Star Wars The Black Series Darth Sidious review (2024)

Darth Sidious has long been on my must-have list for the Star Wars The Black Series line for a few years now. We’re talking the big bad of the entire prequel trilogy and somehow the Star Wars team had him in the queue just chilling. Finally, this year we got Sidious in all of his Revenge of the Sith glory. Just in time for the upcoming ROTS Yoda in the two-pack with Commander Gree.

I’ve been waiting on this guy for awhile, but missed the initial pre-order window and he stayed listed above retail price on online sites. Finally, Entertainment Earth had a not mint version available that I quickly snatched up.

Let’s see if this figure is worthy of the greatest villain in the Star Wars saga or a shocking disappointment.

Packaging: EE wasn’t joking about the not mint packaging. This is one beat down package. Fortunately, I open my figures so it’s not a terrible thing though I’m going to have to do a little surgery on it since I do like stacking the BS boxes for the mural images and themes. Darth Sidious is the first figure in the Revenge of the Sith subset line, which features a coffee color scheme.

The mural image features Sidious in his chambers raising his left hand and gesturing as if he’s naming Anakin “Darth Vader” for the first time. Over on the back we get the usual sensational bio detailing Sidious’ rise to power.

Likeness: Darth Sidious is a smartly designed figure as it incorporates both plastic and soft good elements. The hood is done in plastic, which gives it the appropriate folds as they lay along his shoulders. His gold clasp even has some detailing.

His robe has a layered setup with a black upper portion and a main robe that matches up pretty closely to the source material with the open “split” within the robe. The robe is tailored fairly well with the sleeves having some flare without looking too poofy.

Underneath the robe, Hasbro reused the body from the Luke Skywalker that came in the two-pack with Grogu. That’s fine since Sidious has more bounce in his step at this point.

Darth Sidious has a bunch of expression options. The Black Series team went with one with a slight sneering smile. It fits Sidious just fine as it works for more display settings than a more animated expression.

Scale: Darth Sidious is shorter than most of the characters he’s around, but in fairness he tends to be around some pretty tall characters from Darth Tyrannus, Mas Amedda and Darth Vader. In this specific attire, he’s only going to be around Darth Vader, Yoda and a hopefully forthcoming Mas Amedda figure.

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Paint: Most of Darth Sidious’ paintjob is limited to his hood and head sculpt. The gold clasp was cleanly done and Hasbro did a decent job of matching the hood’s brown with the robe.

Hasbro should have added some black paint shadowing to form a triangle from the middle of his nose. It adds to the phantom menace that is Darth Sidious to not actually fully see his face.

Articulation: For this particular look, Sidious basically is just shooting some lightning and battling Yoda.

For most of his duel against Yoda, Sidious utilized dual grip overhead, darting slash strikes. Hasbro still hasn’t engineered enough range in most Jedi/Sith to do overhead strikes particularly well. You can’t do those poses, but it is possible to do his slashing down strike poses he did when Yoda was at ground level.

He can strike the dual grip pose with the lightsaber in front of him, which is good for face off poses with Yoda. Due to the nature of the soft goods robe, it does bunch up in some unpredictable ways, but it’s got enough give to not be super restrictive either.

Darth Sidious has:

• neck
• ball-jointed shoulders
• elbow (with swivel)
• wrist
• wrist hinge
• torso
• hips
• thighs
• knees (double jointed)
• ankles

Accessories: Hasbro made sure to include all the essential elements for Darth Sidious. He’s got his lightsaber complete with all the specific details like the curved grip and gold adornments.

It’s got a sharp piercing red blade although sadly there’s no spring-loaded mechanism in his right sleeve to pop out his lightsaber.

Additionally, he’s got a swappable set of lightning spraying hands with deeper blue lightning. Perfect for those in the search of unlimited power.

That’s a very cool inclusion and anytime we get more than one accessory with Black Series figures that aren’t a deluxe, it’s a good thing.

It’s probably too much to ask for another hood with a different portrait, but it would have been great to have a snarling expression or a maniacal grin.

Worth it?  We don’t normally get multiple accessories with Black Series figures so that’s a good deal to just get him for the regular $24.99 price point. I was able to get Darth Sidious for $18.24 due to the botched packaging. Given his essential nature to the story, he’s probably one I wouldn’t wait out for a better sale.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Darth Sidious was long overdue but thankfully his Black Series figure was worth the wait. Now I can start impatiently waiting for a Chancellor Palpatine figure.

Where to get it?  He is still available on Hasbro Pulse and on Amazon and Entertainment Earth.

As an Amazon Associate and Entertainment Earth, I earn from qualifying purchases.