It’s been nearly a decade since Lego last menaced Star Wars fans’ wallets with a full Death Star diorama. But much like the Empire itself after the Battle of Yavin, the brick builder is bringing the battle station back bigger than ever before… and that includes its price, as well as its parts count.
This morning Lego finally revealed the plans for its latest fully armed and operational—but not fully spherical—Death Star set. Clocking in at 9,023 pieces (more than double the parts count of the 2016 set, which retailed for $500), the new display piece changes up from Lego’s previous Death Star dioramas to replicate the station as a 30-inch-wide, 10-inch-deep disc. Like the prior set, this slice of Death Star is full of vignettes based on both the first and second Death Stars as seen in A New Hope and Return of the Jedi.
Familiar scenes include, of course, the trash compactor, Princess Leia’s detention block, the tractor beam power generator, the meeting room for Imperial command, the battery control for the Death Star’s main laser, and the Emperor’s throne room (complete with Luke and Vader duking it out).
There’s also a small meditation room for Darth Vader, based on the one aboard the Executor in The Empire Strikes Back, and even a pretty sizable hangar, complete with a buildable Imperial shuttle. Running throughout the diorama, connecting all the floors together, is a series of lifts, each with sliding doors (and, say, perfect for people faking a prisoner transfer).
As well as all that, the new Death Star includes a whopping 38 minifigures—almost double the amount included in the 2016 set. Alongside icons like Vader, the Emperor, Luke, Han (both in their Stormtrooper disguise and regular forms, and in Luke’s case, a third version of himself in his Return of the Jedi gear), Chewie, 3PO, and Leia, the set includes some deep cuts like Sim Aloo, one of the Emperor’s advisors from Return of the Jedi; Admiral Motti, General Tagge, and Admiral Yularen from A New Hope‘s meeting scene; and even a Hot Tub trooper, inspired by the Easter egg from the Lego Star Wars games. There are even two Rogue One figures for the display base, representing their crucial role in the first Death Star’s construction: Orson Krennic and Galen Erso.
It’s all certainly very impressive, but Star Wars fans will no doubt balk at several of the more controversial decisions here. First up, of course, is the price: the new Death Star is the most expensive set Lego has ever made, clocking in at a whopping $1,000—$150 more than the last record holder, the UCS AT-AT walker released in 2021 (the 2017 UCS Millennium Falcon also retails for $850, with both it and the AT-AT initially retailing for $800 before a price increase in the last few years).
There’s also the format of the model itself. A flatter (but still reasonably thick) shape may make this new Death Star easier to display than the full sphere of Death Stars past—even though it is still absolutely massive—but when you’re asking fans for more money than they’ve ever spent before on a single set before, even though this is over twice the parts count of the last set, the fact that it is “only” a disc instead of either a half-sphere or somehow completely covered is going to sting.
Will all the new bells and whistles (and all those new minifigures) lighten the blow? We’ll find out when the new UCS Lego Death Star releases on October 1. Preorders are available here.