The new wave of LEGO The Hobbit sets are most likely the last wave of the LEGO The Hobbit line (and maybe even the end of the LEGO Lord of the Rings/LEGO The Hobbit theme). They are meant to coincide with the release of The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies film in mid-December, which is the last in The Hobbit movie series. YouTube member just2good posted some really nice video-reviews on three of the new sets, so I thought to share them here, to give you an idea what they look like and what to look forward to. ➡ #79015 LEGO THE HOBBIT WITCH-KING BATTLE: This is the smallest of the new sets, with 101 pieces and three minifigures; Galadriel, The Witch-King and Elrond. P ➡ #79016 LEGO THE HOBBIT ATTACK ON LAKE-TOWN: This set can be interconnected with the previously released #79013 LEGO The Hobbit Lake-Town Chase set. It includes 313 pieces and five minifigures; Bard, Tauriel, Bain and two Hunter Orcs. P ➡ #79017 LEGO THE HOBBIT THE BATTLE OF FIVE ARMIES: This is a fairly large set with 472 pieces and seven minifigures; T
horin, Dain, Azog, Legolas, Bard and two Orcs. P ➡ #79018 LEGO THE HOBBIT THE LONELY MOUNTAIN: This is the largest in the new wave of LEGO The Hobbit sets with 866 pieces, a giant Smaug, and five minifigures; Bilbo, Balin, Dwalin, Fili and Kili. Phere is no video-review for this set as of yet, but here is a picture: The new wave of LEGO The Hobbit sets should be available at all LEGO retailers and official LEGO stores shortly. In the meantime you can check out the current selection at the Online LEGO Shop. So what do you think? Are you looking forward to the new wave of LEGO The Hobbit sets? Are you planning to get any them? Which one is your favorite? And how do you like the minifigures? Feel free to share and discuss in the comment section below! 😉 For more LEGO Lord of the Rings news, reviews and discussions, check out the LEGO Lord of the Rings section, or select from recent posts below:Legolas' mother is never mentioned by Tolkien. It is certain that there is no Queen of the Elves of Mirkwood at the time of The Hobbit, so she must presumably be dead by then.
He is estimated to be several thousand years old at the time of the War of the Ring, and the events of The Hobbit took place less than a century before those of The Lord of the Rings, so his birth may be as far back as the Second Age. His mother, like his father Thranduil, must have been Sindar herself, but nothing is known for certain about her.EDIT: Strictly speaking, Legolas isn't in the book The Hobbit, though he is in the movie version, as I point out in Eric Bowersox's answer to Is Legolas in the real *The Hobbit* book like the movie (The Desolation of Smaug)?EDIT: Thanks to the third movie in the Hobbit trilogy, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, we do know one more thing about Legolas' mother: she died in Angmar. Presumably, she was killed by orcs. (Legolas mentions this to Tauriel as they're approaching the orc stronghold at Gundabad.) This may or may not be canonical; anyone who can find a citation for this in Tolkien's writings is invited to speak up in the comments.
We do not know anything about Legolas’s mother, in book-canon anyway. All we can say for certain is that she existed, but she doesn’t have a name or fate. She might or might not have been alive at the time of The Hobbit. Peter Jackson gave her a back story of having been killed in battle with Angmar, but this is purely his invention. It does not make sense in the book world. Tolkien never mentioned the Elves of Mirkwood when discussing the battles against Angmar. Angmar was finally defeated by an alliance of the Elves of Lindon, Rivendell, and Lorien along with the remaining Dunedain and troops from Gondor. Canonically, Angmar was hundreds of miles to the northwest of Thranduil’s realm, and Angmar’s great enemy was Arnor and its successor kingdoms.As has been pointed out, in the book-verse Legolas isn’t in The Hobbit, although it is reasonable to assume that he was at the Battle of Five Armies. When Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, he was writing a children’s book that was unconnected with the greater Legendarium.
(In fact, he had to revise the original version to make it fit with The Lord of the Rings.) The Legolas character probably had not been created at the time, and “The Elvenking” was vaguely identified with Thingol.Peter Jackson inflated the roles of Legolas and Thranduil. It would probably surprise fans of the movies who haven’t read any of the books, but Tolkien was not particularly interested in Thranduil, Legolas, or the Elves of Mirkwood. Thranduil is unnamed in The Hobbit—he’s only “The Elvenking.” In LotR, he’s only mentioned as Legolas’s father and once or twice elsewhere. He doesn’t appear as a character with dialogue. Legolas himself is a supporting character; the main story lines belong to Frodo and Sam, and to Aragorn. Legolas’s main role in LotR was to be the representative of the Elves while not being a distraction (as a powerful Elf such as Glorfindel would have been), and also to make friends with Gimli. As such, he was only given an incomplete genealogy—he’s the son of Thranduil, son of Oropher.
From start to finish, Tolkien’s focus in the overall Legendarium is on the fallen Noldor and especially on the Half-elven brothers Elrond and Elros, their ancestors, and their descendants. That is why their genealogies are so much more complete.Eric Bowersox is absolutely correct. I just want to add that Legolas does not have a mother in The Hobbit, because Legolas is not in The Hobbit. His addition in the movie was quite logical, since in hindsight he must have been around somewhere, but The Hobbit was published seventeen years before The Lord of the Rings. At the time The Hobbit was written, the Elvenking didn't even have a name, much less a son.I suggested yesterday that 79003 An Unexpected Gathering might be the best LEGO set of all time. I wasn’t kidding (it’s definitely my new favorite), but I don’t think all of the sets in the new Hobbit line are the stuff of legend. 79001 Escape from Mirkwood Spiders isn’t the worst set of all time, but I can’t really recommend it for anybody but completionists.
This set felt too much like many other “trees on bases” sets we’ve seen over the years. Worse, the spiders are basically scaled down versions of Shelob, and you spend about a third of your build time making two identical arachnids. Unlike the brilliant window in Bag End, I didn’t encounter any ingenious building techniques, and the play features are what you’d expect — pull a pin and the tree falls down. The minifigs are certainly the highlight of the set — an elf named Tauriel (not from Tolkien’s book), Legolas (who’s not in the original book), and the dwarves Fili & Kili. In a mostly black set, they bring about the only color, further emphasizing how much the spiders and trees feel like background for the four minifigs. Legolas has his longer bow, while Fili & Kili have the older-style LEGO Castle bows. LEGO must have a surplus of time-traveling daggers left over in their warehouse from the Prince of Persia sets, because Tauriel gets two of them. They sort of work as elven weapons, but they’re a bit jarring if you know their LEGO origin…
Edit: Fili & Kili have a hairpiece that might be the first long hair that allows the minifig to also wear a quiver for arrows underneath. I’d break my self-imposed rule and post a picture of my own, but I’ve already packed this set away due to some flooding in my basement, so here’s a good photo from our friend Huw over at Brickset (who liked this set a lot more than I did, according to his review). As you can see from the inventory pages, there’s a whole lot of black in this set. The two highlights are dark red leaves and printed tan mushrooms (2×2 radar dishes). Edit: I forgot to mention the two little cloth bags that the dwarves go in when they’re all wrapped up by spiders. I don’t build with capes, rubber bands, or ship’s sails, so I think I subconsciously dismissed them without a second thought. They’re new, and certainly add some play value to the completed set. But I still stand by my original assessment that this is an overpriced fig/battle pack.