LEGO Star Wars Dark Falcon minifigures sound wild – but there’s inspo out there for all of them

Believe it or not, the source material for all of those wild LEGO Star Wars minifigure rumours does actually already exist.

It’s rare that you get a swathe of rumours so surprising that commenters immediately assume reliable Instagram accounts have been hacked but the rumoured minifigure line-up for 75389 Dark Millennium Falcon, as reported by Instagram users 1414falconfan and childish_landino_chronicles, has done just that. Admittedly, the inclusion of Dark Rey, Darth Vader in white armour, evil C-3PO, evil Chewbacca, a possible Darth Jar Jar, and potentially one more mystery character, all in one set, does sound like a bit of a fever dream.

However, these minifigures might not be as wild as they first sound. In fact, if you dig deep into Star Wars lore, legends, and fan theories (as well as some movie scenes that we’re all doing our best to forget), there’s inspiration for every one of those bizarre minifigures already out there.

Dark Rey

The only ‘canon’ character in the entire line-up is Dark Rey, who appeared as a vision in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Will the LEGO Group deliver a new mould for her folding double-bladed lightsaber? Fingers crossed, because otherwise she’s just a regular Rey minifigure in black robes. But at least this character has precedent and a tenuous link to the Falcon.

Darth Vader (white armour)

Here’s where things start to get interesting. When he’s not wearing his Christmas jumper, Darth Vader has pretty much only ever been clad in black (or chrome black) in LEGO form. But according to these rumours, the Dark Lord of the Sith will debut in white armour in 75389 Dark Millennium Falcon, reversing the trend of pretty much every other minifigure in this list (as we’ll see) by moving from the dark side to the light.

There is precedent for this one too, but only in Legends. Dark Horse’s Star Wars Infinities: Return of the Jedi comic gave us a peek into an alternate universe in which Vader survived after his redemption aboard the second Death Star, and… painted his armour white. That’ll gain the trust of the galaxy again, eh? Anyway, it would be super interesting to see a LEGO version of that Vader, who has already been turned into a Hasbro action figure.

Evil C-3PO

The prospect of an evil C-3PO might sound pretty funny at first pass, but we have actually seen a glimpse of the protocol droid gone wrong in The Rise of Skywalker, when Babu Frik overrides his programming to obtain coordinates from Threepio’s memory. (No worries if that plot point didn’t instantly come to mind: it was over without a second thought in the movie, too.)

Returning to the comics once again, there’s also a counterpart to C-3PO on the Sith side in Marvel Studios’ Darth Vader series. Named 0-0-0, or simply Trip (shorted from Triple-Zeo), he’s a protocol droid much like Threepio that specialised in etiquette, customs, translation – and torture. He was awoken by Imperial archaologist Doctor Aphra and served under Darth Vader, performing various missions alongside his fellow droid and companion BT-1. The pair act as a clear evil version of Threepio and Artoo, with the droid duo continuing to roam around the galaxy with Aphra after she faked her own death.

Evil Chewbacca

This link is a little more tenuous but we can only imagine an evil Chewbacca will be kitted out with black fur and some intimidating weapons. If that sounds familiar, it’ll be because we’ve already had just that character appear in The Book of Boba Fett: Krrsantan. Now, it’s not quite fair to say Krrsantan is evil. He’s a bounty hunter that serves whatever side pays him well. Traditionally, that means he’s been fighting for Darth Vader and the Hutt Twins – but he did defect to Boba Fett’s side once the Twins had been defeated. He’s not so much evil as self-serving – a common trait among Star Wars bounty hunters.

A mystery Gungan

We had to save the best for last. In what universe would you associate Gungans with other evil characters? The one in which the Darth Jar Jar theory is correct, of course. We’ve dug into the weird and wonderful possibility of Jar Jar Binks being a Sith Lord to rival Palpatine himself here but, despite only being a fan theory so far, this could well be providing the inspiration for the Gungan character rumoured to feature in 75389 Dark Millennium Falcon. You only need to do a quick Google for dozens of edits of what a Sith Jar Jar could look like – and it’s truly something.

With the full picture of all those characters in mind, the thread that runs between them all seems to be: what if these Star Wars characters came down on the opposite side of the Force? For the majority, that means turning good characters evil, and that seemingly extends to the Millennium Falcon, too. Darth Vader is the only exception – and could arguably serve as this set’s protagonist to its very many antagonists.

There are rumours of a Star Wars animated series that follows the same narrative thread as Marvel’s What If…?, which could be sparking the idea for this set – and perhaps even more of them. For now, it’s obviously a fun and creative concept to toss around, especially given the number of Millennium Falcons the theme has churned out over the years – another standard one would likely have met with a tepid response from veteran fans – yet devoting a flagship set to it is still surprising.

We’ll hopefully find out more about 75389 Dark Millennium Falcon in the weeks and months to come, but it’s not likely to hit shelves until the summer (if it exists at all), so we’ve probably got a while to wait for anything concrete yet. In the meantime, take a look at the entire line-up of rumoured LEGO Star Wars 2024 sets here.

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