It’s May and that means Lego fans are celebrating Star Wars. Fans celebrate May 01 for the 501st Legion, May 5th for Revenge of the Sith, and the most iconic May the 4th be with you, as well as many others. Lego Shop at Home is celebrating with a shopping promos on their website including gifts with purchases and insider points. With all these different days in May to celebrate Star Wars, I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the various subthemes of the Lego Star Wars.

Lego Star Wars first launched in 1999 and we’ve seen hundreds of sets, polybags, promos, minifigures, and more over it’s 26 year history. Fans have been treated to Lego built X-Wings, Millennium Falcons, Darth Vader helmets, storm trooper armies, and even a $1000 “Death Slice”. Those 100s of sets have been released within subthemes in the larger Star Wars theme such as dioramas, buildable figures, and Ultimate Collector Series (UCS). Let’s take a look at a few subthemes.

Buildable Figures

From 2015 to 2018, Lego released 31 Star Wars Buildable Figures. You could build Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, General Grievous, K-2SO, various troopers, Chewbacca, and Darth Maul, amongst others. The fully built figures stood about 12 inches tall and you could move the limbs to create different poses, which made it pretty fun for fans to recreate scenes or make their own stories. My favorite parts about these sets were weapons like the light sabers and blasters.

My least favorite is the faces of the non-helmeted characters. Not all of them were terrible, but there’s just something about them that feels weird. Vader, Grievous, and the troopers look really call - all of them have helmets. Luke, Rey, and Han Solo on the other hand do not (Obi-Wan is probably the best one, in my opinion).

Dioramas

We only seen 6 Star Wars Dioramas, all of which ran from 2022 to 2025. Even though they’re short lived, I am a fan of these builds. They look great and bring back memories of the movies. I do think there may not have been great direction in terms of what Lego wanted to do with this subtheme because 2 included no minifigures and focused on the ships, and the others did feature and focus on the minifigures in action.

75329 Death Star Trench Run is the memorable Luke’s X-Wing being chased by the Vader’s TIE Advanced and TIE Fighters, and 75380 Mos Espa Prodrace features Anakin and Sebulba’s podracers. Both have no minifigures. The other 4 dioramas are 75330 Dagobah Jedi Training (with Yoda and R2D2), 75339 Death Star Trash Compactor (with Leia, Luke, Han, and Chewy), 75352 Emperor’s Throne Room (with Emperor Palpatine, Luke, and Darth Vader), and 75353 Endor Speeder Chase (with Leia, Luke, and a Scout Trooper).

I’m a fan of all of these dioramas, especially the ones with the minifigures. I think the minifigures add the character, figuratively and literally, to recreate these iconic Star Wars scenes.

Microfighters

I really like the Star Wars subtheme Microfighters for several reasons. First, I believe that these are geared nicely towards younger fans, which I think is important when it comes to Lego sets. I think there needs to be a balance and the Microfighters sets bring that. Second, if the Star Wars ship builds are too expensive for your taste, these Microfighters are a great entry point at around $10-$20. Finally (although there are plenty of reasons to love this subtheme), I really enjoy mini-builds when it comes to Lego. I do appreciate the details that go into larger sets, but there’s something satisfying about creating a mini-version or in this case micro-sized build of an X-Wing.

Something you’ll notice in these Microfighters sets is that they all include a minifigure and there’s a seat for them in the vehicle/build. Most of the sets in this theme are single packs, but there are a few that are double packs. A few of my favorites are 75160 U-Wing (I’m a sucker for all Lego Star Wars U-Wings), 75223 Naboo Starfighter, and 75298 AT-AT vs. Tauntaun.

Lego Star Wars has a lot more subthemes than the ones I talked about above, including:

Advent calendars, poly bags, Brickheadz, Technic builds, Helmets, busts, mechs, planet sets, buildable characters (different than buildable figures), midi-scale, and ultimate collector series.

Lego Star Wars has seen a lot over the last 26 years and I expect more sets and maybe event subthemes to emerge. I can also imagine to some Lego fans, subthemes aren’t even a thing and it’s ALL just Star Wars sets. Which is totally cool and fine too. We’re all Lego fans and we can appreciate that we get these awesome Star Wars sets to enjoy.

Lego is currently celebrating Star Wars with their May the 4th promo and read more about it in Corey’s blog here. Lego didn’t just stop there because they also released new sets, which we wrote about here.

As always, we appreciate you being here, reading our blogs, using the Brick Dynasty app and watching us live.

Keep building Lego fans!

Star Wars Subthemes

May the 4th be with you