Jedi Temple Guard Black Series Action Figure Review

This review of the Black Series Jedi Temple Guard action figure features the accuracies and inaccuracies of the figure, and mention points of articulation and lore.

Who is the Jedi Temple Guard

The Jedi Temple Guard is a type of Jedi that is often overlooked and underrepresented in Star Wars. They first appeared on February 9, 2013 in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars series.

This episode was “Sabotage” (S5 E17), where there was an explosion at the Jedi Temple. The Temple Guards first appeared alongside Jedi Battlemaster Cin Drallig while these was a group of protesters outside the temple.

Though their most memorable moment was from S5 E20 “The Wrong Jedi” where they shout “Cease hostility!” as Anakin confronts Bariss Offee within the Jedi Temple.

While they had a figure made in 2015, it wasn’t the best quality. Twelve years later, the Temple Guards finally got a proper Black Series figure! These were released alongside The Ronin and Bariss Offee Black Series Figures.

First Impressions and Unboxing Experience

At a glance, the black and yellow create for a striking box that easily catches your attention. Right as you see it, you can already admire the quality of this figure. If you have a keen eye, you can also see the flaws as well, but that’s for later in this review.

The side and the back of the box display some amazing art of a Jedi Temple Guard. It’s a shame I cannot find the artist online as I’d like to email them for their excellent work.

The back of the box contains the following text in English, French, German, and Portugese:

Within the interior of the box, there’s a backdrop of the Jedi Temple’s entrance with the statues that line the walkway.

It’s not hard at all to unbox this figure. The top has two pieces of tape that you can easily slice through, From there, you remove the tape holding down the pike and pop out the Temple Guard!

The Jedi Temple Guard Pike comes with two blades about the same length as the hilt. The blades are detachable so you could pose them with only a single blade activated if you so desired.

Material Quality

One of the first details you’re likely to notice is the brilliant gold on the mask, tabards, and pauldrons of the Temple Guard. The neck features the long neck of the tunic and a neck sleeve beneath that. This would help the Temple Guard retain anonymity.

The hood, tabards, and skirt are made of a thick yet slightly pliable plastic. This is particularly useful on the skit as it allows the legs to be posed more easily.

One nice detail that was retained from the concept art and Clone Wars footage is the herringbone pattern on the skirt. This is a good attention to detail as it can easily be overlooked.

The keys hanging on the belt feel rather delicate and given their flexibility, you should refrain from touching them too much as it feels they could break off with too much force.

Underneath the skirt is the cassock which is made if a finely knit cloth with an acrylic light beige trim. The fabric is very thin which makes it easier to position the legs, but doesn’t give the figure the heavy fabric look seen in the animated series.

One part of the Temple Guard that was often hard to see in the animated series was their boots. This figure gives us a better look at them and we can see that there are straps and buckles that would be for securing the boots in place.

The bottom of the boots have a hexagon hole on the heels which would allow the figure to be placed onto a hexagon peg stand. Unfortunately, the figure doesn’t come with one and this feels like a loss as it can be tricky to keep it stationary on a flat surface.

The blades of the pike lack any bubbles, and the hilt features an acrylic brass appearance. The center portion of the hilt is painted a metallic silver color with a matte brown.

Articulation

The head can barely be moved up and down, but it can be more easily rotated side to side. This limitation stems from the stiff hood preventing too much movement. I wouldn’t recommend trying to take off the hood as this can affect the other layers.

The torso can be rotated 360 degrees at the waist. The upper arms can swivel a bit but their range of movement is limited by the pauldrons. You can get decent positions at the elbows and wrist

The upper legs can be rotated left and right a tiny amount, and can be pushed back and forth. Since the skirt is actually two pieces, the split in the middle behind the Temple Guard allows you to position the legs back.

The legs below the knee can be rotated left and right freely while the knee can only be bent back. The feet can only be rotated back and forth. While you can get some swivel at the ankle, the positions it makes that way are unnatural.

Overall, the figure’s lower half has more flexibility than the upper half. This can make it tricky to get more dynamic poses but it’s possible.

Flaws

The pike is lacking a lot of details when you compare it to the concept art. For starters, it’s lacking a lot of color. The activation switch should be red, the windows cyan, the indented rectangles a dark gray/black, and it lacks the light yellow symbol on the top shroud.

There should also be a bare metal trim at the edge of the lower shroud of the pike. The wheel clip is replaced by a peg that allows the Temple Guard to hold the pike on the left side of their waist.

Another flaw is that the brown portion in the middle doesn’t go up on one side of the hilt where it expands into the thick end. It was kept limited to a portion of the center hilt.

It’s a real shame that one of the Temple Guard’s defining features wasn’t worked on all that much. This is a simple fix if you’re willing to paint the pike to make it more accurate.

The most glaring flaw of the figure itself is one of the symbols of the tabard isn’t painted gold. This is where the tabards go into the belt. This is a rather big flaw that should be easily preventable.

Another slightly disappointing feature is the herringbone pattern on the skirt. In the Clone Wars, these were thicker and had cutoffs in the pattern to give it a more ornate look. This figure’s skirt only features tightly packed zig-zags to imitate the herringbone pattern.

The last flaw I can point out is that the pants are the wrong color, they’re far darker than the Clone Wars version. These should be a tad brighter with more of a red hue. Though this can be overlooked as the figure’s pants color still meshes well with the outfit.

Cost

You can purchase this figure for $24.99 USD MRSP, which is fairly standard for Black Series figures. It’s a solid price but a true fan would want at least two as the Temple Guards appear in pairs. Doing this means you’ll be spending $50 for the two figures.

This figure tends to sell out rather quickly, likely due to scalpers trying to resell them at a higher price. If you love anything Jedi, you should get one sooner rather than later otherwise you might be paying double or triple the price down the line.

Conclusion

Overall I’m happy with the Black Series take on the Jedi Temple Guard. It needs some more love in some areas but I’m happy that Temple Guards are getting more attention.

You’ll be hard pressed to find someone who loves Jedi Temple Guards more than I do, I would argue that I’m the biggest Jedi Temple Guard fan in the entire fanbase. No one else has made a screen accurate Jedi Temple Guard Pike like the one seen below.

Though the story of that pike will be saved for another time here on VULKK, ideally when I’m less occupied with other tasks.

Exploring the Lore

If you would like to learn more about Jedi Temple Guards, I recommend that you check out my Jedi Temple Guard Lore Series on YouTube! I go more in-depth on Jedi Temple Guard lore, equipment, and theories on their role and combat techniques.

You would think that we’d see more Temple Guards in action during Operation Knightfall, defending the Jedi Temple during Order 66.

Despite getting Order 66 flashbacks from The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi series, we never see any Temple Guards in them.

In terms of seeing combat, you had Temple Guards training Kanan Jarrus through the Force. The only other example is in Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes where they were enemy NPCs and later turned into a character you can collect.

In Galaxy of Heroes, they act as tanks that have high defense and critical avoidance while providing minor healing and area attacks through Force Throwing their pikes. To date, this is the most in-depth Jedi Temple Guard combat we’ve gotten from Star Wars.

Outside of visual representations of their combat, there’s untapped story potential. A couple books barely tap into this but it’s worth mentioning. These books are Force Collector (Amazon affiliate link) and Rescue of Yoda.

In the book Force Collector, the protagonist Karr Nuq Sin has the Force power psychometry. He picks up a Jedi Temple Guard mask at a store and sees its past. The Temple Guard that wielded it was the first one to fall to Anakin Skywalker as he and the 501st Legion siege the Jedi Temple.

In Rescue of Yoda, the plot revolves around a Temple Guard that attacks and kidnaps Yoda, leaving Obi-Wan and Anakin to rescue him.

One interesting detail of this book is how it mentions that Anakin doesn’t like the Temple Guards. The masks remind him of the Tusken Raiders from Tatooine, and this hate would likely increase immensely when the Tusken Raiders would kill his mother four years later.

It’s very likely that if Anakin was fighting Temple Guards in the temple, he was being especially vicious. As he saw them, he was likely having flashbacks of his mother’s death and the ensuing massacre at the Tusken camp.

Maybe the costumes are too expensive to produce? The lightsaber too hard to manufacture as a prop? I hope one day we’ll get Jedi Temple Guards in their full live-action glory.

Until then, Temple Guard fans like myself will have to settle for small cameos in books, comics, or easter eggs such as the Temple Guard mask in Luthen’s shop as seen in Andor.

With that said, this concludes this article. Which character would you like to see made for the Black Series next? I would like to see Cin Drallig myself as he’d compliment the Jedi Temple Guards.