REVIEW: Hogwarts Hospital Wing

This year, we are getting a “mini-wave” of LEGO Harry Potter already in March (and assumingly more mid-year). Four sets are due to be released 1 March, and LEGO has provided me with the sets for early review. This review covers the Hospital Wing set, which combines with last year’s modular Hogwarts sets. This is what you get…

Set 76398 – Hogwarts Hospital Wing

Price: US$49.99, £44.99, €49.99, CA$64.99, AU$79.99, NZ$89.99, DKK 449

The hospital wing featured regularly in both the books and movies (Hogwarts must be a dangerous place) and it is therefore surprising that we didn’t see it represented in a Harry Potter set till the 2019 Hogwarts Clock Tower set, which was part of a modular series of Hogwarts sets that were released 2018-2020.

In 2021, with the release of the 20th anniversary of LEGO Harry Potter sets, a new series of Hogwarts sets was started. You can connect them to the old series, but the style (sometimes referred to as doll-house style) is somewhat different.

This 2022 set follows the 2021 style and takes us to the third movie – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – and more specifically represents the scenes towards the end, centred on the hospital wing, the clock tower and Hermione’s time turner.

With two levels and 510 pieces, I would characterise it as a medium sized set – though a smaller one in that range.

Eager to see how it would look like once built, I sat down last weekend with the set, my morning coffee and camera, and started building. Here are my observations…

Box and content

The front of the box follows the well known template, with logos at the top and a photo of the model seen from the front in the centre, with a painted backdrop to show the surroundings. It was worked well so far, so why change it. At the bottom left is as usual a banner listing the included minifigures.

The back of the box shows the interior of the model with small insert photos illustrating detail and play features; in this case with Madam Pomfrey about to administer Skele-Gro medicine to Harry, and that the arms on the clock can turn. Finally, you can see that the set include two collectable wizard card tiles, which surprised me when I first found out, as I thought it was part of the Anniversary sets last year along with the Golden Minifigures. I’m sure there are still people collecting, so it is good to seem them appear in this wave of sets too.

Inside the box you find the instructions, a small sticker sheet and four numbered bags with LEGO parts.

Now I was ready to see what was in the bags.

Minifigures

As previously mentioned, we got a hospital wing with the 2019 Clocktower set. As this focused on the Yule ball, there was no Madam Pomfrey, and in this set it is therefore the first time ever she is represented as a minifigure. And LEGO has done an amazing job, in particular with the dual moulded hair and headdress. The three other figures included in the set are – not surprisingly – Harry, Ron and Hermione.

All figures have printed torsos on the front, while Madam Pomfrey also got printed dress.

The same is the case on their back. Also note that all comes with dual printed heads, allowing you to change between to facial expressions.

Ron comes with a white leg representing a plaster cast. You can swap the leg pieces around, if you want another to undergo treatment instead of Ron. A cast for an arm is also included. This is attached to the hand as shown above. Maybe Hermione punched Draco so hard she hurt herself? Finally, note the 1×1 round tile with a print of Hermione’s time turner.

The clothes Harry, Hermione and Ron are wearing does look familiar. It is a good representation of what they were wearing in the movie, and dirty/worn versions of the figures included in the Hagrid’s Hut set from 2019.

And before I start with describing the rest of the build, here is a brief clip from the movie, which both shows how accurate the torso prints are, Ron’s leg in cast, how the hospital wind looked and the clock tower just down the corridor.

The build

The figures were great, but what about the building itself? Eagerly, I got myself a second coffee and continued building.

Bag 1 takes you about half way through the hospital floor. Here is Ron expecting the early stages of the build.

I quite liked the beds

The exposed studs at the foot end is to attach the figures so they don’t slide off.

There’s the build after finishing bag 1.

Bag two allows you to complete the hospital floor. Here is what it looked like both from the inside and the outside view.

Note the hinges though. This is the first set in this modular series that allow you to put different sections of Hogwarts on an angle to each other. It does work very well. I hope we will get more such modules later in the year to give more flexibility displaying the Hogwarts castle, which is getting quite big if you have all the sets.

In contrast to the first two bags, the third one really caught my eye, as it had many colourful and interesting either new or rare pieces. Here are some of them.

The owl is new in that colour, and the chest has a new top part. My favourite is probably the brick with the printed Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, though the parts to build the skele-gro bottle and the printed time turner on the small round tile were nice too. The two wizard tiles included in the set are in this bag too.

In general, the bag allows you to build many small models for the hospital. In particular I like the Skele-Gro bottle on the bedside table.

For comparison, here are a couple of photos of the actual movie props and Pomfrey administering Skele-gro treatment to Harry after his mishap with his arm.

The patients would feel a lot better now, with all the treats they can get, and that bottle of Skele-Gro will mend Ron’s leg a lot better than Lockhart’s perfect charm to fix Harry’s broken arm.

The third bag also has the pieces for the roofs for the two side sections though.

Here is what the set looks like from the outside, once the roofs were added.

Finally, bag four allows you to build the clock tower itself. As illusted on the box, a play feature is twisting the top of the tower, which will make the clock turn around. A number of gears are involved in that process.

Here is what the completed model looks like from the front.

I think this is one of the best sets in the series when it comes to exterior look.

Here is what the completed set looks like from the back.

Conclusion

Overall, the completed build was slightly smaller than I had imagined, but I really love the detail.

In the movie, the clock tower was a rather dominating feature of the castle, and the scale of the set fails to give that impression. But if you stack it on other sets, you may be able to achieve that feel and that is where the modular nature of these sets has its strength.

The interior of the hospital wing is really well made, with lots of nicely designed mini-models, and the clock tower is easily recognisable. The minifigures are really good, and am in particular so pleased that we finally got Madam Pomfrey. I do also like the updated set of Harry, Ron and Hermione as they looked towards the end of the day when they were to save both Sirius and Buckbeak.

As such, the set ties really well in the the Hagrid’s Hut set we got in 2019, and I hope we’ll get to see a set mid-year with Sirius in a prison tower to complete the plot in the books. We should know for sure if that is the case in the next month or so.

Till then, Build the Magic!

(Note that this set was kindly provided by LEGO for review. The views expressed here are my own however).

You can check my review of the new Hogwarts Magical Trunk set here.