LEGO explains Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff minifigures in 76405 Hogwarts Express

The LEGO Harry Potter team says 76405 Hogwarts Express Collectors’ Edition‘s ‘generic’ Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff students are included to broaden the set’s representation.

The vast majority of the latest Hogwarts Express’s 20 minifigures are completely relevant to the particular scenes recreated across its station and passenger carriage, with 16 of them specifically named – including the first-ever epilogue characters of Harry Potter, Ginny Weasley and their kids Albus, Lily and James. The remaining four minifigures are the Trolley Witch, Train Conductor, and two generic students for Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.

When 76405 Hogwarts Express Collectors’ Edition was first revealed, initial assumptions were that the final two characters had come at the expense of epilogue versions of Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. But as outgoing LEGO Harry Potter Design Lead Marcos Bessa explained at the time, those two minifigures (and their families) were ultimately omitted to ensure balance between the characters in each of the set’s four scenes.

“We wanted to shift the focus to the journey of the lead character on board the train: from meeting his new friends in movie one, to sending his own children to Hogwarts years later!” Bessa wrote on Instagram. “Besides, the two extra students help populate the station with a bit more recognisable and iconic Hogwarts outfits, since all other characters are in plain ‘civilian’ clothing.”

Those uniforms weren’t the only reason for including the two unnamed Hogwarts pupils, however. In a recent roundtable with Brick Fanatics and other LEGO Fan Media, Bessa revealed that the students were also included to broaden representation of the wizarding school’s lesser-spotted houses.

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“Gryffindor and Slytherins are all over the place,” the designer said. “They are key players in the story, and we have to be truthful to the stories we’re telling. Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws tend to be underrepresented. So whenever there’s an opportunity for us to bring a bit of love to those houses we try, especially considering that we understand what it is to not be represented in the key moments.

“So yeah, it is an effort to bring everyone in, to have a bit of representation for everyone.”

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“We wanted to create a range of the different houses in there and Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw are underrepresented,” added current LEGO Harry Potter Design Lead Andrew Seenan. “So we definitely wanted them in there. They’re actually generic students as such. Normally, this is something we don’t do very often or at all within this product range, but in this case we thought it was quite important to have that representation in there.”

Of course, beyond better representing Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, the two minifigures also add some much-needed diversity to 76405 Hogwarts Express Collectors’ Edition’s character line-up through their skin tones, too. That’s more of a reflection on the set’s source material than anything else, but it’s hard to begrudge the LEGO Group trying to address that imbalance where it makes sense to do so.

76405 Hogwarts Express Collectors’ Edition is available now. Take a closer look at all its minifigures here, and check out our full review here.

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