Ninjago

Temple of Resurrection

A haunting little temple with one of the best minifig rosters Ninjago ever packed into a midsize box.

Brick Rated Score

3.9/5

Set 70643 · 2018

Pieces765

Minifigs7

Year2018

Set number70643

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The verdict

This is the big centerpiece set from the Sons of Garmadon season, and the temple itself is genuinely lovely, all dark reds and blacks with an elegant oriental roofline.

What really sells it for me is the seven figures, because you get Princess Harumi, Hutchins, Mr. E, Chopper Maroon, resistance Cole and Lloyd, plus baby Wu tucked away as the mystery reveal. It is a display and play piece for someone already invested in the story, not a first Ninjago set, and the tight interior functions hold it back from greatness.

Best for: Ninjago fans who followed the Sons of Garmadon arc and want the villain roster

The full review

What it is

The Temple of Resurrection was the anchor set for Ninjago season eight, the Sons of Garmadon run, and honestly the finished model is what got me. It stands about ten inches tall in deep reds and blacks with a curved oriental roof, and it has that slightly menacing, haunted-shrine feeling the season was going for. This is where Lord Garmadon gets brought back, so the whole thing is built as a ritual chamber, and it looks the part on a shelf. At 765 pieces it is a solid midsize build rather than a big one, but it packs a lot of story into that footprint.

The catch

I will be straight with you about the caveats, because there are a few. The headline gimmick is a roof that flips from good to evil to reveal the resurrection chamber, and in practice it is more fiddly than thrilling. The interior play features, a spider prison and a couple of trapdoors, are cramped enough that wedging minifigures into them gets frustrating fast, and reviewers flagged the same thing at launch. The floorspace is tight overall, so if you are buying purely for a kid to swoosh figures around, the playability is only okay. And the price is the real sting now. It launched around 70 dollars, but it is long retired, and sealed copies climb well past two hundred on the aftermarket, which changes the whole value conversation.

Who it's for

So who actually gets the most out of this. If you followed the Sons of Garmadon story and love the characters, this is close to essential, because the figure lineup is the best reason to own it and several of them live nowhere else. If you want a striking, slightly gothic temple to display, it delivers that too. If you are new to Ninjago, or you mostly care about smooth engineering and generous open play, I would point you somewhere cheaper and less cramped first. This one rewards attachment to the story more than it rewards a cold spec-sheet read.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building it feels like assembling a proper little set piece rather than a repetitive slog. You work up through the temple in layers, the base and gangway first, then the walls with their revolving panels, and finally the transforming roof, so there is a nice sense of the structure revealing itself as you go. The functions are woven into the build rather than bolted on afterward, which makes the process more interesting than the modest part count suggests, even if a couple of those mechanisms end up tighter than you would like.

The standout pieces here are really about print and character rather than exotic new molds. The seven minifigures carry gorgeous printing, with Harumi in her white-haired Jade Princess robes and kabuki face paint, Hutchins, Mr. E, Chopper Maroon and the resistance versions of Cole and Lloyd, plus baby Wu as the quiet reveal. The three Oni masks, Hatred, Deception and Vengeance, are the collectible jewels, and the dark red and black temple panels give you a genuinely useful palette for custom builds. As a parts pack alone it is average value, but as a character pack it is one of the richer boxes of its year.

Fun facts

01Harumi, the Jade Princess in this set, is secretly The Quiet One, the leader of the Sons of Garmadon and the main villain of Ninjago season eight.
02The set's unnamed 'mysterious baby' is baby Wu, Master Wu reborn as an infant after the events of the previous season.
03The temple houses the three Oni Masks of Hatred, Deception and Vengeance, the season's central relics used to resurrect Lord Garmadon.
04Several figures, including resistance Cole, Princess Harumi in her royal robes, Hutchins and baby Wu, were exclusive to this set at release.