The Knights of Ren were referenced in The Force Awakens and finally show up on screen in The Rise of Skywalker where they do an impressive amount of standing around and looking tough…and not much else. The latest retail wave includes our first (last?) Black Series Knight of Ren, who in the grand Star Wars tradition is never named on-screen but ancillary materials name as Vicrul. Let’s take a look!
Vicrul is packaged as “Knight of Ren”, probably because they didn’t have the name decided early enough to add to the packaging. That’s kind of funny to me because in the old days the only way you knew the names of some of these characters was their card back. I also learned the cantina alien names from the POTF2 card backs. The usual black and red packaging feels even more appropriate for this black-clad lackey of Kylo Ren.
Vicrul comes with a blaster pistol and a poker of some kind. The blaster is pretty neat and features the requisite greeblie detail you expect of a Star Wars gun and is painted shiny silver with a nice black wash for detail. It fits securely in the holster on Vicrul’s side. The only downside is the handle is a bit thick, so it stretches out his hand a bit.
The poker, which the Star Wars visual dictionary names a scythe also has a great deal of nice Star Wars techno-greeblie detail, good metallic paint and a detail enhancing wash. The only issue is the stretched out hand doesn’t want to hold the weapon very securely. It’s also not immediately clear to me what the business end of this weapon is. I’m assuming the cutting edge is on the inside of the curved blade, but it looks a little dull from both ends.
Sculpting on Vicrul looks good and matches the source material well. I like the textures on the clothing and the aforementioned weapon detail. He’s a regular sized guy and looks good flanking Ren.
The one thing I don’t care for in the sculpting is the way the swivel/hinge knee looks when bent. It doesn’t quite flow with the sculpting and stands out as an obvious disc when bent. I feel like it also makes the thighs look overlong when the knee is bent.
The articulation is a mixed bag of the usual Black Series scheme with some really effective and not so effective changes. Vicrul has:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles
- Ball and socket waist, neck, and head
- Thigh swivels
- Butterfly hinged pecs
I think the swivel/hinge knees are big downgrade from the double knee in look and function. The swivel/hinge only gets a 90 degree bend at best and looks awkward when bent. If they insist on going forward with this, I hope they integrate it better into the sculpting like they have with elbows. The knees were also stuck on my figure and even after loosening with heat, they are tough to hinge, but swivel a little too freely.
On the other hand, I absolutely love what they did with the neck. The ball joint where it connects with the body works in conjunction with the ball joint in the head to allow for a really nice expressive range of motion. The wobble joint at the waist also gets some decent movement. The joints other than the knees aren’t heavily ratcheted for the most part either, which is nice.
I also like that the torso has a softer plastic tunic that allows the pec hinges to move. The lower skirt does block leg movement a bit, I couldn’t get him into a convincing kneel, but it’s not as bad as I was expecting from photos.
The paint is pretty minimal with black plastic doing the bulk of the work with silver highlights and some messy brown for weathering. I like the look of the weathering on the boots, but feel it’s a little overdone on the shoulder. The shoulder should have more of a dusty feel than muddy, but I think that sort of subtle paint job isn’t really possible with mass production.
Overall I liked Vicrul more than I was expecting. I’m not really a fan of the KoR, but the detailed weapons and, oddly, the really excellent neck articulation made me enjoy this figure a lot more than I thought I would. I do low-key hate the knees though. I’m glad they started the Knights with Vicrul (who I’ve thought of as Grenade Face when he was unnamed) because his design is one of the more appealing of the group, but I wonder if we are going to ever get the rest of these guys. The Rise of Skywalker feels like the least merch-supported Star Wars movie in recent years.
