As Luke Horwath ’25 and his mother, Anne, cleared their dinner table, the phone rang. Horwath sprinted across the room to answer and put it on speaker. It was the call they had been awaiting: Horwath, a long-time Lego builder and fanatic, had been accepted to compete on Lego Masters USA with his mother as his partner.
“I struggle to think of many more moments in my life where I have been that excited,” Horwath says. “It was practically indescribable, the feeling.”
As their spot on the show went public, he felt some uncertainty “in the sense that I am a college guy playing with Lego bricks with his mom.” A positive response from friends, family and other viewers eliminated that concern.
Horwath is a fifth-year undergraduate student at Notre Dame. Though he participated in the May 2025 commencement ceremony, he has one semester left because he took off the fall 2023 semester to record season five for Lego Masters USA. Almost two years later, the season premiered on May 19, 2025.
Stepping onto the set of a show he had watched since it debuted in 2020 was more intense than he imagined. The hosts of the season were “Brickmasters” Amy Corbett and Jamie Berard, as well as actor and comedian Will Arnett.
The entire 10-episode season was recorded in one month, and Horwath and his mother made it to episode 8 before they were eliminated. They were the winners in episode 6 and had the distinction of creating the tallest build in Lego Masters USA history on episode 2, which was a wedding cake that portrayed the love of two Lego minifigures.
From Barrington, Illinois, Horwath received his first Lego set when he was 5 years old. He and his mother built and played with the set’s helicopter and car together, and he was hooked. His journey to Lego Masters USA really began in seventh grade when an ankle injury sidelined him from the soccer, basketball and volleyball teams that occupied much of his time. He was searching for things to do instead when his mother said, “Luke, build me a beach.”
With no beach-themed Lego set in sight, Horwath’s mother had just challenged him to his first-ever custom build. From his collection of Lego bricks, what started as a simple beach grew into a 63-square-foot Lego city, entirely a product of Horwath’s imagination. “Luke, I didn’t mean build me that much,” his mother later remarked.
He continued to build, and his creations became more complex. At age 15, Horwath built a life-size, fully operational Lego pinball machine, which is still his favorite project. Made up of more than 7,000 pieces, the first motorized build of Horvath’s career has a Batman theme. After that, interactive builds became Horwath’s “thing,” inspiring him to pursue mechanical engineering at Notre Dame.
“Lego is traditionally a medium of ‘look but don’t touch,’” Horwath says. “But Lego, to me, has always been a toy, so I wanted to build something large that you could actually play with.”
Horwath then started working on another fully operational game — a six-foot-tall Lego claw machine. He brought both of his arcade games to the 2019 Brickworld Chicago event, one of the largest Lego conventions in the United States which he has attended six times. Hundreds of attendees played with his machines. “That to me was really the eye-opening moment of ‘the way I build is different,’” Horwath says.
On Lego Masters, Horwath’s favorite build was a Dark Knight-themed vehicle. He and his mom went dark and industrial, creating a semi-truck, or the “Bat Big Rig,” a homage to his grandpa Dave, Anne’s stepfather, who was a long-haul driver for over 20 years.
Grandpa Dave loved to watch Lego Masters, discussing every episode in depth with his Lego-obsessed grandson. Horwath remembers his grandfather saying, “Luke, you’re a Lego Master. You should be on this show.” Grandpa Dave died before that milestone, but Horwath was grateful for the opportunity to honor him. Luke and Anne’s creation helped them win that episode.
“I couldn’t have asked for anything more,” Horwath says. “It meant the world to me.”
Being on the show was a thrilling mix of intensity and joy for Horwath. “For every moment of pressure, when you’re looking at the clock and realize that time is ticking away, it’s also a lot of fun,” he says.
When episode 8 rolled around, the builders were challenged to choose an item from a ’90s-themed bedroom and recreate it on a life-sized scale. The goal? To be as indistinguishable as possible from the real thing.
“We ended up deciding on the biggest item in the room, which was the bed,” Horwath says.
The bed came together well until the weight of the colorful Lego sheet crushed the structural beams at the last minute.
Elimination inspired mixed emotions. “I was, at the end of the day, above all else, very proud of my mom and I as a team for everything we accomplished,” he says. “To realize it was coming to an end was a little bit sad, but at the same time, the biggest emotion there was pride.”
To share the Lego Masters experience with his mom, the person who kickstarted his custom-building career, was the greatest treasure, he says.
The show also taught him to see building with Lego bricks as a holistic experience. “It’s not just how we get from point A to point B,” Horwath says. “It’s how do we tell the story? What details are there? How do I use color? How do I use motion to convey the story and not just have it take up space?”
Horwath has a few new Lego projects lined up, the concepts yet to be revealed, but still fitting within his favorite theme of large and interactive. Recently, he began to design digitally first to prototype concepts.
Post-college, Horwath’s dream job is to work in the roller coaster industry. “I absolutely love riding roller coasters, I love researching roller coasters, I love building roller coasters,” he says. “Everything about that is incredibly exciting.”
As a Lego Masters viewer, Horwath spent years watching participants give advice to aspiring creatives. So, after his experience, he has his own words of wisdom:
“Channel your passion into creativity and share it with the world,” he says. “That’s what led me to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Adelyn Rabbitt is a rising sophomore from South Bend studying journalism and psychology at Indiana University. She is this magazine’s summer intern.