Our friends over at Brickset.com have published fourth and final part of an anatomy of Star Wars Aliens written by Brickset user The_Rancor, aka Toby, covering 2015 to 2020.
The last 5 years or so have seen huge prominence in Disney’s Star Wars, for better or worse, releasing the full Sequel Trilogy plus Rogue One and Solo: A Star Wars Story. We’ve also seen The Mandalorian, the completion of Rebels & The Clone Wars, Resistance, and Lego’s Freemaker Adventures – so there’s a huge variety of new worlds to draw aliens from!
Interestingly, in previous years almost all of the Lego minifigures had a clear species, human or otherwise, but 2015-2020 introduced a few more characters that don’t have detailed anatomical features to assess.
Unkar’s thug and brute from The Force Awakens are good examples where their species are humanoid in nature and may not be alien, because nothing identifiable is showing through their clothing. I’ll be excluding instances like these for the alien study, but will still include the explicit “unknown” species like Maz Kanata and The Fifth Brother.
2015
Despite the big release of The Force Awakens during 2015, we were only provided with two new alien species that year – the imposing Pau’an through Rebels and the more enigmatic Shozer through Episode VII.
The Shozers themselves are less immediately alien with light flesh skin, but have black widely spaced eyes and large flat noses (below). It’s a species that we see very little of on-screen but we have a minifigure of Resistance Ground Crew member Goss Toowers, who appears briefly in the Sequel Trilogy. As with many others, this group uses a printed head, focusing on the black eyes and nose above a mask. A specialised helmet was created for additional accuracy to Episode VII.
The ancient humanoid Pau’ans are most easily identified by their distinctive pale, lined skin as well as red markings around their face. Our Lego Pau’an isn’t Tion Medon from Episode III, but The Grand Inquisitor, a sinister Jedi hunter who features prominently in Rebels (above). This is probably one of the best uses of print to determine species on a regular minifigure head, despite also including 3 new moulds for a lightsaber, armour & helmet at the same time!
2016
This year followed up Episode VII with Rogue One and also the Lego Freemaker Adventures series, introducing a grand eight new species in a single year, which is the current record and unlikely to be beaten!
We start with an unidentified near-human species used for a minifigure from The Freemaker Adventures. Identified mainly for white tattoos across her face like Kiffar or Mirialans, Naare (below) searches for the Kyber Saber as an agent of the Sith. As the species is similar to us, a regular head and hair parts are used, with white tribal tattoos printed across her visage. The minifigure even has a happy or Sith double sided-head, but the red blade indicates her main allegiance.
Another unidentified species is distinguished by plated greyish skin and pale eyes, creating a zombie-like look. This is the group of the Fifth Brother Inquisitor (above), one of the many successors to the Grand Inquisitor in Rebels. The hulking warrior is mostly covered in armour – deeming necessary the creation of new shoulder pad and helmet pieces – so we can just see the regular head beneath, hinting at the skin and eyes with angry and pensive expressions.
The hairy ape-like appearance of Iakaru garnered the species an initial nickname of ‘Space Monkey’ (below). Our Lego minifigure from this group was the briefly seen Rebel Bistan from Rogue One. The Iakaru neck is wide and Bistan wears a suit with a neck ring, so a new bulky mould was created, including realistic skin tones and printed hairy details across the face, focusing on their brow tufts. I do feel moulded hair texture would’ve looked even better though.
Also introduced through Rogue One, the amphibious Drabatan species has grey, wrinkled skin, sunken eyes, no nose and a large mouth. Pao (whose real name is far longer!) was our minifigure (above), leading troops into battle on Scarif. As the species has a round head, a regular grey minifigure head was used, combined with a new piece for Pao’s hat. The best feature of the double-sided face is turning it to see the Drabatan’s gaping mouth shouting his war cry “Sa’kalla!”
After 17 years of the theme we finally saw our first Ugnaught in 2016, a species known for its short stature, thick jowls and porcine nature (below). We have two unnamed Ugnaught minifigures from 2016 and 2018, both hailing from Cloud City. Their jowls and mouths appeared to deem necessary a new mould to show their widening cheeks with simple hair & printed skin details on both versions completed with short legs. It’s a shame there’s no sign of Lego Kuiil yet though.
Another diminutive species introduced in Episode VII belonged to Maz Kanata, with wrinkled, orange skin and a slightly flattened head (above). The species is unidentified like Yoda’s, also lives to a great age, and is rare across the galaxy. Maz is rarely seen without her variable corrective goggles, and so a new dark orange mould was created, including skin wrinkles, lenses and printed eyes beneath them. Short legs match her general stature instead of regular ones.
Our penultimate group this year is the reptilian Teedo, identified too for their shorter height, but also green skin and elongated cranium (below). Our Lego Teedo is intended to represent the character that entraps BB-8 on Jakku. Another detailed head element captured the cranium in green, as well as an accurate representation of the breathing & filtration mask covering the face. Normal legs look too tall, but this does allow the ability to sit on a luggabeast.
The bulky Crolutes are our last 2016 species, an aquatic group like Mon Calamari, but with gelatinous light coloured skin that sags when out of water (above) as shown in our Lego minifigure, Jakku junk boss Unkar Plutt. The large frame necessitated a sandwich board mould to add padding to the torso, whilst the character’s large head and shoulders were captured in light flesh, even including a moulded cap. The nose is also unusually prominent here too!
2017
This year added more to Rogue One, added our last sets from the Freemaker Adventures and Rebels, then progressed to Episode VIII – though oddly only two new species were introduced with none coming from The Last Jedi.
The Chiss species have deep blue skin and red eyes like the Duros, but otherwise have a much more human-like appearance overall (below). Our Lego minifigure is fan-favourite (Grand) Admiral Thrawn (Mitth’raw’nuruodo), best known in canon as an Imperial mastermind attempting to quash rebellion. Due to the human-like features of the Chiss, a regular blue head and hair were used, with dual expressions for pensiveness, and for anger when Rebels escape.
The tall, white and hairy appearance of Gigorans loosely resembles our idea of a yeti, with only a face showing through the fur (above). The species appeared briefly in Rogue One and so our minifigure is Moroff, a mercenary aligned with Saw Gerrera’s Partisans. Much like Wookiees or Talz, another sandwich board was introduced to capture the fur texture and bulk, but in a striking white, including key equipment such as Moroff’s vocoder translater over his mouth.
Read more of part 4 of the series here. Take these links for the first, second and third parts of the series.
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