Lego Masters Season 7 review: building nicely

The most obvious thing Lego Masters and that other titan of reality television Masterchef have in common isn’t the word ‘Master’.

It’s not the fact that both shows are currently bringing back old champs and runners-up for another swing at the title. It’s not even that both shows are built around people racing against the clock to construct some outlandish and visually stunning contraption that also has to achieve a specific goal. Well, maybe a little.

What unites both shows is an approach that de-escalates the competition side of what is basically, well, a competition. Everyone (mostly) gets along; everyone is just there for the thrill of the game.

Watch the Lego Masters Season 7 trailer.

There’s no bitchiness, no sly digs, no nasty judges getting laughs by being cruel. They’re soothing, lightweight viewing where likeable experts get to geek out doing what they love while keeping one eye on the clock. And even after multiple seasons, Australians can’t get enough.

Season 7 of Lego Masters – Lego Masters Grand Masters of the Galaxy to give it its’ full title – features ten teams of two in the Lego Masters studio. Four are from Australia, with the remaining six brought in from around the world (Canada, China, Finland, Sweden, USA and New Zealand to be precise).

The standouts here early on are David & G, the two WA mining types making a repeat appearance, and Oskari & Aura from Finland, who with their exceedingly dry comments seem like stereotypical comedy Finns – but you know, in a good way.

Lego Masters: challenge

Some comedy mucking around aside, each episode is built around a challenge. Build a model plane that can fly, create fake items in a restaurant that can fool real people, tackle a Cluedo-style mystery: there’s a lot going on this season as the teams are slowly whittled down until the final three get to compete for a trophy and $100,000.

The first episode was built around the task of moving a ping pong ball from one side of a table to another, which rapidly became more difficult than it seemed.

For one thing, the ball would arrive via a chute on one side of the table and was required to leave at the same height, so the teams had to figure out a way to move the ball upwards at some point (conveyer belts were very popular).

Keeping the ball on the table for longer (AKA ‘dwell time’) was a good thing, so just letting it roll from one side to the other wasn’t great. And then contestants had to come up with a theme for their build, which is where the creativity comes in.

Some teams had to junk their original idea when it wasn’t practical and scurry to put together a stop-gap solution. Others had concepts that erred on the side of caution.

Big swings were what usually paid off: the team that had a water theme complete with coy fish pooping out the ball always looked like front-runners – just so long as the fish didn’t get constipated.

Reality shows like this one, where successfully completing a task and not bitching about everyone else is the goal, always struggle a little on the personality side of things.

Everyone has to be nice, which means there’s a pretty limited range of personality types on display: passionate nerds, people you wouldn’t suspect are passionate nerds, and passionate nerds from other cultures is pretty much it.

Lego Masters turns this into a strength by playing up the self-aware and daggy vibe. Host Hamish Blake (in a Freddy Kruger jumper in episode one) gets across just the right level of self-depreciation; the introduction of the coveted ‘immunity brick’ turned out to be a joke about dodgy special effects.

The stakes aren’t exactly undercut, but it’s always clear we’re watching a show where people play with toys. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the upcoming episode (sponsored by Woolworths) where the contestants have to create stories around a minifig superhero team called ‘The Fresh Food People’.

That’s not to say the results aren’t impressive. There was plenty of imagination on display, with themes ranging from a mining site (no prizes for guessing who built that) to a kung fu dojo to a collection of nut-crazed squirrels.

And the big test of everyone’s constructions – the aim is to have the ball run through all ten structures without stopping – turned out to be surprisingly tense.

The format might be familiar and the product placement blatant, but the creations are unique. Lego Masters has to play up the creative process (there wouldn’t be a show otherwise) but the end results make the journey worthwhile.

It’s the contestant’s constructions and contraptions that steal the show – and then they’re turned back into bricks and it all happens again next week.

Lego Masters Grand Masters of the Galaxy Season 7 premiered on 1 June 2025 with new episodes weekly on Nine on Sundays at 7pm.

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