One of the most shocking scenes in Star Wars: The Last Jedi occurs on Supreme Leader Snoke’s enormous flagship the Supremacy, when Kylo Ren turns on Snoke and he and Rey join forces to battle the Supreme Leader’s Praetorian Guards. 75216 Snoke’s Throne Room captures this scene as a playset. The set includes 492 pieces with 5 minifigures and retails for $69.99.
Packaging, instructions, and sticker sheet
The set’s box features The Last Jedi imagery and contains just three numbered bags. The instructions and sticker sheet are loose in the box.
The sticker sheet has a variety of black/gray-on-black technical details, control panels, and so on. Note the “Death Star hallway” light panels, which have yet to be brick-built in any LEGO set except in the Star Wars Celebration exclusive set Detention Block Rescue.
The build
Like many playset-oriented LEGO Star Wars sets over the years, Snoke’s Throne Room is built from fairly basic building techniques — mostly bricks sandwiched between plates for sturdiness, with details added on top.
The first bag builds the base of the playset, the second bag adds the turbolift, and the third bag includes parts for some angled columns. For those interested in which bags include which minifigs, Kylo and Rey are in the first bag, Snoke is in the second bag, and the Praetorian Guards make their appearance in the third bag.
Although there are various play features built into the set (more on that in the next section), the build flew past in about thirty minutes, with little in the way of memorable moments along the way.
The finished model & play features
In The Last Jedi, Snoke sits in an enormous chamber surrounded on all sides by a monumental red backdrop, into which his Praetorian Guards in their red armor blend seamlessly. A major disappointment of this set is that it lacks anything that would allude to that huge red background.
This is easily remedied in our photographs for this review, and the official LEGO set photographers also added a red backdrop for the box art. Nevertheless, the set looks much less dramatic without any more red than the bricks that appear in the base, below the floor.
Despite the fairly small part count and basic building techniques, the set does have quite a few play features. The turbolift spins around, but there’s only room for one minifigure standing at attention, so you can’t really reenact Kylo Ren’s temper tantrum, nor is there room for him to escort Rey into Snoke’s presence.
A walkway connects the turbolift to the main throne room floor. It’s rare that I fault LEGO for using tiles and other smooth pieces instead of regular bricks and plates with exposed studs, but this would be an instance in which a few studs would make the walkway less slippery for minifig Kylo.
In the area on each side of Snoke’s throne there are odd little stands that poke up from the floor — perhaps they tune Snoke’s connection to the Dark Side.
For some reason, Snoke’s throne spins around, and it detaches from its hemispherical base.
The rear of Snoke’s throne has some great detail, though it doesn’t actually appear in the film so we can’t be sure how speculative these details are. A red knob behind Snoke’s throne moves a floor plate back and forth so you can float Rey toward Snoke.
One of the key features of the throne room is a magnification device called an oculus, which Snoke uses to force Rey to watch the destruction of the Resistance fleet. It’s a large device taller than the characters who look through it, with a large transparent lens. That lens has been reduced to a 2×2 round tile with a sticker.
Each side of the playset includes small storage compartments, where you can apparently store things like silver chalices.
The compartment on the other side stores what appears to be a Bilari electro-chain whip so the Praetorian Guards aren’t restricted to the weapons provided to them.
The minifigures
75216 Snoke’s Throne Room includes five minifigures — Kylo Ren, Rey, Supreme Leader Snoke, and two Praetorian Guards. The Kylo and Rey minifigs are the same ones that appeared in the previous waves of LEGO Star Wars sets from The Last Jedi, and both have alternate expressions on each side of their heads.
Similarly, the Snoke minifigure is identical to the one that appears in the 2017 set 75190 First Order Star Destroyer.
So then, the real stars of this playset are the pair of red Praetorian Guard minifigures in their unique armor. In the movie, Snoke is surrounded by four pairs of guards. Each pair of guards wears identical armor and uses matching weapons. LEGO has produced just one set of armor for these Praetorian Guards, so both minifigs are identical except for their weapons. Both guards have the new, shorter robe pieces first seen on characters like Moloch in the Solo sets.
Conclusions & recommendation
As we were planning this review recently, Chris asked me if there was ever a LEGO Star Wars playset (as opposed to a vehicle) that I actually liked. Without a second thought, I answered that I really loved two sets released in the past few months — 75200 Ahch-To Island Training released this January and 75208 Yoda’s Hut released in May. I also love the Jabba’s Palace playsets released several years ago. But Chris’s observation is correct — there have been a lot of LEGO Star Wars playsets over the years that I haven’t cared for, including 75137 Carbon Freezing Chamber which I frankly hated. While I certainly don’t hate Snoke’s Throne Room, the basic building techniques, repeated minifigures, and inaccuracies definitely detract from what could be a much better set.
In spite of these flaws, 75216 Snoke’s Throne Room does have a number of great play features, and it’s rather fun to reenact Kylo Ren’s inevitable betrayal of his Dark Side master.
75216 Snoke’s Throne Room 492 pieces and 5 minifigures. The set is available August 1st from the LEGO Shop (USD 69.99 | CDN 89.99 | GBP 64.99), Amazon.com, eBay, BrickLink, and elsewhere.
The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
Read more reviews from the current wave of LEGO Star Wars sets:
- 75203 Hoth Medical Chamber
- 75215 Cloud-Rider Swoop Bikes
- 75216 Snoke’s Throne Room
- 75217 Imperial Conveyex Transport
- 75218 X-wing Starfighter
- 75219 Imperial AT-Hauler
- 41619 Darth Vader & 41620 Stormtrooper
As far as play sets go, what did you think of the Force Awakens Takodana set? I own it, and, while overpriced, I think it was a great set!
Like a lot of things from this movie – including the movie – it’s a bit meh. That being said, I like some of the lay features and the figures are half decent and the set as a whole looks pretty good as a display piece.
@Hutt: I agree on both counts about that set — as I noted in my review at the time, it was indeed a great set, but rather overpriced.
Thanks for the link, I hadn’t starting following the site when you wrote that review.