Here’s another figure from the “lost” wave 4 of Solo figures.  Thandie Newton played Val, who was one of the more compelling characters in Solo, even though she was short-lived.  This is right on the heels (simultaneous, actually) with Thandie’s performance as, by far, the most compelling character in an otherwise lackluster season 2 of HBO’s Westworld.  There’s an obvious pattern developing here.  Thandie Newton always plays compelling characters.  This is proven by science.

Val was romantically linked to Tobias Beckett.  I actually thought they were married for some reason, but this is apparently not correct.  We meet Val on Mimban, while the crew is disguised as Imperial Mudtroopers.  They reluctantly bring on Han Solo and Chewbacca, and take off for Vandor-1 in a stolen AT-Hauler.  During the big heist of the coaxium shipment, Val’s job was to blow up the rail of the conveyex train, allowing the rest of the crew to secure the particular train car with the Hauler and fly off with the valuable coaxium.  However, plans went awry, and Val had no time to get to a safe spot and detonate the explosives, so she sacrificed herself to complete her part of the mission. Regrettably, this all happened in the early part of the film, so Thandie’s role was cut short.

Our first order of business in the actual review is to destroy Hasbro for the parenthetical name on the card.  Mimban?  MIMBAN?  Hasbro, please.  This isn’t the hard part.  Yes, Val was on Mimban once, but as described in the preceeding paragraph, she was wearing her mudtrooper disguise.  Speaking of which, where are our Val, Beckett, and Rio in Mudtrooper disguise figures?  What’s that you say?  We’re never getting them?  Good, good.  We didn’t want them anyway.  I was just kidding.  But Val wore this outfit on Vandor-1, probably after she showered and changed on board the surprisingly luxurious AT-Hauler. 

Val has a really good sculpt.  The jumpsuit is sufficiently detailed, with nice textures.  There are separately sculpted straps hanging off the belt, as well as a small kama.  The face sculpt is also well done, along with the hair style.  One of the bigger problems with the figure is the application of the face paint.  As with so many figures these days, you can tell that the underlying sculpt is quite good, but the paint applied to the eyebrows, eyes, and lips are off enough as to hurt the final product.  Everything is off sculpt just a bit.  The lips, in what seems to be a common problem, are painted to look like those of a Roaring Twenties Flapper.  Only the middle part is painted in a slightly exaggerated manner, while the corners of the mouth are bare.  But the eyes are particularly distracting.  She looks very concerned.  Perhaps she is concerned that she is not a super-articulated figure?  It’s overall not a bad looking face, and does bear a passable resemblance to Thandie Newton, but it really could be done better, even without FACE! technology.

Val comes with a large blaster, and she can grip it well in either hand.  However, she has no holster.  You could try to stow it away in the hanging straps on her right hip, or even inside the silver hose on her back, but these don’t seem to be realistic.  The figure has swivel gloves, so it actually 7POA, but again, it adds almost nothing to posability.  My figure has a slight balance issue, and leans a bit to her right.  It’s not terrible, but when you have a figure with no lower body articulation to assist with standing upright, the sculpt MUST be balanced properly.  This is Action Figure 101, Hasbro.  Gosh, do we have to explain everything?

Finally, the figure includes the Force Link 2.0 talking feature.  It kind of sounds like Val, but really, in the end, the only good thing this gimmick provided were the continuous engine sounds for vehicles.  It was a misused technology.

Overall, it’s a really nice looking figure.  It’s one of those that makes me angry that the super-articulated line is so weak right now.  We’ve all said it a million times already, but these Solo and Rogue One crew members need proper representation in TVC.  If this Val figure were SA, and had removable goggles and perhaps some additional accessory like her explosive device, this would be a real winner.  Meanwhile, it gets a 4. It maybe could have gotten a 5 if it didn’t have freaky eyes and a balance issue.