Wave 2 of the Solo line is upon us, and our collecting lives are enriched only one figure from the film.  The wave includes Moloch, as well as one figure from the OT and two figures from the ST.  For what it’s worth, Hoth Leia has a logic link to Solo because it’s his future wife. Kylo Ren is his future son.  And Snoke, well, it’s more of a stretch to link it to the Solo film, but I guess he trains Han’s son, and dares him to kill Han.  It’s a weird wave.  Including some carry forwards, and two near-repacks, you’re only getting two new figures, and frankly, a 5POA Hoth Leia serves no purpose in our universe since we already have an amazing, and essentially definitive, super-articulated version from TVC.  But that rant is for another time.

You’ve seen this figure before.  It’s basically a repack of the Kylo Ren that was included in the TLJ Force Link Starter Set.  Chris already reviewed that figure about 6 months ago, and there’s nothing much to add.  It’s 5POA, an excellent sculpt, and a good looking figure if you have no interest in coaxing any kind of interesting pose out of your figures.  The reason to get this would be if you missed it the first time and want this particular version of Kylo Ren, even though you have options for several others.  The difference would be that it is compatible with Force Link 2.0 instead of the previous version, as is physically indicated with the green symbol on the bottom of his left foot, replacing the blue one from Force Link 1.0.  So you’d think you’d get at least as many lines out of this upgraded version, but you’d be wrong.  There are only 3 lines, instead of the standard 5.  That’s strange.  If Hasbro was going to make the effort (if this is considered effort) to repack this figure, at least they could have wowed us with a bunch more lines, even ones that might once have been considered spoilery.  Instead, he speaks 3 lame lines and makes some lightsaber dueling sounds.  That’s it.

It’s a figure nobody really asked for.  I would assume Hasbro has this marked as a “main” that needs to be available consistently, and I understand that.  But of course we currently have the TVC version (which itself is a repack of the TBS version) on the pegs now, so this was an unfortunate selection for a figure, especially since we should really be getting a Solo figure.  While it’s a nice figure as far as 5POA goes, the lack of newness and the failure to take advantage of 2.0 is a downer.  I’d probably think about giving this figure a 4 or 5, but I’m giving it a 3 because it’s a poorly executed and ill-conceived choice for the currently movie line.