Jake Sully and the Na’vi try to take shelter from the invading RDA. 

The set contains 528 pieces, which are spread across five bags numbered one through four. There’s also a separate bag containing a number of 10×10 octagonal plates, as well as two large plastic sails that make up the canopy of the reef home. There’s a small canoe, and the ubiquitous coral reef side build that is a mainstay of this theme. Four minifigures are also included: Ronal, Tonowari, Neytiri and Kiri.

The build begins with the construction of the small canoe and coral reef side build. Neither particularly stand out, but much like the other sets in this wave, they are very enjoyable to put together. The canoe is notable for having recoloured parts used for the front and back of the boat. The colours are bright and vibrant, and while it’s an okay attempt at recreating the on-screen version, when compared side by side (which handily you can do thanks to the film stills contained throughout the manual) you’ll realise it’s somewhat lacking in detail.

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What definitely can’t be accused of lacking in detail is the reef home, the main model of the set. Right from the earliest stages you’ll be tasked with adding fish, plants, leaves and tentacles all around the base, bringing the set to life.

Where the other four LEGO Avatar: The Way of Water sets all contain small Pandoran reef builds that accompany the main model. In this set, the home is actually built on the reefs and integrates with the natural settings. For fans that have worked their way through the rest of the wave, it’s a welcome change, if only for variety among the theme – even if the build does still rely on a number of the reef sections that make up the base of the reef home.

The reefs below have wonderful detail added, as does the home itself. There are fires, tools, food produce, fish and a whole host of other paraphernalia that make up a fairly accurate and authentic recreation of the reef home.

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The home is slowly built up using half cylinders as the base, to which the 10×10 octagonal plates are added to form the floor area of the reef home. The dark blue represents the bottom of the ocean, with lighter blue for the sea level. An attempt at recreating the sea foam splashing up on the pillars of the home has been made, although this could have looked better through the use of 1×1 slopes, rather than flat tiles. 

As the build progresses it becomes apparent that the shape of the reef home is based on a boat, with the bow and stern protruding at each end and the sails making up the home’s canopy. This is both authentic to the film as well as tying in with the whole tropical water environment that this theme sets itself in.

Considering the smaller piece count compared to 75577 Mako Submarine, the final model certainty has a fairly impressive footprint and the set does feel large. It’s an important location in the film, but as a LEGO set it’s probably the weakest in the whole wave. It just lacks the style that the other sets in the theme have, with a fairly standard build, lacking in many innovative or interesting techniques. It feels much more like a playset and lacks the aesthetic appeal when placed on display too. 

— LEGO Avatar 75578 Metkayina Reef Home characters —

A lot has been said about the style of the Na’vi minifigures within the Avatar theme. Some love the strange look, with their elongated legs, while others are not keen on the departure from regular minifigures. Within the Way of Water wave, we’ve been offered a mix of styles with some characters having shorter or regular legs (depending on their actual heights within the film) and some have retained the elongated legs. Whatever your stance, one thing that definitely cannot be disputed is the quality of the printing seen on every minifigure, not just in this set but across the entire LEGO Avatar theme. 

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Four minifigures are included here, of which three are exclusive. Tonowari, the Metkayina clan leader, also appears in 75576 Skimwing Adventure, whereas his wife Ronal is exclusive to this set. Her torso printing successfully communicates the fact she’s pregnant for much of the movie, navigating the need for a specific element.

Neytiri is an important character, playing a pivotal role in both the first Avatar film and The Way of Water. She is recreated here beautifully, as is her daughter Kiri – another character who plays a major role in The Way of Water.   

All four minifigures have exquisite printing, from their face prints right the way down to the printing on their legs. They are accurate representations of their on-screen counterparts and the quality of all four is undeniable – long legs or not!

— LEGO Avatar 75578 Metkayina Reef Home price —

The cost of 75578 Metkayina Reef Home is a little tricky to assess. On one hand, the set offers up a colourful, vibrant playset, complete with four decent minifigures (although not all are exclusive) and a nice array of varied and unusual parts. However, when comparing it to other sets within the LEGO Avatar theme, the lack of style and display potential really lets it down.

75578 costs more than 75577 Mako Submarine, yet that set offers more both from a play perspective – as fans can recreate scenes from the film using both the heroes and villains of the movie – and on display, where it looks much better than the Metkayina Reef Home. 

It’s not that it’s not fairly priced – it’s just there are better and cheaper sets even within the LEGO Avatar theme (let alone elsewhere), so it suffers by comparison.

— LEGO Avatar 75578 Metkayina Reef Home pictures —

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— LEGO Avatar 75578 Metkayina Reef Home pros and cons —

Overall there is nothing inherently wrong with 75578 Metkayina Reef Home. It’s a decent enough model that is enjoyable to put together, it’s just the lack of style that lets it down. It’s not as accurate to its source material as some of the other sets in the theme either.

From a play perspective it works nicely, and does come with four key characters, but when finished it just doesn’t look as good on display as the other four sets within the Way of Water range. This is definitely one for the die-hard fans of the Avatar franchise only.

75578 Metkayina Reef pros	75578 Metkayina Reef cons
A decent playset	Lacks the style of some of the other The Way of Water sets
Impressive side builds	A little bit overpriced
Final model comes in at a fair size

This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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— LEGO Avatar 75578 Metkayina Reef Home FAQs —