I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I basically missed The Acolyte.  My wife and I tuned in to every episode, but I fell asleep for an unfortunately large percentage of it.  I thought the parts that I remembered were promising, but I missed so much of it, I couldn’t give an honest assessment of the show.  I know a lot of people ripped it to shreds, but I have this idea that I may try to watch it through someday.  In researching The Stranger for this review, I watched a Youtube clip that was only all of his fight scenes.  I didn’t recall that he had so much screen time.  As I (poorly) remembered it, he had a short fight where he killed a bunch of Jedi, and that was basically it.  Not so.  And his fight scenes are actually pretty cool, so I enjoyed the “recap”, which was nearly context-less for me.  But I got the gist, and pieced together what I remembered to get the story.

All that is to say, I’m definitely not attached to The Acolyte, but I’m not against it, either.  But after we had gotten 5 figures alread, it seems only natural that we should have the villain in 3.75”, which for whatever reason can be a challenge on occasion for some media sources. 

The first thing I’ll point out is the facial likeness.  Coming in the same wave as Padmé, it seems that Hasbro is in the process of setting a new standard for awesomeness.  The figure looks just like actor Manny Jacinto.  That’s a good start to any figure, but the quality of the likeness, like that of Padmé is putting this figure on a fast track to a top score right out of the package.  However, Padmé lost momentum as I reviewed the figure, and finished with an 8.  Can Qimir hold on to that score?

The soft goods are quite nice.  It’s a double layered tunic, stitched together into one piece.  It falls nicely over the figure without having that parachute quality.  The slits along the side expose the figure’s bare arms as needed.  The tunic can be removed when the head is popped off.

The figure’s sculpt is also excellent.  I was originally put off by the balloon pants, but I got over it as a necessary part of the character design.  There’s definitely a git of awkwardness to them, but it doesn’t impact the articulation.  Someday Hasbro will take a crack at soft goods pants, and wouldn’t that be something?  Anyway, the rest of the sculpt is pretty close to perfect, no complaints.  The textures on the outfit are great, and nothing about the overall sculpt has any meaningful negative impact of the range of motion of the joints.  The bare arms are also sculpted nicely, and I didn’t feel they suffered too much from the visible joints.  The left forearm is encased in a vambrace, which is crafted from cortosis.  I mean, it’s really plastic, of course, but meant to look like its onscreen counterpart, which is made from cortosis.  You didn’t actually think it was real cortosis, did you?  That would have made the figure absurdly expensive.

The articulation is outstanding.  As expected, The Stranger features the full suite of modern Jedi-Level Articulation.  But most importantly, there’s a full range of motion of just about every point of articulation.  Of note, both the elbows and the knees flex past 90 degrees.  This is something in particular that I feel shouldn’t be lacking in any modern figure.  Just going a few degrees past 90 allows the figure to make poses that are significantly more lifelike.  For whatever reason, it’s just not as standard as it should be.  Also, as you can see by several of the photos, the figure poses like a dream, and has great balance.

For accessories, the most important is the swappable head.  You’ve got the aforementioned unmasked face, which is awesome, and then you can swap out the helmet.  This is the most striking and memorable physical aspect of the character.  It’s a cross between a Sith and an insane clown.  And it works.  Hasbro did a great job of sculpting the helmet, as well as adding the paint details.  Which reminds me to mention the paint - while the figure is simply painted/sculpted in all black, there are some weathering details on the arms and pants that are worth noting.  The helmet in particular is well done, including all the “welding” lines - or battle scars - whichever they may be. 

Also included is a lightsaber hilt, and then that same hilt split into two ignited blades - the main lightsaber and than a shoto blade.  A minor quibble is that there is no main lightsaber with the shoto detached, so when he’s posed wielding both, it’s technically screen-inaccurate because the shoto hilt is still attached to the main hilt.  The unlit hilt plugs into a notch in the belt.  The figure can perform many battle poses holding either/or/both blade(s), although the right hand isn’t as secure as I’d prefer.

The existing Acolyte figures are all excellent.  Going back through our reviews, Chris noted some frustrations with Sol that knocked it down to a 7, but Indara, Yord, Mae, and Osha all got 9’s.  I can find no flaw with this figure that was significant enough to deduct points.  The sculpt, articulation, paint apps, soft goods, accessories, and actor likeness make this a superior figure.  On top of that, I simply found it fun to pose.

I wasn’t asking for a Qimir figure, and I have no attachment to The Acolyte.  I probably would have preferred about 50 figures to this one, but apparently there was some demand for this character, so here it is.  And Hasbro nailed it.  10/10.