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mr-jabbajohnl –
In Revenge of the Sith, Chancellor Palpatine tells Anakin Skywalker the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise, a tale he refers to as a Sith legend. Palpatine frames the story as a cautionary tale about the quest for greater power, but in reality he designed it to prey on Anakin’s growing insecurities and make him crave the “unnatural” abilities of the Dark Side. It’s a powerful performance from the masterful Ian McDiarmid and a twisted echo of Obi-Wan introducing Luke to the Force in A New Hope. While it’s never explicitly stated that Plagueis was Sidious’ master, it’s strongly implied, and this story was compelling enough to launch a long-delayed, bestselling expanded universe novel by James Luceno. Now we have a highly demanded action figure in The Black Series from Hasbro, presumably meant to tie into the cancelled release of Revenge of the Sith 3D.
Darth Plagueis has only been visually depicted a handful of times, and much like other Muuns, nobody can seem to decide if he has a prominent nose or how tall he’s supposed to be. Hasbro drew inspiration from the most logical source: Attack of the Clones, where the Muun species debuted with Banking Clan representative San Hill. Now the slit-nosed, big-handed, tall-but-not-giant Plagueis release fits in with Hill’s action figure (Geonosis War Room screen scene – “Saga,” 2003) but takes advantage of the previous decade’s advancements in sculpting and articulation to bring a much more lifelike representation of the species. Similar to Merumeru, Plagueis is super-articulated aside from a waist joint; he’s extremely skinny, so it was likely that this choice was made to improve the figure’s structural integrity.
Hasbro looked to Brian Rood’s Star Wars Insider artwork (as seen on the cardback) for Plagueis’ gold-trimmed outfit, and his breath mask and staff are based on their designs in the Star Wars Miniatures game. I’m not sure why so many bald, gray-skinned Sith seem to have respiratory issues, but the breath mask encircles Plagueis’ jaw only after you pop off his head, add the mask, and pop his head back on; the neck feels a little fragile due to how thin it is, but breakage shouldn’t be a problem here. The unpainted dark gray staff isn’t as long as it appeared in the Miniatures game, but Plagueis’ lightsaber can plug into it for some awesome longer-range fighting poses. There is some paint sloppiness on my sample’s lightsaber, but most every other application is tight. Unlike most soft goods cloaks, Plagueis’ is maybe a bit small with sleeves that ride up when posing his arms. The hood is difficult to pose well and tends to look like it’s hovering above his head, but that’s more or less par for the course in this line.
As with any never-before-made figure named “Darth,” Plagueis quickly became scarce and shot up in price on eBay, with fans even searching at Walgreens to track down the evasive Sith lord. Now that wave 3 is finally shipping more widely to Target and the Disney Store, more collectors would be wise to add this creepy, cool figure to their collections.