For those living aboard the Death Star there are plenty of rooms and amenities, as long as they dodge the dianoga, so Blocks explores the scenes included in the new 75419 Death Star.
The latest and largest LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series set is 75419 Death Star – so Design Manager César Soares provides a tour of some of the areas you can find within the space station. If you preorder it early, you can get a free gift with purchase set; 40771 TIE Fighter with Imperial Hangar Rack.
When fully armed and operational, the Death Star (and its sequel) was not only a weapon, but a self sufficient world for all of the Imperial personnel aboard. It had everything from command centres and conference rooms, to bars and gym facilities (yes, Stormtroopers have to work out). Each hangar bay and corridor seen in Star Wars: A New Hope as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo attempt to rescue Princess Leia was just a glimpse within this vast space.
Deciding which rooms to include within 75419 Death Star led the LEGO Star Wars design team to consult both its iterations in Star Wars: A New Hope and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, with a little bit of creative liberty given to the arrangement within the cross-section.
“The Death Star exterior looks very cool, but what’s happening inside is really the most important part. And it was really amazing to have everything in one cross-section view,” says LEGO Design Manager César Soares. “I actually have a drawing that I made in the beginning with a giant circle and each floor. That’s how I initially decided where I thought all the rooms were going to go and they ended up being more or less where they are in the final model.”
Some of the rooms had to had to be shuffled around to find the right place, as César wanted to ensure that the placement made sense. “It was a very natural process. The trash compactor and the docking bay had to be on the lower levels and then it makes sense for the throne room to be on the top. As the top is where the super laser needs to go, then you also need to have the control room and the bridge next to it.”
There was another key deciding factor for the final arrangement – the working function between the cell block and trash compactor. In A New Hope, after Luke Skywalker and Han Solo’s rescue of Princess Leia doesn’t go to plan, she leads them down a trash chute to escape. “I wanted to have at least one floor between the trash compactor and the cell block area, so that dropping a minifigure down would be more dramatic,” continues César, referring to the feature that lets a minifigure recreate the iconic scene. “So in the end everything found its place and I didn’t have to tweak a lot. The only two that I was not completely sure about were the meditation chamber and the conference room, but the deciding factor ended up being that I needed more space for the conference room, so it had to go on top.”
Get even more detail in our exclusive interview with LEGO Star Wars Design Manager César Soares in Issue 132 of the monthly LEGO magazine! To be ready for the new issue, take out a great value subscription package and get a top quality 116 page magazine every single month. It’s much more than Imperial propaganda!
Strictly speaking, Darth Vader’s meditation room isn’t seen on the battle station in the films, but it was still added to 75419 Death Star as the Sith Lord spendis time aboard, striding around and Force choking ignorant Moffs. “I actually have the Darth Vader meditation chamber, which you don’t see in A New Hope or Return of the Jedi – unless you watch the deleted scenes,” says César. “But because it’s such an iconic scene from The Empire Strikes Back, and it looks really cool, we thought it would make sense for Vader to have another one on the Death Star.”
Yet while each room found its appropriate place, César ran into challenges and, unlike Galen Erso, he could leave no flaws in this Death Star. “There were a lot of things in this model that were challenging, but by far the most challenging was the elevator. Because the elevator was getting stuck every time. Then I thought I had solved it and I asked somebody else to come and test it, but then that person would get it stuck! Maybe it was the velocity, I don’t know. There were many iterations and in the end the solution was to have all the walls of the elevator shaft made using big wall elements, with the smooth surface facing the shaft. And the most important part was actually giving the the elevator cabin a round shape so the edges don’t get caught.”
If you’re eager to build your own space station when 75419 Death Star releases on October 1, 2025, then preorder it via our affiliate links to help support the work we do at Blocks.
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