If you are a fan of the Harry Potter franchise and a collector of BrickHeadz, you might be scratching your head at the one-sided line-up released so far, which includes the three heroes of the story, along with Dumbledore, Hagrid, Buckbeak, and Newt, but only one villain so far, Gellert Grindelwald. Well, that is about to change. With the upcoming release of a brand new batch of bad guys and girls. That’s right, the most feared villain in history, He Who Must Not Be Named himself, Lord Voldemort, is finally joining the ranks of BrickHeadz along with his snake Nagini and Bellatrix Lestrange. LEGO BrickHeadz Harry Potter 40496 Voldemort, Nagini, and Bellatrix includes 344 pieces and will be available starting June 1, 2021. LEGO has not released a price or parts count at the time of this review, but based on previous multi-character sets, I’m guessing it will be around $24.99 US.
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.
The box and contents
The extra-wide box features the entire line-up of Lord Voldemort (143), Nagini (144), and Bellatrix Lestrange(145), along with the Harry Potter and the Wizarding World branding. The side shows the 3 characters from the movie, while the back of the box shows the characters in a different line-up, along with photos of each character with their stands.
The set comes with 4 numbered bags (2 of bag 3), many containing additional bags for smaller parts, as well as 3 instruction booklets, one for each character.
There are a few printed parts as well: Voldemort’s creepy snake nostrils, his robe collar, Nagini’s scaly front, and Bellatrix’s gown front. The set also comes with 4 of the tall 1×1 bricks with 2 studs on one side and 4 of the newer tall 2×1 bricks with studs on three sides.
The build
While Lord Voldemort may be patient enough to spend years plotting his revenge on Harry, we don’t want to keep him waiting, so we’ll start with him. Right away, he breaks the mold by starting at the very bottom with the hem of his long robe trailing behind. From here on up, however, he follows the typical BrickHeadz process with a tall core of outwardly facing studs.
Aside from his snake nostrils, the rest of the build goes along without interest, and personally, I think that his bald head would have looked smoother if they had used tiles instead of plates, just this once.
Moving on to Bellatrix, right away, we see something unexpected. Not only with the upside-down cheese slopes used for Bellatrix’s bodice, attached with two technic axle bricks top-to-bottom, but two architectural bricks with a curved fleur, which fill the space above the inverted brick perfectly.
From there, the build takes a more traditional turn, with a tall stack of outward-facing studs. There is a bit of extra support for the upcoming pile of curly hair, which is substantial. So substantial, in fact, that Bellatrix becomes top-heavy and must be attached to her stand early to keep her from face-planting.
The next section gets complicated as we attempt to match the instructions placing dark brown round plate after plate. Fortunately, LEGO included red outlines for all of the new pieces in the instructions, or it would have taken me even longer to get everything right. The fact that there was an extra bag with just these parts for her hair should tell you something.
Finally, we come to what I would say is the absolute undisputed star of this set, Nagini. Starting with a small section that forms the upper neck of the serpent-turned-horcrux, including a nice slope with a printer scale pattern. Then we move on to the cutest snakehead ever.
The head uses those tall bricks with studs on three sides to provide the perfect offset to the tiles on either side.
From here, we build a set of coils that wrap around the back ending with her tail.
The finished model
The finished characters each get their own stands, and two of them get wands. Sorry, Nagini. Overall, they are well detailed and capture the look of their on-screen inspiration well, and while Nagini may come off a bit cutesy for a giant snake, I think that she steals the spotlight, hands-down. Voldemort felt a little simple to me, especially compared to Bellatrix, but there is really nothing else you could do with him besides maybe include some green blast effects or a death’s mark.
Conclusion and recommendations
We’ve waited a long time to see Voldemort join the rest of the Wizarding World of BrickHeadz, and with Nagini, the wait was worth it. I think that this set would make a great addition to any Harry Potter fan’s collection. If you are looking for a good parts pack, the amount of dark brown plates and slopes spilling out of Bellatrix’s tresses and the sand green curves are worth it, even if you have to take Nagini apart to get them.
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.
