With October 1st in the books, there are a slew of new Lego sets on shelves, both digital and physical, but one stands out for its size and price: the long-rumored and finally officially available Lego UCS Death Star, now available to order.
Reimagining the Death Star was less about rebuilding an icon and more about solving a design puzzle: how to capture the most crucial moments that took place on the battle station from star wars within a single structure.
The newly released set, priced at $999.99 / £899.99 / AU$1,499.99 and part of the Ultimate Collector Series, pushes the limits of Lego engineering with over 9,000 pieces and presents a completely new approach to the moon-sized battle station structure. To explore how it came about, TechRadar spoke with César Soares, master model designer at the Lego Group, who led the project.
Lego has been developing the Moon-sized battle station at its headquarters in Billund for more than a year. Soares said he took over the concept model in late summer 2023 and worked on it for about 14 months, by far the longest time he has spent on a single model.
“We had a concept model made during one of our design drives in the summer of 2023,” he recalls. “I bought it in the late summer of that year and worked on it for about 14 months. It was by far the model I spent the most time designing.”
Previous iterations, including the most recent one from 2016, were completely spherical and significantly smaller, showing only a few rooms per level. This time, Lego reinvented the Death Star as a thick slice.
From the beginning, the idea was the cross section
“From the beginning, the idea was transversality,” says Soares. “We wanted fans to see all the rooms and all the iconic moments in one view: each scene interacts with another.”
That decision required multiple prototypes and improvements before the team arrived at the final version. “I did maybe four or five different iterations, each time building again from scratch and evolving the design,” Soares says. “Once you get to a point where you’re happy, it’s about refining every detail: room by room, feature by feature.”
The finished model measures 20.6 inches high, 18.9 inches wide and 15.1 inches deep and features six detailed floors. In particular, the ground floor features a large hangar, while the Emperor’s Throne Room is located above. In between are iconic spaces like the detention block, trash compactor, superlaser control room, conference chamber, and reactor core, all filled with references from both Death Stars.
Considering its large size and likely lengthy construction, the designer wanted to ensure the process remained attractive. Soares opted for a modular construction approach, where each room is built separately before being joined to the main structure. “You start building room by room,” he explains. “So, you build the trash compactor outside, and when you’re done, you put it in and then you move on to the next room.” He concluded by noting that it makes for “the best Lego building experience, because you never get bored.”
The method also reflects how the model was developed internally. Soares began by building physical models, brick by brick, starting from the bottom and working his way up, then repeated the process before reconstructing them digitally piece by piece to fine-tune the connections and details.
“We physically recreated it piece by piece,” Soares says. “It’s a back-and-forth process: you never jump definitively to digital; it’s always both at the same time.”
Hidden throughout are nods to the Lego brand and star wars lore: from a small reference to Octan’s power in the foundation to a Stormtrooper room with a hot tub near the top that Lucasfilm approved without hesitation.
“We contacted Lucasfilm about it and they were totally on board,” Soares laughs. “They thought the idea was brilliant.” The reference, which began in the Lego Star Wars video games, is just one of many Easter eggs hidden within the set.
As for the collaboration with Lucasfilm (the first Lego Star Wars set was released in 1999), Soares shared that it has been underway for almost three decades, with regular meetings, exchange of ideas, and access to Lucasfilm’s vast reference archive. This set will likely end up in that file, and you can also find it in Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the galaxy – Pieces of the pastwhich is available to stream on Disney+.
For Soares, part of what makes this Death Star special is how it honors Lego’s long-standing design philosophy. “We, the Lego designers, are very proud of the Lego system at play,” he says. “We always try to use what we already have available. For this Death Star, we only created one new item: the Imperial Dignitary Hat, and I’m very proud of it.”
That little piece was crucial to the included Imperial Dignitary figure, the first in Lego Minifigures and one of 36 included with the set.
We wanted the definitive version, with everything in a single model.
That efficiency extends to the construction itself. The entire set is based almost entirely on standard Lego System elements, with only minimal Technic integration for the working elevator mechanism—proof, Soares says, that the existing system is still capable of performing new tricks even at this massive scale.
Ultimately, he believes the project represents the pinnacle of what Lego Star Wars can achieve. “Every important room or scene is there, from both Death Stars. We wanted the definitive version, with everything in one model,” he says.
Even after months of design and testing, and then building and rebuilding, Soares noted that “with this one, I really wanted to build it again,” he admits. “Which I think says a lot about the building experience.”
I started the process of building the UCS Death Star myself, and while it’s daunting, it doesn’t feel as repetitive as I initially feared. The instructions mix things up from the start, from assembling parts of the hangar floor to building mirrored sections, keeping even the foundations interesting to assemble.
If you sold it, Lego UCS Death Star is now available direct from Lego for $999.99 / £899.99 / AU$1,499.99; although, at the time of this publication, it is already backordered, so please allow a few weeks.
Lastly, while Soares can’t reveal what’s next for Lego Star Wars, his passion for the galaxy far, far away remains clear. “I grew up with the original trilogy,” he says. “So I will be very, very happy in anything I can work on from the original trilogy.”
The UCS Death Star may not be the first time Lego has tackled the Empire’s ultimate weapon, or the most affordable set ever released, but its ambitious cross-sectional design, modular construction and attention to detail make it the most complete version yet.
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