Today’s guest article comes from Stephen Scott, a writer and LEGO fan in Brisbane, Australia. It is adapted from an article previously published on Medium.

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendars have been a Yuletide highlight every year since 2011, providing 24 gifts a year to excited kids and AFOLs alike. If you were to collect them all as of 2022, a complete collection would amount to 288 advent polybags of LEGO Star Wars goodness. But what are the odds of finding a female minifig in your advent calendar? (Spoiler alert: The odds might be just as likely to successfully navigate an asteroid field!)

What’s In The Box?

But before we take a look at the minifigures, let’s take a step back to see what the distribution of subject matters is for each polybag over time.

Star Wars advent builds typically fall into several primary categories, though the most prominent is vehicles. In fact, almost 40% of the daily gifts are vehicles, numbering well over 100 so far. Sometimes they’re misses or clunky, but when they hit, wow, I can't put into words how good they can be. It is almost fun seeing how new elements can improve micro versions of the Millennium Falcon, Slave 1, and X-Wings with four occurrences each. (Disclaimer: Star Wars vehicles are by far and away my favorite part of the calendar.)

Objects and weapons make a decent chunk of the buildable gifts, both claiming 10.7% of space in the calendar. Objects can be quite fun, from normal Moisture Evaporators to Christmas Tree Moisture Evaporators. Weapons are usually a Hoth Laser Cannon (because snow = Christmas, and Hoth, like Die Hard, has snow), but the category also includes Weapons Racks. The less said about these atrocities the better.

Locations make up a mere 2.9% or so—sometimes they’re a hit (like 2020’s Fortress Vader with its Micro TIE Fighter) and sometimes they’re best added to your brick inventory (yes, 2015’s Ewok Village, I’m looking at you). Next, I classify creatures and droids that are brick-built in their own category outside of the realm of minifigures. This includes Mynocks, Tauntauns, and GNK Droids. They also only make up 1.6% and 3.9% of the collection respectively. All of these brick-built gifts let the designers showcase their creativity of building small scale.

Merry Minifigures

But we are here to talk about minifigures today, not micro builds. Minifigs make up a significant slice of LEGO collectibles, and Star Wars is a major contributor to this market. Brickset lists over 1,300 Star Wars minifigs in total across the entire theme, so you can imagine how popular they are when included in an advent calendar – especially when they’ve been Christmasfied with a festive sweater or Santa outfit.

And LEGO doesn’t disappoint with almost a third of daily gifts in the advent calendars being minifigs—that’s a total of 97 minifigures to add to your collection! But what are the odds of them being female? Before I answer, consider that from the 12 advents thus far there have been 8 Battle Droids (Roger Roger), 5 GNK/Gonk Droids, 3 Chewbaccas, 3 Darth Vaders, 2 TIE Fighter Pilots, 2 Porgs, and a partridge in a pear tree—I mean General Rieekan. (Remember the guy who ordered the evacuation of Hoth? Of course you do! He was on screen for at least a minute.)

Obviously the gender balance will be weighted heavily away from females as there have been so few in the original movies, but with the sequel trilogy and spin-off television shows, there has been growth in strong female characters in the Star Wars universe. Surely this would see them having a larger stake in one of LEGO’s most popular Christmas gifts? Sadly not.

Where’s Leia?

I’ll give it to you plain and simple. Of the 97 minifigs released across all 12 LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendars, only three have been named females: Rose Tico, Rey and Sabine Wren.

True, there were only two women with names in the Star Wars universe until Mon Mothma appeared in Return of the Jedi, but think of everyone else who is missing from the LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendars: The leader of the resistance, Leia Organa (or a kid version); Queen of Naboo Padmé Amidala and her many outfits; Rebellion founder Mon Mothma; Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano; Death Star saboteur Jyn Erso; shiny bucket head Captain Phasma; traveling collector Maz Kanata; bounty hunter Fennec Shand; Aunt Beru in flesh or skeletal form… I could go on and on.

Surely if there have been five Luke Skywalkers over the years in the advents, there would have to be at least one Leia or Padmé. Thankfully, Star Wars LEGO sets overall have had a good amount of female representation, with Leia herself appearing in 26 different variants since the first licensed set was released in 1999. But surely the day has come that Leia Organa can finally take her place in the pantheon of Christmas trinkets alongside another iteration of a Hoth Ion Cannon or Battle Droid?

With most years’ calendars based on a particular theme, there is usually a rationale for the choice of the included minifigures. In 2020, Rey matched up to that year’s animated Christmas special, Rose in 2018 was part of the interconnected universe with nods to all the trilogies (and even the Freemaker Adventures TV show), and Sabine’s inclusion in 2017’s advent set was part of the Rebels TV show theme for that year. Perhaps in years to come, the calendar will be themed after shows like The Bad Batch and Ahsoka to help increase the odds of more female minifigures appearing in LEGO Star Wars advent calendars.

Making Room For Females in The Calendar

Following the normal flow of what we are all accustomed to for future Star Wars advent calendars, how could LEGO fit in more females? Switching just one of the minifigs to a female would not detract from the balance. Even using a female head on a stormtrooper would be a symbolic start. I’m sure both girls and boys would be thrilled to get a few different faces, plus they get covered up by helmets anyway.

It’s been done successfully already—just look at 2017’s set which not only included a female figure, but also managed to feature four nameless villains: an Imperial Officer, an Imperial Stormtrooper, a First Order Snowtrooper, and an Imperial Ground Crew.

[EDIT: It appears that LEGO did just this in 2022’s Star Wars Advent calendar! We missed the subtle smile and lashes of the snowtrooper. It’s great to have a bit more gender diversity, though we hope to have more well-known characters as minifigures included in the future.]

Looking at the previous minifigs included in calendars that weren’t major characters, there is an obvious leaning towards generic additions (that would cost LEGO far less than running off a new mold of a named character) such as Clone Troopers (4), GNK droids (5), Rebel/Resistance Troops (8), Battle Droids (10), and Imperial/First Order Troops (22). Do we really need more Battle Droids?

Other swaps to allow female minifig inclusion would be a harder choice to make and would likely lead to substituting other side characters that can be some of the more interesting parts of the advent calendars.

The painfully obvious and glaring item that could make way for more female inclusion without losing much is sacrificing the weapon rack: a much-bemoaned inclusion that seems to be a way to pass off a lackluster collection of small plates as a buildable gift, perhaps for budgetary concerns or maybe designers just run out of time. There have been 14 weapon racks across the 12 years, meaning you are four times more likely to discover a weapons rack behind an advent doorway than a female minifigure.

At this point, including any female minifigure from another concurrent Star Wars set and simply slapping a Santa hat on them would be measurable progress—and they’ve done it before with a few droids.

These ARE The Odds You’re Looking For

So what are the odds of finding a female minifig in your LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar? To put it in perspective, imagine you have a brand new calendar in your hands (any of the 12 that exist) and you haven’t peeked at the outer box or online photos. You hold your breath and open a random door… these are your chances:

Finding any minifigure: 1 in 3
Finding a weapons rack: 1 in 20
Finding a named female minifigure: 1 in 96

LEGO, you need to do better than that.

Which LEGO Star Wars minifigure is the best that’s ever appeared in an advent calendar? Let us know in the comments below.

Do you want to help BrickNerd continue publishing articles like this one? Become a top patron like Charlie Stephens, Marc & Liz Puleo, Paige Mueller, Rob Klingberg from Brickstuff, John & Joshua Hanlon from Beyond the Brick, Megan Lum, Andy Price, John A. and Lukas Kurth from StoneWars to show your support, get early access, exclusive swag and more.