Hogwarts Castle: The Main Tower! Leaked!

[gingerwitch.livejournal.com]

And we now have photos of the crown jewel of the 2025 summer wave for the lego Harry Potter theme: 76454 Hogwarts Castle: The Main Tower!



lego Harry Potter Set: 76454 - Hogwarts Castle: The Main Tower
• 2135 pieces
• 12 minifigs, Fluffy, Fawkes, Hedwig, spider
• age 10+
• US $259.99 | DE/FR €249.99 | UK £TBA
• JUNE 1ST 2025 release date
and it looks like it might include 6 of the collectible portraits



The Gryffindor Boys' Dorm, the Gryffindor Common Room (with two squashy chairs and a fireplace), the Fat Lady, Fluffy, the Harp, the trapdoor, presumably the Devil's Snare room, the Flying Keys Room, the Chess Challenge, three staircases, one landing seems potentially to now double as a very light version of the trophy room, misc portraits, the Griffin that bars the way to Dumbledore's office, the Mirror of Erised, and the Philosopher's Stone.



The cast of minifigs included:

Neville, Dean Thomas, Marcus Flint (Slytherin Quidditch Uniform), Nearly Headless Nick
Percy Weasley, Ernie Macmillan (Hufflepuff), spider, Lisa Turpin (Ravenclaw), Fawkes, Professor Dumbledore
Professor Kettleburn, Fluffy (eyes wide open), Harry, Ron, Hedwig, Hermione

Some detail photos. Close up of Dumbledore's Office (Fawkes, Pensieve, Sorting Hat, and at least one new portrait):





Close up of the Mirror of Erised.

Credit: thanks to fateful for the pix!

It's nicely done. Caveat: in the background of the box art, we can see rough placeholders for what might be future sets. The problem here is it gives us an idea of scale, and it looks like this thing is going to 1) be huge, and thus 2) presumably expensive. Honestly, I'm getting nervous. Then again, with this set and the Great Hall, the most iconic part of the castle is covered.

As usual, Slytherin and Snape get no love. The Philosopher's Stone was guarded by seven enchantments and creatures, provided by the Professors (and Groundskeeper) at Hogwarts, representing the five core courses (and four Houses) Herbology (H), Charms (R), Transfiguration (G), DADA, and Potions (S), the Headmaster, and one elective (Care of Magical Creatures). Rubeus Hagrid's massive three-headed dog Fluffy, provided, one might assume, by Professor Kettleburn and explaining his presence: present; Professor Sprout's web of Devil's Snare: present (if not overly more developed than it was in the previous CoS version); Winged Keys, charmed by Professor Flitwick: present; a life-size board of Wizard's Chess, transfigured and animated by Professor McGonagall: present; Professor Quirrell's Mountain Troll is included in the previous Great Hall set; the Mirror of Erised, enchanted to hold the Stone by Headmaster Dumbledore: present, even if the chamber containing it isn't. Which means the only thing missing is Professor Snape's potion riddle. My disappointment knows no bounds. Okay, fine, less flamboyantly and dramatically, my disappointment exists, but it would have been so easy to stick a couple of potions bottles in the attic that holds the spider, now wouldn't it?

Comments

[erexen.livejournal.com]

[gingerwitch.livejournal.com]

😃🥰

[erexen.livejournal.com]

Wow, yeah, I know I'm not myself... I Totally missed the Fluffy faces in the Main Tower pix... doh!

[gingerwitch.livejournal.com]

Tbf, there was a lot of other stuff to focus on.

[erexen.livejournal.com]

I noticed the lack in the Slytherin dept., What's the point of another Flint? Would it Kill them to include Snape's brilliant potions challenge? I Do like the moving stairs, especially with the griffin.

[gingerwitch.livejournal.com]

I'm a little torn on the inclusion of Flint. On the one hand, there're no Slytherin school robes in this set, but on the other, we can come by those inexpensively in the Draco Forbidden Forest Polybag, and this offers us something by way of a counterpart to Oliver Wood Quidditch kit minifig in the Flying Lesson set. ("Sort of", because he wasn't wearing Gryffindor robes.) Or the inevitable Quidditch pitch with an over abundance of Gryffindors. I think they should include students from all four Houses in House robes, cardigans (preferably male and female versions), Quidditch robes, and team jumpers stretched over a bunch of sets so we can build a more diverse looking student body. And yeah, that's 20 torsos right there, but they can recycle a lot, so it's mostly just an issue with printing and inventory and not so much on the design front. Plus they have most of those already, they just need to start doling them out less stingily. In a perfect world, we'd see Accessory Packs that would allow us to do that, preferably in a Build Your Own Sigfig approach, but then I like to dream. 😆 )

As far as named characters go, they're unfortunately limited by what's covered in canon, and the films didn't bother to flesh out the Slytherins all that much (not that the books are that much better, but still). Honestly I would have loved if they included Montague, the guy who ended up in the Infirmary forever and a day and then unable to continue his schooling thanks to the twins summarily stuffing him in the defective Vanishing Cabinet. (How stuff like this gets swept under the rug... She included it for a reason, very clearly illustrating the casual violence and harm our intrepid heroes were not merely subjected to in their world of horrors, but also inflicting, and the sociopathic fan universe just... giggled? I guess? Good to know.) But that was fifth year, and he isn't mentioned on the team until third year PoA, iirc, so maybe not as appropriate a choice for a PS / SS set.

Making a pullout thing for Snape's Potions Puzzle could have been so minimal... The final challenge is represented by the mirror and a small number of torches on floor. That's it. And the Devil's Snare once again seems very minimalistic. What harm would it have done to add something representing the puzzle?

I think next year we're likely to see CoS, which means a Slytherin Common room — thus far not done once since the 2018 reboot — isn't unlikely as (not counting the Banners) we've seen Gryffindor three times now (for a total of four rooms), Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw. Eight years, everyone else covered, and still no love for the Snakes. We've had the Potions classroom in the 2024+ series, but Snape's Office might appear, and they could stuff the task in there. It's so odd that the 2018 Whomping Willow 75953 set had both the office and the Potions classroom (and the Gryffindor dorm, for that matter) and yet it all seems less well represented in this series. That remains a very solid set.

I'm trying to think what they might include above ground with a CoS set, and I think Myrtle's Bathroom and secret entrance to the CoS, plus Lockhart's DADA class with more pixies makes sense, the snag there being Snape and Lockhart were included in the 2025 Duelling set (76441 Dueling Club), but then Lockhart at least would be in a different outfit (although they did that in the 2021 CoS set (76389 Chamber of Secrets), so maybe we'll see a hybrid set with CoS/PoA and finally get a Lupin DADA class instead). I hope the potential inclusion of Myrtle doesn't mean we won't finally see the Bloody Baron as far as the ghost roster goes. 😕 I very much want to have both BB and Peeves while we're at things. While the Main Tower is definitely more iconic, I can't say any of the locations included this round are really all that exciting, particularly as all of the tasks are just too measly (not even wings for the WINGED key room), but then that's been a complaint for the "throwaway" / place filler rooms as a whole (see also Transfiguration), and as for the minifigs / creatures, it's basically just Fluffy, Kettleburn, and Neville in his pyjamas.

[gingerwitch.livejournal.com]

Here! In 2001, in set 4704 the Chamber of the Winged Keys (https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=4704-1#T=S&O=%7B). They included these feathers with clips (https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=471&name=Minifigure,%20Plume%20Feathers%20with%20Clip&category=%5BMinifigure,%20Headgear%20Accessory%5D#T=C&C=1) to allow the keys to appear to have wings. I appreciate it hasn't been used since then, and only appeared in five sets, but c'mon. It was a doable solution. Either find the mould, or it's time to revisit the piece design.