Star Wars: Legacy of Vader #7
REIGN OF KYLO REN PART 7
Even after killing Snoke and taking the mantle of Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren still struggles with forging his own path in the shadow of his family’s legacy.
Kylo’s quest to kill the past led him to Darth Vader’s former home, where the young tyrant met the erstwhile aide of the Dark Lord, a man by the name of Vaneé.
After harrowing excursions on Tatooine and Naboo, as well as the conquest of Corellia, Vaneé advised Kylo to seek out a worthy opponent: a survivor of Order 66.
Upon searching a distant, snow-covered planet, the young tyrant has now come face-to-face with the formidable former Jedi….
Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Luke Ross
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Colorist: Nolan Woodward
Cover artist: Derrick Chew
Editor: Mark Pannicia
Publication date: August 6th 2025
We open on Lahtee in the Mid Rim in the midst of a confrontation in a tapcafe as Kylo Ren orders his crossguard lightsaber be returned as a mysterious other tells him that would be an extremely ill-advised thing for her to do. The elder Force user tells Ren to take it outside, as Ren wonders how the alien knows his name. We learn that Ren is practically shouting it to himself in his own mind, and more about the elder alien; she was once a Jedi but no more, and we slip into the past and her younger self as she surveys a battlefield hologram map during the Clone Wars.
Her name is Grandea, and we join at the moment of Order 66 being executed. Her fellow Jedi are slaughtered, but using a classic Jedi mind trick she persuades them that she’s disguised as one of them and runs as they turn on each other. She describes the fallout of Order 66, how they message from Obi-Wan told them to stay away, and how she believed she may be the last of the Jedi. Destroying her lightsaber, she faced the reality of a life on the run. Her body had never been found, so she opted to listen to the Force telling her to live and eschewed her Jedi past, using only the mind trick to cover her tracks.
Even learning to sway the minds of resistant species like Toydarians and Hutts she never felt truly safe, which she wasn’t. Darth Vader and the Inquisitors found her homeworld, and so she ran, only to lose her lower leg to the spinning blade of the Ninth Sister, but her skills in mind trickery saved her again. Telling them they had killed her, the Ninth and Thirteenth Sisters returned to Vader, but when he asks for proof of death they tell him she was incinerated in a fire, and genuinely believing what they were saying, Vader bought the deception. Back in the present was see the aged Grandea tell Kylo that yes, she was once a Jedi, but no more. He is unmoved, still determined to end her, and she probes his mind wanting to know why the death of a former member of an ancient religion is so important to him. Ren lashes out, knocking her back, grabbing his blade and cutting her down.
Ren says ‘and now…Skywalker‘, but as she dies Grandea tells him Skywalker is already dead. He doesn’t believe her, but as she rises from the ground (perhaps levitated by Ren using the Force) she tells him she felt Skywalker’s passing, and asks him again who he is. He lashes out, slicing her again, but as his sweep of the blade ends she gone, and he lets out a roar of frustration as he drops to his knees and the issue ends.
In what feels like a standalone issue, this really does hit the mark. We see the desparation of Ren to validate himself, grasping for meaning as this elderly stranger and former Jedi questions him. The flashback to the Clone Wars is efficient, as is the sparse use of Vader (almost always a more powerful influence on a story when used sparingly) and now with the finale of the series looking we have the Knights of Ren lined up next to get in his way.
This has been an engaging series, more than it might have been in less steady hands than that of Charles Soule, who has delved deep into Ren and Vader in the past. We’ve traversed the galaxy, spanned the ages and as we near the conclusion, have a firmer grasp of the motivations of Kylo Ren. In a way, this may all be a part of what steers for Force into accepting him back when he passes on Exegol; self-awareness might just be the thing that saves Kylo Ren’s Jedi spirit / soul.
