May the 4th Spotlight: When LEGO Rewrote Star Wars History

To celebrate May the 4th (commonly known as Star Wars Day), your good friends over here at MOCBoxing have unearthed an interesting little story deep in the depths of LEGO and Star Wars lore alike. So let's get into it!

We all know how much the Star Wars canon is debated, with plenty of characters, events and paths that some people may or may not agree is canon. What if I told you there is a character that was directly named and given a significant amount of background all due to a LEGO set? You might say I’m wrong, but it’s true! This takes us back to the 2012 lego set releases, specifically set 9493 X-Wing Star Fighter. This is a pretty straightforward X-Wing set, with one little secret…

The minifigs that come included start with the usual Luke Skywalker and R2-D2, but things get weird when you take a look at the new/exclusive extra characters. The two new additions are Jek Porkins and another astromech unit, named R5-D8.

Still don’t see the oddity? Let me break it down further. That specific astromech droid, up until that point, only appeared in Episode IV: A New Hope and was unnamed. Yes, LEGO single-handedly named a droid from one of the original trilogy films, 35 years after it was released.

Spot him in the back?

Later on, R5-D8 was added to the official Lucas Films canon in official source materials. What’s even better is he makes a triumphant appearance in the 2015 video game LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens! It’s great seeing some background characters get highlighted thanks to LEGO adding some extra figs. 

So, end all be all, droid created for a LEGO set ended up being canonized, all thanks to a product designer needing to fill a name slot. Amazing stuff!

While you’re at it, check out this awesome Red Five X-Wing (link https://mocboxing.com/products/moc-197410-1-red-five-t65b-starfighter-2-0-update) only available here on MOCBoxing. You can even fit a R5-D8 in it if you’d like. I know I’d sure love to give this guy some of the spotlight!

Thank you for reading!