"I appreciate your courage, young warrior, I have no quarrel with you."
The first wave of Star Wars Black Series figures from The Acolyte hit stores in September 2024 a couple of months after the show had aired on Disney+. The Galaxy Collection Wave 17 was entirely made up of Acolyte characters including four Jedi as well as the key characters of Mae and Osha.
The Acolyte series within the Galaxy Collection features a new red-shaded accent colour and the figures are packed in the new squared-off box style with the numbering now included on both the front and the back of the box. Jedi Master Indara is number 05 in the Acolyte series with the side artwork putting her between Yord Fandar and Mae in the wider montage. The rear of the box features a cropped version of the same illustration as well as a short piece of background text that is the same on all 6 Acolyte releases from Wave 17 giving us just a synopsis about the show - most likely to avoid spoilers had these figures arrived early.
The new box design also now features a colour-coordinated backing card for the figure with the deep red Acolyte colour scheme offset against the darker robes of Indara. Rather than being a plain colour backing, there is an illustration within the backing card - for Indara this depicts some architecture, an arch of sorts as seen in her first scenes on Ueda in the series.
The figure depicts Master Indara as we see her in the opening scenes of The Acolyte on Ueda when she battled Mae. She is wearing white inner robes with no further paint application beyond the base plastic with the upper tunic featuring a textured quilting finish. Indara is wearing a brown painted leather belt with an ornate gold buckle and plain knee-high brown boots. The belt does show signs of paint bleeding where it is painted over the robes rather than being an individual piece.
Over the robed body is a set of soft goods Jedi robes with a tailored hood piece folded back and stitched into place - it cannot be moved to sit over Indara’s head. The robes sit well enough, but are not considerably improved on versions we’ve seen with other Jedi characters in the past and still suffer from sitting too flat in places without the heft in the material to fold and crease as we see on the actual costume.
Indara’s head sculpt is a good likeness to Carrie-Anne Moss and includes facial printing to extend the realism and include the markings to the side of her left eye. The hair is added as an individual piece and features loose strands that frame either side of her face and a more ornate braid at the back with painted silver clips.
Indara includes her lightsaber as an accessory, a new hilt featuring a gunmetal base with bronzed panels. This can be hung on Indara’s belt by way of a plug and socket, or held in either or both hands. Interestingly Indara features a trigger finger right hand despite only coming with a lightsaber so this is likely to be a re-use and looks a little odd when holding the lightsaber hilt and means and the grip itself is too wide for the hilt leaving quite a loose fit. The translucent green blade slots into place for the lit lightsaber effect.
Indara has 16 points of articulation which on paper looks to be a downgrade of options from previous figures. What Hasbro has done is lose the often intrusive thigh swivel and they have added a swivel to the knee joint. The upper torso still features a waist ball joint and the arms come with a full range of motion and butterfly shoulders to help with two-handed lightsaber posing in particular. The neck looks to be an individual piece but in terms of movement, it is only jointed where it meets the head which is the only real limiting factor driven by this new configuration of pinless joints.
Indara is really engaging to pose with a wide range of motion and some very expressive and expansive posing options can be achieved with or without the robes (one benefit of soft goods usage) with her lightsaber in particular. It is a shame that we still are not getting any spare Jedi hands making force gestures to expand the options further.
The Acolyte Black Series release of Indara is a solid release with a good likeness to the character as seen in the Ueda scenes with a reasonably well tailored soft goods robes and a lightsaber accessory. The articulation, despite having the joint count dialled back is surprisingly good and a testament to the engineering of the newer bodies by Hasbro enhancing the overall aesthetics without impeding the movement.
It seems the majority of The Acolyte releases will be based on the current events from the show and not the flashback scenes this therefore gives us some variation in Jedi Robes between Indara and her contemporaries. Whether we will see figures from the Brendok flashback scenes is unclear and potentially unlikely considering everything going on around The Acolyte and the Star Wars fandom in general. It would however be nice to see more High Republic-era Jedi
Keep Track of all the Star Wars Black Series figures from Hasbro at our comprehensive
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About Me : As a child of the 70's and 80's I grew up in a golden age for action figures and in my youth bought and sold myself through collections of Star Wars, G.I. Joe (Action Force) and M.A.S.K. while also dabbling in He-Man, Transformers and Ghostbusters. Roll forward and I am now reliving that Youth with the action figures of today and am a collector and fan of the larger 6-8 inch figures from my favourite movie and TV licences - including the ones mentioned above, but also the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Who and the Aliens. I launched The Mephitsu Archives in 2015 with a view of creating a UK focused site or these figures where fans can pick up the latest action figure news, read reviews and get information on where to buy their figures and what is currently on store shelves. I hope I am delivering that to you guys...
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