Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is an upcoming videogame and one of the Lucasfilm releases that saw merchandise on Triple Force Friday last week. Today we are going to take a look at Black Series figures of the main protagonist and antagonist from that game, Cal Kestis and The Second Sister!
The figures come in the standard packaging and I’ve honestly run out of things to say about it.
The Second Sister Inquisitor comes with a removeable cape, two shoulder pads and a double bladed lightsaber. The lightsaber is the common blade of the Inquistors as seen in the Star Wars Rebels and the second Darth Vader miniseries.
The sculpting on this weapon looks pretty sharp and has a fairly shiny metallic paint job. The blades pop out fairly easily, but stay in securely. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to break these things popping them on and off, but these feel sturdy.
The cape is a fairly soft plastic and plugs into holes in the figure’s shoulders. It has a nice textural quality to the sculpting and looks like it hangs with some weight to it. The figure’s arms can still get a pretty decent range of motion with the cape on, but it starts to look off the more you move the arms. I love the large textured Imperial cog symbol. It’s a striking look in conjunction with the bright magenta cape/glove lining color.
The shoulder pads can be added in place of the cape and they plug into the same holes on the shoulders. I love the idea of options for display and play like this because it does change up how active the figure can be posed, but the execution leaves a little something to be desired. The pads pop out easily, so I could see losing them if you aren’t careful.
The sculpting has great detail, but I don’t love some of the proportions. She skews a little thinner here than what I’ve seen from the game model and it’s especially apparent in the arms. They are fairly spindly.
The articulation is good with a scheme that will be familiar to Black Series regulars including:
- Ball and socket head and mid-torso
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Double hinged knees
- Thigh swivels
The neck movement seems to be one ball socket at the head which feels a little lame after the cool double barbell action on The Mandalorian. I like that the right hand has a up/down hinge so she can point her saber at people.
The paint gets the job done and is fairly simple with the standout for me being those Imperial cogs and the metallic hilt of the saber. Some of the plastic has a bit of a swirled mix, so it doesn’t look as flat grey as it should on the uniform in places.
If I recall correctly the Inquisitors were a concept originally created for the old roleplaying games, the idea being you want a dark side user for you party to fight, but you don’t want to bring in Vader because he’ll just slaughter all of your players. Rebels expanded on this idea and created four Inquisitors and introduced the brother/sister plus a number naming convention. Including Inquisitors made a lot of sense to me since the main cast of Rebels often felt a lot like a roleplaying game party.
The Vader comic introduced a few more Inquisitors and the Second Sister appeared in one panel, but we don’t learn anything about her there. Rebels and the Vader comic made me love Inquisitors, so I’m predisposed to dig this new one. The figure is nice, if not mindblowing, but my love of the concept and other Inquisitors helps put this one over the top for me.
Cal Kestis comes with a Lightsaber and a little droid buddy. The saber is somewhat unique looking with a longer than usual hilt that has battle damage at one end that almost makes it look to me like it was broken off of a double sided blade. It’s gun metal grey and looks a little plain, but apparently it matches the source material.
The droid buddy is named BD-1 and from what I gather from previews, he opens doors and serves as an in-story way to explain things like maps and HUD in the game. He’s terribly cute with a design dominated by large eyes and tiny little dinosaur feet. He basically looks like a pair of macro-binoculars with feet.
From what I’ve seen in the game he rides on Cal’s back, but I don’t see an obvious way to accomplish that on the figure. I’ve seen some customizers add magnets to the figure to stick him on there. I just used a little bit of poster tack to mimic the look in some photos.
The little guy has decent articulation with ball socket neck and hips and at the knees. It’s enough to get him moving around. He seems a little clean for a Star Wars droid, so I was thinking of giving him a quick gray wash.
I do wish Cal came with an alternate force-push hand and I’ve been thinking lately that force-push hands would be nice inclusions for more of your Jedi characters in general.
Sculpting on Cal is great. His portrait looks like a good match for the game model all the way down to his impressively massive mop of hair. The outfit has some lovely detail including quilted sections that bring to mind Hoth Soldiers and lots of straps and belts and such. He kinda makes me think of Dash Rendar. He’s like a well-designed Dash Rendar. Dash Rendar Jr., maybe?
The articulation is fairly standard, though I do appreciate the inclusion of butterfly hinge joints for double handed saber poses. Cal has:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, hips, wrists, and ankles
- Ball and socket head, neck and mid-torso
- Double hinged knees
- Thigh swivels
The ball and socket at the neck where it attaches to the body was a little stiff at first, but once I was able to get it moving it was helpful in getting Cal to look down.
Paint is also slick with a lot of clean detail work and impressive face printing effects. Like usual, I would love to see a little wash on some of the details, but it’s otherwise good. Overall Cal is a very nice figure and works for me on a cool toy basis. He feels very Star Wars, but a little bit fresh if that makes any sense. The game comes out November 15th and the figures have primed me to want to find out more about the kid.
