Star Wars: Ahsoka explains new LEGO minifigure design, even if by accident

The latest episode of Star Wars: Ahsoka explains the LEGO Group’s design choices for one of its new minifigures – even if it’s just a total coincidence.

The LEGO Group doesn’t always get the design of its Star Wars minifigures right, especially when it’s working on material for future shows and movies (outfits and characters can and do change during production, after all). But those mistakes are relatively easy to forgive – while others that affect veteran characters, which we’ve all had plenty of time to pore over on Wookieepedia, are a little more difficult to overlook.

The community is quick to call out the LEGO Group on those occasions, and has done so plenty of times in recent years, months and even weeks. But the fifth part of Star Wars: Ahsoka, which dropped on Disney+ this week, offers an explanation for a curious design choice in one of its latest minifigures – even if it wasn’t actually intentional on the part of the LEGO designers.

Spoilers follow for the fifth episode of Disney+ series Star Wars: Ahsoka.

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If you knew going into part five – titled ‘Shadow Warrior’ – that Dave Filoni was on directing duties, you might have had some sense of where this episode was going right from the off (especially with the surprise reappearance of Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker at the end of part four). But few of us could have predicted the extent to which Filoni would dive deep into the toy box of Star Wars past, digging out all his favourite characters to play with.

The opening 30 minutes of the 51-minute episode bring us Anakin and Ahsoka together in live action, not only in the World Between Worlds (as we saw last week), but in dream-like flashbacks to key Clone Wars episodes and battles. We get to see Ahsoka as a teenager, portrayed by Ariana Greenblatt (who you might recognise as young Gamora from Avengers: Infinity War), and Anakin in his Clone Wars get-up. But that’s not all.

During those flashbacks, Dave Filoni also brings Captain Rex into live action, in both his Phase I and Phase II armours. The LEGO Group is on the verge of bringing the same character back to shelves in October’s 75367 Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser, and while the return of Rex as a minifigure is heavily overdue – the last time he showed up in Phase II armour was in 2013 – his design has attracted criticism from some corners.

One area that’s drawn flak is the ammo pack printed on the minifigure’s chest, which some fans have complained is oversized compared to the one we saw in The Clone Wars. Leave it to Dave Filoni to have the LEGO Group’s back, though: as redditor Blockomaniac points out, the ammo pouch on Rex’s live-action armour is indeed weirdly massive, suggesting the LEGO minifigure is actually accurate, even if only by accident. 

That doesn’t quite jive with the fact that this particular Captain Rex minifigure is – like the rest of 75367 Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser – based specifically on the Clone Wars, by the LEGO Group’s own admission. But Star Wars: Ahsoka’s flashbacks do technically portray the Clone Wars, only in live action, so it’s still sort-of accurate, in a grey area kind of way.

The size of Captain Rex’s ammo pouch isn’t the only difference between his animated and live action armours, anyway, perhaps best illustrating that there are no hard and fast rules in character design across different Star Wars projects – and so perhaps the LEGO minifigure design team should be allowed a similar degree of creative liberty when approaching its own Clone Troopers. These are just artistic interpretations of characters, after all…

75367 Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser launches October 1 for LEGO Insiders, and October 4 for everyone else, for £559.99 / $649.99 / €649.99. Star Wars: Ahsoka is streaming on Disney+ now.

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