Man vs. Pink

LEGO Star Wars – Death Star Final Duel set review

Man vs. Pink

My daughter loves LEGO and loves Star Wars, so naturally she enjoys playing with LEGO Star Wars. This week we were lucky to be sent a trio of sets to build, play, and review. When they arrived my daughter was rather overcome with excitement.

Honestly, her choice of a LEGO Star Wars t-shirt that morning really was a coincidence.

I assumed she’d have trouble deciding which one to make first, but she opted straight away for the set with Darth Vader. She loves Darth Vader. I like to think it’s because he’s Leia and Luke’s daddy.

This new Star Wars LEGO set recreates the iconic setting of the final showdown between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi in the Emperor’s Death Star throne room.

My daughter and I spent an afternoon making this together, while listening to the Return of the Jedi soundtrack (her idea). Given this set is recommended for 8+ and my daughter is a 3-year-old, I was the Master Builder with my daughter assisting. Playing LEGO is a great joint activity for us, and while she can’t make a set like this herself, it helps her develop her fine motor skills, ability to follow instructions, general concentration, as well as her imagination, when we build LEGO together like this.

She did have sole responsibility for the minifigs though, of which there are five – Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, and two of his Royal Guards.

The detailed 100+ page instruction booklet was easy to follow, and by afternoon’s end we had an awesome LEGO Star Wars playset. It recreates the key spaces of the movie setting, such as the Emperors throne:

“My young apprentice…”

The Stairs leading up to it where Luke and Vader duel:

“Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the Dark Side.”

The shaft where Vader sends the Emperor to meet his maker:

“Nooooooooooooo…..”

And the Darth Vader figure is particularly nicely detailed, with a two piece helmet so you can recreate the big reveal.

“Just for once… let me… look on you with my own eyes.”

As well as the adapted setting, this also has interactive elements such as a collapsing walkway and stairs, sliding doors, plus a minifig ‘force jump’ lever, and even mechanism to fire a lightsaber in the air. There are also hinges and siding parts so it can be opened up or closed between play sessions.

“Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.”

I actually have an early precursor to this set. That one wasn’t very impressive.

To call this new set an improvement is clearly an understatement.

The fundamentally great thing about this is that it’s a playset. It provides my daughter with a detailed LEGO Star Wars environment for her to recreate scenarios with her minifigs. We have a bunch of LEGO Star Wars vehicles, which are great, but this is our first playset (the one above clearly doesn’t count) and the way she interacts with it is a joy to behold.

My daughter loves to improve upon the existing stories, usually by adding more female characters (for instance, she made her own Princess Leia minifig and a brand new scenario to go with it). As this scene is all male, she addressed the lack of women by bringing in a couple of female characters from the other sets we received.

Eventually, we came up with our own alternative finale.

And that was rounded off with an epilogue that my daughter created all by herself.

I think she knows daddy often likes a glass of wine or two at the end of the day. :s

This is a perfect LEGO Star Wars set to enable any little girl (or boy) to create new adventures with. While it was satisfying to construct, it’s far more fun to play with. My daughter usually tries to pull apart any sets we build, but she hasn’t even attempted to with this. She far too busy coming up with more stories in the galaxy far, far away. The force is strong with this one.

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The LEGO Star Wars – Death Star Final Duel set (75093) has an RRP of £69.99, and is available to buy here.

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Disclaimer: While I was not paid to write this review, we did receive this LEGO set free of charge. All opinions stated remain our own.