From animation to building sets to video games, a look back at some of LEGO Star Wars biggest hits.
As we get ready for the premiere of LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy - Pieces of the Past, the mixed-up sequel series, it’s the perfect time to look to the past of the Star Wars and LEGO partnership. For over 25 years, the LEGO brand and Star Wars have teamed up for animated adventures, video games, and countless hours of pure building fun.
LEGO Star Wars projects have a tradition of mixing and mashing up classic Star Wars favorites with a twist (say hello to Darth Jar Jar and even a dark side version of Nubs!) with original characters, vehicles, and just pure zaniness. Pieces of the Past continues the adventures of Sig Greebling, a Force-sensitive nerf herder whose world was turned upside down in 2024’s LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy, now on Disney+.
Animated adventures
Rebuild the Galaxy is the latest animated incarnation following an impressive (most impressive) collection of LEGO Star Wars shorts and series. Unlike its canonical cousins, LEGO Star Wars animated stories often reimagine iconic characters such as Darth Vader, Leia Organa, and Yoda and their stories with a humorous take.
The first LEGO Star Wars animated adventure dates back to 2005 when LEGO Star Wars: Revenge of the Brick debuted on Cartoon Network. The short featured Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and Yoda taking on the Separatist droid army on the ground and in space over Kashyyyk, in LEGO brick form. Dozens of shorts have followed including Bombad Bounty (2012) with Jar Jar Binks, Rebels Ghost Story (2014) with the crew from Star Wars Rebels, a series of era-spanning shorts in LEGO Star Wars: All-Stars (2018), and New Year’s Hothin’ Eve (2021) that gave fans a unique new look at the Battle of Hoth. More recently, Gifting with Grogu (2022) starred — you guessed it — everyone’s favorite green foundling.
LEGO Star Wars television specials began with 2011’s LEGO Star Wars: The Padawan Menace, which featured Yoda leading a group of Padawans on an adventure. Mixing the original and prequel trilogies, 2012’s LEGO Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Out took Leia, Han, and Luke to Naboo after the destruction of the first Death Star. More recent specials, including The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special (2020) — complete with Poe Dameron in a holiday sweater, — LEGO Star Wars: Terrifying Tales (2021), and LEGO Star Wars: Summer Vacation (2022) introduced seasonal themes. All three are streaming on Disney+.
Rebuild the Galaxy writers and executives producers Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit are the latest to join the pantheon of LEGO Star Wars creatives, which includes Michael Price (LEGO Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles (2013), LEGO Star Wars: Droids Tales (2015), Star Wars: The Resistance Rises (2016), The Padawan Menace and The Empire Strikes Out), Bill Motz and Bob Roth (LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures (2017) and All-Stars) and David Shayne (seasonal specials). “It’s been such a thrill getting to work with stellar writers over the last two decades who have all brought their heart, soul, and love of LEGO and Star Wars to the screen” says Lucasfilm senior Star Wars lore advisor Leland Chee.
Beyond the bricks, each one of the LEGO Star Wars specials and series has one key quality in common. According to Lucasfilm’s James Waugh, SVP of franchise content and strategy, every LEGO Star Wars story is careful to maintain the ‘anything is possible’ feel kids have always associated with the LEGO brand, and building with LEGO bricks. “LEGO Star Wars has its own sense of humor, its own style, and creates a special opportunity to share something you love with your kids no matter the age,” Waugh says. Looking at how kids actually play with LEGO bricks is a vital part of the process. “[For most films and series], we’re in our canonical sense of building stories, which delineates certain characters and vehicles set across different points of time. And when I’m watching my son play with [LEGO bricks], and watching other kids play with them, that’s not the case. It’s more like, ‘I’m dumping all my LEGO Star Wars sets out, and I’m going to have the AT-AT fight battle droids from the prequels.’”
Building Star Wars brick by brick
Connecting back to its roots, 2024’s Rebuild the Galaxy introduced Jedi Bob as a nod to one of the first LEGO Star Wars sets ever released. Voiced in the series by actor Bobby Moynihan, Jedi Bob was originally an unnamed Jedi minifigure packaged as part of the LEGO Star Wars Republic Gunship (7163) set released in 2002, early in the partnership that launched in 1999 with the release of thirteen sets themed to the debut of the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace film. Fans took it from there, christening the lone Jedi as “Bob,” and the name stuck.
In real life, Jedi Bob is one of over a thousand LEGO Star Wars minifigures that the LEGO Group has designed over the years, often inspiring LEGO designers to break the mold and create all-new pieces to make the characters more screen-accurate. For example, the 1999 Jar Jar Binks LEGO Star Wars minifigure was the first to have a unique head sculpt. Then in 2002, Yoda, Boba Fett, and Ewok LEGO Star Wars minifigures were among some of the first to feature shorter legs. That same year, the Zam Wesell LEGO minifigure from the LEGO Star Wars Bounty Hunter Pursuit (7133) set was one of the first to have double-sided face decorations — only fair for a shapeshifter!
More recently, LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy has inspired several new LEGO sets, including Jedi Bob’s Starfighter, The Force Burner Snowspeeder, the TIE fighter and X-wing mash-up, and the Dark Falcon. Chris Gollaher, director of product design at Lucasfilm, notes that both the LEGO brand and Star Wars “have that cross-generational appeal. The parents and the kids share it in the storytelling of Star Wars, and then the experience of the LEGO brand. And that’s why it’s so great. It works so well and hits on all levels for that.”
Smash those LEGO bricks up — no, really!
It didn’t take long for the partnership to yield LEGO Star Wars video games, a unique chance to enter the galaxy as a LEGO minifigure while experiencing the Star Wars films in a whole new light.
Starting with 2005’s LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game, LEGO Star Wars games have adapted many of the films as well as the Clone Wars and other epic Star Wars battles. In 2021’s LEGO Star Wars: Castaways, fans experienced an original story where players were stranded on a deserted island. Then 2022’s LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga famously adapted all nine Skywalker Saga films from The Phantom Menace to The Rise of Skywalker, a humorous take on the core Star Wars films.
Beyond the story, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga included a new combat system, improved use of the Force, epic space combat, and about 800 characters — with add-on DLC packs themed to The Mandalorian, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. A Classic Characters Pack also offered versions of the LEGO Star Wars characters as they appeared in early LEGO Star Wars sets. “The worlds in The Skywalker Saga include so many of the places you have seen captured on film as vibrant, living worlds you can explore, creating one of the most immersive experiences in our games to date,” TT Games' lead hub designer Dawn McDiarmond told StarWars.com in 2022. “You can run through markets [in the Uscru District] and straight onto the dance floor, visit a beloved character's home, and befriend local creatures with some mind tricks. Players have never before been able to explore the Star Wars galaxy like this.”
These award-winning games count some of the stars of LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy as their fans. “I played LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga religiously,” Gaten Matarazzo, the star and voice behind Rebuild the Galaxy’s Sig Greebling, told StarWars.com in 2024. “I could probably play it blindfolded from Episode I through VI. It’s a cornerstone of the video games I love now, and just a deep, deep childhood memory.”
Sig will reunite with his brother Dev, and friends like Yesi Scala, Jedi Bob, and even Luke Skywalker, to face a new villain named Solitus in LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy - Pieces of the Past. Now Streaming on Disney+.
