LEGO Star Wars 75383 Darth Maul’s Sith Infiltrator review

The grand pantheon of grey LEGO Star Wars ships racks up a fresh contender with yet another iteration of Darth Maul’s Scimitar, and it's the most efficient yet – for better and worse.

LEGO Star Wars and grey go together like LEGO Star Wars and high prices, LEGO Star Wars and miserly minifigure counts and LEGO Star Wars and weird compromises. Funnily enough, you’ll find each and every one of those in 75383 Darth Maul’s Sith Infiltrator, a set that for all its shortcomings should actually be pretty high on your 2024 wishlist – if only for one reason…

Release: May 1, 2024 Price: £59.99 / $69.99 / €69.99 Pieces: 640 Minifigures: 4 LEGO: Order now

Small and affordable wins the race

We’re 25 years into the LEGO Star Wars theme at this point, so you can forgive the team for returning to franchise staples – particularly in the 25th anniversary of both the product line and The Phantom Menace. Darth Maul’s personal transport first debuted in LEGO in 1999, so it seems like a fine candidate to celebrate those twin birthdays under the twin suns of Tatooine. And you won’t be surprised to learn it stacks up admirably next to that blocky ‘90s build.

But there have been a bunch of other Sith Infiltrators since, so the better comparison is with the most recent, 2015’s 75096 Sith Infiltrator. That version includes just 22 more pieces than 75383 Darth Maul’s Sith Infiltrator but comes in at almost 150% its size, and originally retailed for £84.99 in 2015 (a staggering £114 in today’s money). The focus in this latest iteration has clearly been on keeping the size and cost down, much in the same way as recent LEGO Star Wars sets like 75301 Luke Skywalker’s X-wing Fighter and 75300 Imperial TIE Fighter.

It's to its benefit too, because it makes for a much more swooshable ship, and the kind of one-man transport you could conceivably see skimming around the sandy surface of Star Wars’ favourite planet. And like the X-wing and TIE Fighter before it, the Sith Infiltrator doesn’t make many compromises to achieve its smaller stature, instead arguably offering the most accurate silhouette of Maul’s ship to date as far as its sharp angles and contours are concerned. Save for one glaring compromise, that is.

Does my probe droid bay look big in this?

Any LEGO Sith Infiltrator worth its salt can deploy the probe droids Maul uses to hunt down Qui-Gon Jinn and Padmé Amidala on Tatooine – it’s basically the only thing we see the ship do on screen – and that goes for 75383 Darth Maul’s Sith Infiltrator, too. But because the probe droids are still pretty large and this is a relatively small ship, there’s a big ugly bump on top of the hull to facilitate that storage compartment.

The mechanism to release the trio of droids is actually pretty sophisticated, maybe more so than it needed to be for a set this size, taking advantage of the resistance provided by a rubber Technic beam to spring the hatch open. It’s a pretty cool function and the kids will probably love it, but you (as an adult) might be better served by rebuilding the set to be more screen-accurate at the expense of its functions. There are currently two options for that on Rebrickable if you need a starting point, both of which remove some of the bulk in front of the cockpit using only the pieces included in 75383 Darth Maul’s Sith Infiltrator.

The Scimitar as it stands here otherwise looks pretty good for its size, making sharp use of elements introduced since the last version to better capture its unique mix of pointy proportions and rounded edges. You are building pretty much only in two shades of grey for most of it though, so even this relatively short construction process doesn’t necessary feel the most stimulating. That’s LEGO Star Wars’ cross to bear at this point.

Access to the spherical cockpit rests on four different hinged elements – the top dish, sides and back – and can accommodate Maul riding atop his Bloodfin speeder, which is recreated here using only a handful of elements, and speaks to the set’s wider ethos of efficiency above all else.

Where is Padmé? Is she safe? Is she alright?

That efficiency has unfortunately also extended to the minifigure line-up, which feels fairly trim for a set of this size and cost. That’s not only in comparison to other sets within this price range but previous Sith Infiltrators, which have included bonus characters like Padmé, Captain Panaka and even Watto. 75383 Darth Maul’s Sith Infiltrator opts for a slimmed-down greatest hits selection with just Darth Maul, Qui-Gon Jinn and Anakin Skywalker, and it’s pretty poor going for what is the only minifigure-scale The Phantom Menace set for the movie’s 25th anniversary.

Anakin gets a new mop and Qui-Gon gets a poncho, so there are fun things to talk about between these three at least, but the new direction for Sith eyes among LEGO Star Wars sets is still probably going to rub you up the wrong way. If you’ve been in the game for any decent amount of time though, chances are you already own one or two versions of these characters (Maul in particular), and what you’re really coming here for is Saw Gerrera.

One of seven different LEGO Star Wars 25th anniversary characters arriving in sets in 2024, this bonus minifigure delivers a solid and effective interpretation of one of the biggest omissions from the wider Star Wars canon in recent memory, from his custom cape to his physical armour piece (which covers printed armour, so you can drop it if you prefer the classic LEGO Star Wars aesthetic). He’s good, he’s great, but he’s not a £60 minifigure and he’s not enough to make up for the absence of – at the very least – Padmé, as the LEGO Group burns through another chance to bring us one of the Star Wars prequels’ few female characters.

As an entire package, 75383 Darth Maul’s Sith Infiltrator doesn’t quite hit the mark at £60, so while the LEGO Star Wars team has done an admirable job of nearly halving the adjusted-for-inflation price of the previous Sith Infiltrator for almost the same number of pieces, you’re still best sending those probe droids out in search of a discount if you can. You’re definitely going to want it at some point if only for that Saw minifigure, though.

This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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Our honest opinion: It’s another grey LEGO Star Wars ship, but a pretty cool one. Could have done with a couple more minifigures, mind.