The LEGO Star Wars team tried to reinvent the wheel in 2025 with the first major Jedi Interceptor redesign in 20 years – but now it’s about to retire, was it actually worth it?
75401 Ahsoka’s Jedi Interceptor flew on to shelves in January last year and is due to retire by July 31, 2026. And when it’s firmly in the rearview mirror, it might be best remembered for three reasons: first, that pitch-perfect Ahsoka Tano minifigure with mid-sized legs. Second, its ridiculous price tag of £39.99 / $44.99 / €44.99. And third, its brand new cockpit design.
Jedi Interceptors have come along a fair bit from 2005’s 7256 Jedi Starfighter and Vulture Droid, but while the LEGO Star Wars team has bulked up the wings and added structural reinforcements, one design choice remained constant all the way up through 2020’s 75281 Anakin's Jedi Interceptor: the windshield.
Sure, the printing changed over time, but the same bulbous piece that gave the O.G. Interceptor its bug-like profile back in ’05 stayed in play for a full decade and a half. And why not? For the scale to which these sets were designed, it was an almost perfect match.
That’s a necessary distinction because these Eta-2 Actis-Class Interceptors have pretty much all been oversized compared to their minifigure pilots, but only in pursuit of stable sets that could be swooshed around by kids (and adults alike, let’s be fair). Custom versions have gone smaller and more accurate, but look unlikely to withstand many play sessions.
So yes, the windshield in all those Interceptors – red and blue for Obi-Wan, green and yellow for Anakin – was probably a bit too big. But if the LEGO Star Wars team was going to maintain this scale for its single-pilot ships, there wasn’t really much need to do anything different. Or at least nobody really seemed to be asking for a radical redesign.
But then along came 75401 Ahsoka’s Jedi Interceptor.
Revisiting 75401 Ahsoka’s Jedi Interceptor
The January 2025 LEGO Star Wars set has a brand new cockpit design, comprised of a slightly smaller new windshield and a brick-built rear section. In one way, this is a slightly more accurate representation of the cockpit as we see it on screen: the back of the canopy is a solid colour rather than translucent.
In other ways, though, it’s actually less accurate. Open the cockpit on any of the original Interceptors and the front windshield will stay fixed in place. In Ahsoka’s ship it’s attached to the main canopy piece and lifts away with it. In Revenge of the Sith, we see Obi-Wan sitting in his blue Interceptor with the windshield open – and the front window is still in place.
So too is the rear of the canopy, or the section that’s brick-built in 75401. Unfortunately, the LEGO version still opens fully (perhaps as a consequence of the scale), so there’s no real advantage gained in that department. So the question remains… why did the LEGO Star Wars team feel the need to reinvent the wheel here, if it wasn’t for any obvious improvement in fidelity to the source material?
Because if a Jedi Interceptor redesign was on the table at all, this one really feels like a missed opportunity. It’s ostensibly the same size as its predecessors, where it might have otherwise gone smaller and nimbler, and the cockpit is no great shakes compared to the original. All that said, it does have one or two things going for it.
LEGO Jedi Interceptor comparison
For this feature I also reassembled the copy of 75038 Anakin’s Jedi Interceptor pictured here immediately before putting together 75401 Ahsoka’s Jedi Interceptor, and it’s remarkable just how different those two building experiences were. These two sets are aesthetically quite similar at face value, but structurally they’re entirely different beasts.
The 2014 set attaches each wing to its core with three click hinges, offering a relatively sturdy connection. The 2025 model, on the other hand, attaches each wing with a Technic pin, along with an axle that slides through the entire core of the ship to anchor both wings in place. That approach ratchets up the stability, but more importantly pulls the wings closer to the cockpit, giving it a slightly narrower profile and reducing gaps.
Ahsoka’s Interceptor also takes advantage of the modern parts library to better recreate the angles of the ship. The pentagonal tiles at the back were first used in 2020’s 75281 Anakin’s Jedi Interceptor and return here, while the 2x4 white wedge plates are a neat way to capture the pointed livery of Ahsoka’s craft.
The back of the ship is much cleaner here, meanwhile, and that’s a direct result of the cockpit change: there’s no ugly Technic axle sticking out of the back of the canopy, and the hinge for the windshield is better integrated.
But the real improvements that could carry over to future Interceptors are the 5x1x1 1/3 wedges either side of the cockpit (even if they’re stickered), and the way the white trapezoidal sections at the front of each wing are captured using 2x2 wedge plates.
Ahsoka's Jedi Interceptor: evolution or revolution?
That’s assuming the LEGO Group sticks with this approach for whichever Interceptor inevitably follows next, anyway. There’s every chance it could pivot again – not every experiment sticks the landing, as we saw with the immediate abandonment of the dual-moulded Rebel Pilot helmets in 2018. That was a new and exclusive mould too, so even the creation of a new windshield here is no guarantee it will return.
But while this feels like evolution rather than revolution, and in some ways even a sidestep, there’s a silver lining: 75401 Ahsoka’s Jedi Interceptor is still consistent aesthetically with every other Jedi Interceptor since 2012’s 9494 Anakin's Jedi Interceptor. So if you’ve been building a collection of those starfighters over the past decade-and-change, this one is well worth picking up… with one caveat.
And that is – as with any LEGO Star Wars set these days – the price. 75401 Ahsoka’s Jedi Interceptor retails for £39.99 / $44.99 / €44.99, or a full £15 / $15 / €15 more than 75281 Anakin’s Jedi Interceptor cost in 2020. In the UK, it’s double the price of 75038 Anakin’s Jedi Interceptor pictured here.
For that money you’re getting one additional minifigure, and these are top-tier versions of Anakin, Ahsoka and R7-A7, to be sure. But the value proposition is otherwise pretty much absent, and even inflation doesn’t account for it: £20 in 2014 is £28 in today’s money; £25 in 2020 is £33 in 2026. £40 is just far too steep for what’s in the box.
Luckily, this is one set that’s enjoyed frequent discounts over the course of its lifespan, regularly coming down to £32 and occasionally going as low as £25. At that price it’s a much more palatable pick-up, so fingers crossed we see it that low again before it retires for good.
75401 Ahsoka’s Jedi Interceptor is available now at LEGO.com, but is due to retire by July 31, so time’s running out to add it to your collection.
The copy of 75401 pictured here was provided by the LEGO Group for the purposes of this feature.
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