LEGO Star Wars 75250 Pasaana Speeder Chase from The Rise of Skywalker [Review]

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters in almost exactly a month, but Star Wars fans have been treated to scenes from the movie in several teasers and trailers over the past year, including a speeder chase scene featuring our Resistance heroes aboard a vehicle that look like the post-apocalyptic offspring of the desert skiffs in Return of the Jedi and Enfys Nest’s Cloud Rider swoop-bikes from Solo. 75250 Pasaana Speeder Chase is the smallest LEGO Star Wars set released so far to support the upcoming movie, at 373 pieces with three minifigs and one droid.

The set was released at the beginning of October so is available now ($39.99 US | $49.99 CAN | £44.99 UK | currently 20% off from both Amazon.com and Target).

The packaging & build

There’s nothing particularly special about the packaging for this set, featuring various action shots of the vehicles on the front and back of the box.

The set’s parts come in three numbered bags.

The sticker sheet is loose in the box along with the instruction booklet, with a sticker sheet that mainly provides wear patterns distinct to the red speeder.

Such a small set can’t really be expected to have hugely innovative building techniques or parts uses, so let’s just provide our readers with how the build progresses across the three bags.

The tracked First Order speeder with the two First Order troopers The first half of the red speeder along with BB-8 The second half of the red speeder, junk stand, and Rey

The tracked First Order speeder incorporates a rubber tread piece encased in Technic beams.

The red Resistance speeder is built mostly studs up, with a few brackets on one end to provide some studs-out shaping of the forward hull.

The finished models

The red speeder ridden by Poe, Finn, and Threepio featured prominently in the first teaser trailer back in April, though it remains to be seen how the vehicle will fit into the overall plot of the movie. This means that we can’t really comment on the relationship between the tracked First Order speeder piloted by First Order troopers and the red speeder, which has Rey at the helm in the LEGO set.

After completing the first bag, the tracked speeder felt a bit like filler necessary to provide “good vs. bad” conflict play in the set, rather than a solid model in its own right. The LEGO product description names the vehicle as a First Order Treadspeeder. We’ll revisit this after the movie’s release, accompanied by official reference books we’ve already pre-ordered to arrive on the date of the movie’s opening.

The speeder can seat both First Order troopers. Again, it’s hard to evaluate whether the speeders are overly large (a perennial problem with LEGO versions of speeder bikes, including the otherwise excellent Cloud Rider speeders we mentioned earlier).

The star of the set is obviously the red speeder used by the Resistance characters, which LEGO merely labels a “transport speeder.” It features a forward section with a split intake (accentuated by stickers on flag pieces), outboard feature of unknown purpose, and what are presumably steering vanes at the back with a safety cage for passengers.

What appears at first glance to be a deck gun is actually the steering column, according to the front of the box and the final illustration in the instruction booklet.

The speeder features several cool details, such as tubing on the underside and a roll cage attached at the back.

A stand with a bunch of junk in a box rounds out the set, providing two containers and several minifig accessories for additional play value.

The minifigures

75250 Pasaana Speeder Chase includes three minifigs and a droid (or four if you count the two-piece BB-8 as a minifig). The three minifigures are Rey, a First Order stormtrooper labeled as a “First Order Treadspeeder Driver”, and a First Order Jet Trooper.

One of my very minor complaints about the first movie in the recent trilogy was that Rey (easily my favorite new character) spent the entirety of The Force Awakens wearing her Jakku scavenger outfit while male characters like Poe and Finn flitted around on-screen through half a dozen costume changes. This meant that Rey’s LEGO minifig became the Qui-Gon Jin of the new trilogy — I have a small bin full of identical Reys. Rey’s new look in The Last Jedi came as a refreshing change, and Rey gets another new look in all white for the final movie.

Rey has gotten her hair done up in her original do for the third movie, with an alternate expression and full detail on the back of her torso. Notice that BB-8 gets a minor update, with a larger photoreceptor.

Appearances to the contrary, the two First Order trooper minifigs are also new, and unique (so far) to this set. The treadspeeder driver features greater detail on his knees as well as lettering and a red mark on his torso. Similarly, the jet trooper features a new helmet, torso, and legs.

The jet trooper’s jetpack is a two-piece assembly, with a neck bracket piece and a 1×1 printed tile — much more compact than the flared jetpacks for the Star Wars: Battlefront Battle Packs released a couple years ago.

Stormtrooper minifigs may all look the same at first glance, but every single element (other than the standard Clone Trooper heads) is unique to these two new First Order trooper variants.

Conclusions & recommendation

With stud-shooters and a variety of vehicles and minifigs from both sides, it’s clear that this is a LEGO Star Wars set designed to facilitate conflict play (aka “role-play”) by LEGO’s core 6-12 demographic rather than something targeted at both kids and older builders or collectors. For those of us in the higher end of the “8+” range, it’s hard not to deduct the components that feel like filler — the treadspeeder and junk shop — leaving just the red speeder seen in the first teaser trailer.

For LEGO Star Wars collectors focused on minifigs, this is the only set that features Rey’s new look, though that’s likely to change with the inevitable January wave of sets based on the full range of characters, vehicles, and locations seen in the movie when it’s released. Similarly, this is your first (perhaps only) chance to pick up two unique First Order trooper minifigs.

Overall, then, this set provides three unique minifigs plus a great speeder operated by the Resistance alongside two pieces of arguable filler, bringing the total part count to nearly 400 pieces at an equivalent price point of $40. That’s quite steep for basically just “new Rey” and the cool red speeder. Star Wars completionists will certainly want to pick this up before it becomes unavailable, but others may want to wait to see whether the minifigs become available in subsequent sets or if this set goes on sale.

LEGO Star Wars 75250 Pasaana Speeder Chase from The Rise of Skywalker is available now from the LEGO Shop online ($39.99 US | $49.99 CAN | £44.99 UK), and is currently 20% off from both Amazon.com and Target). It may also be available from third-party sellers on eBay, BrickLink, and elsewhere.

Read all our reviews so far of the LEGO Star Wars sets from The Rise of Skywalker and The Mandalorian:

75248 Resistance A-wing 75257 Millennium Falcon 75254 AT-ST Raider

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