Last year’s LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild The Galaxy was one of the most unexpectedly joyous things to come out of LEGO since the original LEGO Movie. Instead of yet another cute but clearly cheap seasonal special like most other recent LEGO Star Wars media, Rebuild the Galaxy told a fun and surprisingly bold story with compelling new characters and clever reinterpretations of old favorites, all while integrating LEGO and Star Wars together more directly than any previous incarnation.
Now returning for a sequel series under the subtitle Pieces of the Past, does this expanded what-if scenario have enough new ideas to still feel fresh? Or is it time to put the toys away? Let’s dive right into this new LEGO Star Wars adventure and find out.
LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild The Galaxy – Pieces of the Past plot
Sig Greebling, voiced by Gaten Matarazzo, is honing his abilities as a Force Builder under the tutelage of Jedi Bob, voiced by Bobby Moynihan, when he begins having visions in his dreams of his older brother Dev, voiced by Tony Revolori. In Sig’s original timeline, he and Dev were the best of friends. But when Sig accidentally and permanently rewrote reality with the Cornerstone in the first Rebuild The Galaxy, Dev became a powerful and ruthless Sith Breaker by the name of Darth Devastator.
Sig, believing that Dev can still be returned to the light, goes to find his brother. But their reunion is cut short by the arrival of Solitus, voiced by Dan Stevens, a mysterious new villain who plans to unmake the galaxy by trapping everyone in a void between time and space called Forcehold. With no other options, Sig and Dev must work together alongside both new and familiar faces to save the galaxy from total annihilation before it’s too late.
LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild The Galaxy – Pieces of the Past review
Both the first Rebuild The Galaxy and Pieces of the Past are built on the premise of using time travel/multiverse theory to present a wildly different Star Wars universe than even previous LEGO Star Wars media. One where heroes become villains, villains become heroes, and any number of other seemingly impossible things can happen.
By that same token, Pieces of the Past as a show makes something seemingly impossible in our world happen. A LEGO Star Wars multiverse sequel mini-series is a charming love letter to the creativity and joy of both LEGO and Star Wars instead of a fan service-reliant insufferable reminder that we live in a capitalist dystopia. Is there fan service? Absolutely. The show is packed with guest appearances by Star Wars characters, both iconic and obscure, doing cool things and saying the things people know them for saying. But it always manages to maintain a “We’re all just having fun with this” attitude about it and never devolves into an artificial dopamine rush of “We said the thing. Please clap.”
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Some of that might just be because of Pieces of the Past‘s explicit non-canon status as both a what-if story and a LEGO spinoff. Not having to worry about larger implications also means not having to worry about pleasing everyone. But it also manages to push the what if aspect beyond the foundations set by Rebuild The Galaxy, creating far more wild variations than the simple moral alignment swaps that made up most of that show’s variants, many of which feel like they could be the basis of entire shows or movies in and of themselves.
On top of that, much like its predecessor, Pieces of the Past feels much more deliberate and intentional in its LEGO theming than other LEGO spin-off media, utilizing brick-based environments, figure variations, and a slower frame rate for character movement meant to resemble LEGO stop-motion shorts to help make the world look and feel like it’s actually made of LEGO bricks. Plus, the Force Builder conceit and emphasis on creativity feel very reminiscent of The LEGO Movie, and that very much worked for me.
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Furthermore, the voice cast is excellent here. Gaten Matarazzo and Tony Revolori’s sibling bond/rivalry as Sig and Dev respectively is relentlessly charming, Bobby Moynihan is fun as always as Jedi Bob, and Dan Stevens brings a surprising amount of menace to Solitus that helps add weight and stakes to what is mostly a very silly story. And of course, the cavalcade of returning actors reprising their roles from across various pieces of Star Wars media is consistently delightful and gives a layer of authenticity to the otherwise wacky proceedings.
Unfortunately, Pieces of the Past ends up inheriting Rebuild The Galaxy‘s biggest problem: it’s too short. With only four 22-minute episodes to tell its story, we never have time to give especially deep development to Sig and Dev, or any of the other original characters for that matter, nor do we have time to go all-out bonkers with the variations and cameos because we’re constantly moving on from one thing to the next and by the time we’ve really given ourselves room to explore, we’re already at the climax and it’s time to wrap things up.
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It feels like just a couple more episodes would’ve been a big help in this regard, but as it stands, Pieces of the Past can’t help but feel a little rushed despite how good it is. They’ve crafted a genuinely inventive world with bizarrely compelling characters. Now, they just need to let that world and those characters have a chance to breathe.
Is LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild The Galaxy – Pieces of the Past worth watching?
LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild The Galaxy – Pieces of the Past should not be as good as it is. A four-episode toy commercial extension of a nearly 50-year-old franchise coated in this much nostalgic fan service and with as ridiculously long and brand-specific of a title as this should be a cute distraction at best and an eye-roll-inducing slog at worst. Yet somehow, it all works incredibly well.
The variations are creative, the LEGO animation is gorgeous, the characters are compelling, it’s genuinely funny, and in its own weird little way, it reminds us all what made us fall in love with both LEGO and Star Wars in the first place. It could stand to go further in a few places, and I definitely wish it were longer (seriously, if they do another one of these, please give it more than four episodes), but the Force is nevertheless strong with this one.
