After a couple of Ezra toys, we now move on to our next Rebels character, The Inquisitor.  Officially, he’s The Grand Inquisitor, but Hasbro left this part off of his title, so he was demoted in the toy line.  I’m sure he’d be angrier about it if he was still alive to see this, but I guess we don’t have to worry about it much.

As I was late to the Rebels party, I had completely missed this character when it was first released in the Rebels line, but I’m not sure I even had any shot at finding him, since finding those figures was a pretty difficult endeavor.  I still hadn’t watched the show by the time this figure was repacked in the TFA line, and I missed him again in stores.  I picked him up on the secondary market very recently, although the price was just about the same as retail.  Even as I wasn’t watching the show, I recall The Inquisitor being the focal point of early advertising for Rebels.  Once I saw the first season, I actually liked the way the character was written.  Jason Isaacs brought an air of refinement to the villain, and I also liked that he was a revisiting of the Pau’an species from Revenge of the Sith.  The Inquisitor was killed off at the end of Season 1, which made way for another calculating and refined villain, a re-canonization of Grand Admiral Thrawn.

One bit of interesting trivia I came across, Dave Filoni stated that The Inquisitor was seen briefly in The Clone Wars.  The Inquisitor was a Jedi Temple Guardsman, and was seen (hidden behind a mask) escorting Ahsoka Tano from Temple after her capture when she fled arrest, and then again later, when he escorted Bariss Offee before the Imperial Tribunal.  After his death in Rebels, The Inquisitor appears in later episodes in a vision to Kanan Jarrus, where he is wearing his Jedi Guardsman uniform, and assists Kanan in escaping from the pursuing Fifth Brother and Seventh Sister.  If this line of toys had more time to breathe, and if it was collector focused, no doubt Hasbro would have released a Guardsman figure with The Inquisitor’s face behind the mask.  But that would have happened in another time, when the state of the line wasn’t craptastic.

The figure, is of course, off to a bad start because it’s 5POA and cartoon-styled.  But that said, Hasbro did a really nice job on the face. The detail is excellent, right down to the grooves in the skin, which we are familiar with from realistically styled Pau’ans in the ROTS line.  The tattoos on his face are done well, and are reasonably accurate to the character’s appearance in the cartoon.  The uniform is also fairly striking, along with sharp application of the Imperial emblems on each shoulder. The arms and legs move freely, and the figure can be posed in a seated position, which is important (there’s that forshadowy music again).  In my sample, however, the swivel neck barely moves.  Not sure if this is specific to mine, but I was afraid to twist it too hard for fear of breaking it.  As such, he pretty much only looks straight ahead or slightly to the left.

The Inquisitor comes with his trademark circular-hilted, double-bladed lightsaber, which comes fully ignited.  This is too bad, because it would be cool if it had removable blades and allowed the hilt to be attached to the figure’s back.  Also showing a lack of effort, Hasbro could have tried to create some way for the weapon to display its spinning capability.  Either this could have been done with the ring itself, or if that was too clumsy, then perhaps a swivel joint could have been added to allow the wrist to spin freely.  Probably too much to expect from a budget figure.  One other piece that could have been included would be the Special Adjutant’s Helmet that The Inquisitor could wear while flying his TIE Advanced v1 starfighter (more foreshadowy music…).

Also included is the build-a-weapon part.  On its own, it kind of works as a type of shield, although it seems like an odd thing for a Jedi or Sith to be using.  Also, it looks like a Transformer face, so this might have been some kind of attempt by Hasbro to deliver subliminal messages to unsuspecting kids that they should go buy Transformers figures.  Well, I’m not fooled for one second.  I’m not wasting any money on that stuff.  I have to save my money so I can waste it on 5POA junk.

The figure serves its purpose.  It looks good, it stands tall, and it holds its weapon.  Not a bad figure to own, and not the easiest one to find either.  If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll probably want this.  If not, it would be a super easy pass, as it was for me, once upon a time.  I give it a 4.

Editor’s Note:  The score is changed to a 3, which is our baseline for 5POA animation -styled figures.