When LEGO first designed a set for The Last Jedi’s badass Resistance Bomber, they only had some art and reference photos to go on. So they gave the pilot a placeholder name and white skin and released it. Once the film and its expanded canon hit, though, it turns out the bomber’s pilot had a name, and he was black.
As The Brothers Brick report, LEGO set 75188 originally contained a pilot called “Resistance Bomber Pilot #1″, who looked like this:
But an updated version of the set has just begun hitting shelves, with the only difference being that the generic pilot has now been replaced by:
Obviously the skin colour and face have now changed, but so too has the pilot’s helmet design. That’s because ever since The Last Jedi’s release, and the release of a canonical novel about the Resistance’s bomber crews, the pilot has gone from being what LEGO assumed was filler to an actual character in the Star Wars universe.
His name is Finch Dallow, and you might remember him as the pilot of the last remaining Resistance bomber, the one also crewed by Rose’s sister Paige, which manages to release its bombs and destroy the First Order Dreadnaught.
The decision to replace the figure wasn’t down to a mistake on LEGO’s part; as a representative from the company told a fan who contacted them about the change, it was just down to the limitations of trying to make toys based on a movie before that movie is actually released.
“We developed The Lego Star Wars Resistance Bomber set (75188), based on “The Last Jedi” movie and discovered after the film was released that one of The Lego minifigures in the set doesn’t reflect the movie scene properly”, the rep wrote.
“As a result, we decided to adjust the set accordingly, true to our motto: “Only the best is good enough”. We hope Star Wars fans across the world appreciate this attention to details.”
One person who’s understandably ecstatic about the move is British actor Kevin Layne, who played Finch in the film, and was shown a shot of the new figure late last year:
He’s not the only one excited; because the original set is already off the shelf in some regions, and it’s difficult to specifically request the updated version when ordering online, the Finch replacement figure is already going for a lot of money on eBay.
Comments
11 responses to “LEGO Replaces Generic Star Wars Minifig With Actual Character”
Good thing those bombs fell in the gravity of space!!
Proton bombs can’t melt durasteel dreadnoughts!
Few ways around this TBH.
1. gravity tech in the bombs to make them work in space.
2. The Force.
3. Magnates.
4. Its a fantasy, so who cares?
5. SW Universe space physics are different.
I always thought the bombs fell from inside the ship then drifted – i.e. the ship had the typical SW internal gravity generator system thingy whereby the bombs were dropped inside the gravity/atmosphere of the internal environment (ignoring the issue of synthesizing normal gravity in a tiny spaceship) and upon leaving the shielded environment continued moving from the momentum – like a smaller version of how the environment shields work in the carrier hangars letting fighters and transport craft through.
I see people complain about this all the time and it irks the shit out of me because we see TIE Bombers *dropping* bombs the exact same way in literally the only scene the TIE Bomber is ever seen in the entire film franchise (Empire Strikes Back, when the Falcon is hiding inside the slug inside the asteroid field), and everyone just talks about how cool they look.
I really don’t mind the bombs falling; I was just being cheeky 😛
It’s all Poe’s fault they died
I loath TLJ but I’m glad to see Lego making minifigs for actual characters, even if they’re extras or unnamed.
Now make us a minifig for ROTJ aged Rex in his Endor rebel trooper outfit.
And I still need a Nein Nunb minifig to put beside Lando in my Falcon’s cockpit.
This isn’t actually canon. Filoni thought about it and laid a bunch of hints down but in the end he backed off actually linking them as he felt it was inappropriate for him to rewrite an existing character from before he worked on Star Wars as actually being one of the characters he created. So there’s the ambiguous ‘Rex was at Endor’ in the Rebels finale but they stop short of redefining Nik Sant as actually being Rex.
That said, I’d be fine with getting the character as a minfig and letting us make up our own minds.
My illusions! NOOOOOOO!!!
They made this fig because TLJ is a great movie that is liked by great people and any opinion differing may result in your lack of greatness.