After some Marvel Monday meanderings, I’m finally down to opening the last figure in the House of X inspired Legends wave, and I saved the figure I since I was most excited for: Omega Sentinel! So, let’s check out Karima Shapandar…

I caught myself almost referring to Karima as a recent character, but holy shit, it’s been 21 years since she was introduced in the pages of X-Men Unlimited. God damn, I’m so old! One of the things that always fascinates and terrifies me is the blending of body horror and cybernetics, so it should be no surprise that I find her to be a compelling character, with lots of opportunity to explore the lines that divide human and machine.

And it doesn’t hurt that she just looks do damn cool! The towering robotic hunters have given way to compact elegance in Karima’s poetic female form! Omega Sentinel sports a form-fitting white and red suit with black trim, which gives a telling nod to the colors used to brand this wave’s packaging. Given the arms, I expected to get some fresh and original sculpting on this figure, but I was surprised to see that the entire figure appears to be new, which makes up for the fact that a number of releases in this assortment were done on the cheap with paint and recycled parts. In this case, every last detail in the paint on the figure is also reflected in the sculpt. That combined with the coloring makes this figure really pop!

While most of the body is all woman, Omega Sentinel’s technological side mostly manifests in her shoulder, arms, and neck, as well as the two plugs that appear down her front. I like the dark gray plastic, Hasbro used for the arms, you get some more black trim around the shoulder pieces, and some red paint hits on the shoulder nodules.

Omega Sentinel includes two portraits, but the one that comes on the figure is the synthetic head that reflects her appearance in the House of X. Hasbro did a beautiful job with this one, using more of that snappy red paint for the majority of the head. She has white panels, which are also part of the sculpt, and her eyes and eyebrows are painted with some crisp applications. It’s a great likeness to the character’s appearance in the comic panels.

The alternate and more human head is an absolutely amazing sculpt, and from a design standpoint I love it. She has a gray mask partially covering her face, but leaving the mouth and chin exposed, while a mane of wild hair splays out in all directions. Unfortunately, as great as it looks, this portrait is also a bafflingly huge missed opportunity to give us something comic accurate for the character. I don’t know why Hasbro chose to go with this rather specific look, nor can I comprehend the choice of skin and hair coloring, but it’s a shame they didn’t go with something more… correct? I’ve poked around a bit to see if I could come up with any answers as to what happened here, but I had no luck.

For the most part, the articulation here is pretty normal stuff. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs, double-hinges in the knees, and hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. There’s a ball joint under the chest, which is standard for the female Legends, but this was an example where I really missed having a waist swivel. Maybe it was because I had a hard time putting her down and just kept playing with her. The neck is ball jointed and hinged, and offers a nice range of motion for either head. The big change here comes in the arms, and that’s because you can swap out Omega Sentinel’s fore arms for weapons. The shoulders and wrists have the usual rotating hinges, but the elbows are hinged pins, so you can pull the arms out at the elbows and replace them.

I don’t know what either of these weapons are supposed to be, but let’s just go with some kind of focused energy beam emitters. One has some paint apps to make it look like it has glowing bits, while the other is just a giant maw. You can use either weapon for either arm, or just double her up for extra firepower! It’s a great gimmick and it really adds to the fun factor of this figure!

Coming into this wave, I was excited to get Omega Sentinel and now that I have her in hand, I’m very pleased with how she turned out. Yes, I’d still say that Hasbro needs to serve up an apology head at some point down the road. Hell, I wouldn’t mind a re-release, because there’s nothing wrong with having extra Sentinels. It’s a shame, because they really did do a nice sculpt for that portrait, I just don’t know what they were going for when they colored it. It doesn’t really detract from the base figure, and I still love this one a lot. Next week, I’ll put this wave to bed with a look at the Tri-Sentinel!