Darth Malgus, released in 2023 as a Deluxe Gaming Greats entry, represents a statement that Hasbro is willing to invest seriously in the expanded lore when the fan demand is sufficient and the character design is strong enough. Darth Malgus should not exist in the way that he does. He is a character from Star Wars: The Old Republic, an MMO that launched in 2011 and centers on events set thousands of years before the Skywalker Saga. He has never appeared in a film. He has never appeared in a Disney+ series. He exists, canonically, in the thicket of what was once called the Expanded Universe and now lives in the Legends classification — that soft-focus parallel dimension where Hasbro sometimes dips a tentative toe when the fandom demands it loudly enough for long enough. And yet. Here he is. A Gaming Greats Deluxe entry in the Star Wars Black Series — the most elaborate, most detailed, most extensively accessorized non-mainline Black Series figure Hasbro has produced in recent memory — standing over 7 inches tall in imposing, scarred, breathing-apparatus-equipped magnificence. He sold out his preorders almost immediately. He has been compared to fan-favorite Legends figures like Darth Revan in terms of demand and collector heat. He is, by all available evidence, exactly what SWTOR fans have been waiting for since 2012, finally made real in premium plastic.
Who Is Darth Malgus?
If you are arriving at this review from a position of casual Star Wars fandom — perhaps you loved the sequel trilogy, or you grew up with the prequels, or you’ve been a Clone Wars devotee since 2008 — the name Darth Malgus may be new to you. Darth Malgus was born Veradun, and he is a Sith Lord from the era of the Old Republic, a period set approximately 3,600 years before the Battle of Yavin. He first appeared in the Star Wars: The Old Republic cinematic trailer “Deceived” in 2009 — one of the most stunning pieces of Star Wars animation ever produced — where he led the Sith Empire’s devastating sack of Coruscant, walked through the Jedi Temple with the casual destructive authority of a hurricane, and killed the Jedi Master Ven Zallow in a duel that remains one of the most emotionally resonant combat sequences in Star Wars lore outside the films. “Deceived” was so good that people watched it who had no intention of playing the game. It went viral before viral was the word for it.
Malgus is complicated in the way the best Star Wars villains are complicated. He despises the politics and hierarchy of the Sith Empire almost as much as he fights the Republic. He has genuine ideological convictions about what the Sith should be — more meritocratic, less nepotistic, less strangled by the political maneuvers of the Dark Council — and those convictions eventually lead him to a spectacular act of rebellion against the very Empire he helped build. His visual design is equally distinctive. A human who received severe injuries during the fall of Coruscant — injuries that damaged his respiratory system and required a mechanical breathing mask to sustain him — Malgus presents as a scarred, chalk-pale figure in heavy black armor with massive shoulder pauldrons, a black soft-goods cape with a functional hood. He carries a red lightsaber with a hilt featuring large blade emitter shrouds that give it an aggressive, asymmetric profile. He looks, in short, unlike anything else in the Star Wars visual vocabulary, and that distinctiveness is why the fandom has been desperate for a serious action figure of him for over a decade.
Before we get into the figure itself, the context of the Gaming Greats program deserves recognition, because it represents a meaningful evolution in how Hasbro treats Star Wars lore beyond the films. The Gaming Greats sub-line was initially perceived as a modest novelty — a way to release figures from the Star Wars video game catalog, initially as GameStop exclusives, often with a fan-channel exclusivity arrangement. Early entries were sometimes repaints or minor retools. But as the sub-line matured, it evolved into something more ambitious: full new-sculpt figures representing characters from SWTOR, Jedi: Fallen Order, and Knights of the Old Republic that had been beloved by fans for years but had never received proper Black Series treatment.
Here’s a detail that matters immediately: Darth Malgus is not 6 inches tall. He is approximately 7 inches, towering noticeably over his shelf companions in the Black Series. This is accurate to the character — Malgus is physically imposing in-universe — and it creates a display presence that simply cannot be ignored. He dominates whatever shelf space he occupies. This is correct. The sculpt is one of the most detailed in the Black Series’ modern run. The chest armor is a complex piece, featuring a layered design with what reads as segmented plating over the torso in dark, almost matte black with subtle color modulation. Silver detailing runs along the belt that wraps the waist and extends around to the back, giving the figure a sense of completeness that purely front-facing figures lack. The shoulder pauldrons — enormous, jutting constructions that are definitional to Malgus’ silhouette — are made from a softer plastic compound that allows the arms to achieve clearance angles without the armor becoming an immovable obstacle. This is a smart engineering call that keeps the display options open without sacrificing the visual impact. The head is cast in pale skin tone — the appropriate gray-white pallor of Malgus’ complexion — and it carries the scarring and features from his in-game appearance with impressive precision: ridged, wrinkled forehead, sunken eyes with the dark surrounding shadow that suggests someone who has been living in the Dark Side for several decades, and the red scars running along the left side of his face and around his mouth.
The soft-goods black cape sits under those shoulder pauldrons and around the neck, falling to the floor in a long sweep. The material used is similar to the fabric employed on Black Series Darth Vader figures, which means it hangs with appropriate weight and drape rather than splaying outward stiffly. The hood is tailored to fit over the head, and it can be posed up or down — hood up giving Malgus a cloaked, hooded Sith silhouette; hood down revealing the full face — with neither position looking awkward. This is harder to achieve in soft-goods at this scale than it sounds, and Hasbro’s tailoring team deserves specific credit for getting it right. The breathing mask — that essential piece of Malgus’ visual identity — is removable. This deserves emphasis. To access it you need to gently unplug the head first, then remove the mask, but the mechanism works as intended and survives repeated operation. Displaying Malgus without his mask reveals his full scarred face underneath, which is a character detail from specific story moments in SWTOR and is an enormously appreciated option for collectors who want display variety. Hasbro doesn’t always provide this kind of depth.
Articulation: What Works and Where the Engineering Limits Are
The Black Series articulation standard for large figures is solid, if not at the cutting edge of what Japanese manufacturers achieve. Malgus features:
- Ball-jointed head (with reasonable though not exceptional range given the neck and collar construction)
- Swivel-hinge shoulders
- Single-jointed elbows (the area where collector reviews note some limitation — the bend does not achieve the full 90+ degrees that double-jointed elbows would provide)
- Swivel wrists
- Torso pivot
- Hip joints (the hip swivel range has been noted in some reviews as slightly loose — an occasional quality control variable in Hasbro production)
- Swivel-hinge knees
- Swivel-hinge ankles
The elbow limitation is real: the elbows do not bend as deeply as collectors accustomed to Figuarts or Revoltech joints would prefer, which constrains some two-handed lightsaber poses. The hips, when tight, pose no problem; when slightly loose (a quality control variable), they can require positioning care to maintain standing stability. These are not dealbreakers — the figure can achieve the broad sweep of Malgus’ characteristic combat stances and dramatic display poses — but they are honest engineering limitations that distinguish this from the very best articulation available in the market.
Accessories: The Lightsaber and the Mask
Hasbro identifies this figure as coming with two accessories: the lightsaber hilt and the lightsaber blade. The removable breathing mask is technically part of the figure assembly rather than a separate accessory, though in practice it functions as one. The red lightsaber is a single piece with a separately attached blade — the blade can be detached from the hilt for display in the off-position, allowing Malgus to be posed with just the hilt ignited or with the full blade blazing. The hilt itself is substantial, scaled to Malgus’ large frame and featuring the characteristic large blade emitter shrouds of his in-game weapon. The paint application on the hilt has received some collector critique: reviews note it is a somewhat dull gray-and-black application that lacks the metallic sheen or weathering detail that would elevate it to match the rest of the figure’s quality. A metallic paint or subtle wash on the hilt would have been a welcome addition. The blade attachment point is firm enough for posing but light enough that the blade can be removed without stress. Notable absence: there is no peg on the hilt and no hole in the belt for saber attachment. Malgus cannot carry the saber on his belt between scenes. For a Sith Lord, this is a mild aesthetic frustration — the inability to “holster” the weapon means the saber is either in his hand or set aside on the shelf. The cape/hood as a posable soft-goods element functions effectively as a third accessory in practice, even if it ships attached to the figure.
The Paint Work
The paint application on the Black Series Darth Malgus is, on balance, a significant achievement — particularly for a Hasbro mass-market figure at this tier. The head wash is excellent: the shadows in the recessed facial features add genuine dimensionality. The silver belt detailing that wraps around the back is a sign of manufacturing care that didn’t have to be there. The chest armor modulation — the slight variation in the black surfaces — prevents the figure from reading as flat and lifeless. The facial scarring and eye work are strong in person, even if they read less sharply than macro photography would prefer. The comparison point that sometimes circulates — that the older, smaller Vintage Collection Malgus had sharper eye paint — is technically accurate in certain detailed respects, but comparing the two figures at actual display distance rather than in extreme close-up tells a much more favorable story for the Black Series version.
The packaging suits a Deluxe release because Malgus is a large figure, and the box format helps sell that premium feel. It also looks consistent with the Gaming Greats branding rather than feeling like a one-off release. The front design is clean and premium, and the side panel artwork gives it a strong display presence. For packaging alone, it’s a strong-looking box with good shelf appeal, but it trades away visibility of the figure for a cleaner modern presentation.
There is a specific kind of joy available to Star Wars fans whose entry point was the Expanded Universe — the novels, the video games, the comics — rather than the films. These fans have spent the better part of a decade watching their beloved lore get reclassified, marginalized, or politely ignored in favor of the Disney canon. They are not bitter (mostly). They understand the business logic. But they have never entirely stopped hoping that the things they love — Revan, Malak, Bastila Shan, the Mandalorian Wars, the Old Republic’s golden age of Sith villainy — will receive the recognition they deserve. Darth Malgus as a Deluxe Black Series figure is that recognition, made tangible. The fact that he sold out his preorders. The fact that Hasbro committed a full new sculpt with this level of engineering. The fact that the Gaming Greats line is expanding rather than contracting. These are the signals that SWTOR fans have been waiting for, and they add a layer of meaning to this figure that transcends its technical qualities.
Among Black Series Gaming Greats Deluxe figures, Darth Malgus sets a high bar. The pauldron engineering, the soft-goods cape quality, the removable mask, the head sculpt wash, and the overall visual impact at 7+ inches place him among the most impressive single figures in the line’s history. The comparison most commonly drawn is to Darth Revan — the other beloved SWTOR Legends character who received Gaming Greats treatment — and while Revan benefits from an inherently simpler costume that creates fewer engineering demands, Malgus arguably achieves more with more complexity to manage. His size alone ensures he doesn’t disappear in a group display. His design distinctiveness means he reads immediately even in a crowded collection. His limitations — the single-jointed elbows, the loose-hip risk, the modest lightsaber paint application, the absence of a belt attachment point — are real but minor against the overwhelming weight of what he does right. The soft-goods cape with posable hood works. The scarred head sculpt with its subtle face wash works. The enormous shoulder armor that still allows arm movement works. The 7-inch scale that makes him genuinely dominate a shelf works.
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