– Spoiler Review –
Legacy of Vader #7 sees Kylo Ren up against an Order 66 survivor with a particular set of skills, which leads to a riveting confrontation readers will have to come to their own conclusions about!
There are many ways to make a story memorable, like an interesting story which tells us more about the characters or even an ending which has us questioning everything we just saw or read. Legacy of Vader #7 is a memorable issue because it does dissect Kylo Ren in a more pointed way than the series has in the past, while its ending manages to leave us questioning everything without reading like a trick. In the comic solicitation for issue #7, which was included at the end of last issue, there was promise the story of Grandea’s Order 66 survival would include a unique usage of the Force, so as she ushers Kylo out of the bar he found her in, holding his lightsaber, she reveals she used the good ol’ fashioned Mind Trick to avoid execution. This was a disappointment at first, plenty of Jedi still have and will use Mind Tricks, but what came next was writer Charles Soule making me feel like a fool, in the best way possible, for doubting where this was going. Turns out Grandea focused so much on the Mind Trick, having cast her lightsaber away upon hearing Obi-Wan Kenobi’s warning message to the Order, it became a true weapon, as she essentially became a shadow, able to trick anyone however she wanted and then be gone without them none-the-wiser. This escalates, as one day the Inquisitorius catches her trail and Darth Vader travels with the Ninth and Thirteenth Sister to track her down, sending the two Inquisitors to kill her to show their worth. While they catch up with her and chop off a leg, her abilities have grown so strong, she’s able to convince the two they killed her! It’s a wild show of power and really is a unique and surprising way for Grandea to have survived this long, though what comes next somehow tops it. But we’ll get to that in a moment…
Soule makes it easy to like Grandea from the start, as she’s unconventional and very straightforward when dealing with Kylo Ren, seems to be enjoying a life of her own, her mind trick skills are very intriguing, and she’s really glad to state she hasn’t been a Jedi in a long, long time. The way she senses Kylo’s constant need to prove to himself he’s Kylo Ren, not Ben Solo, so he can fight the pull of the light, cuts Kylo down to size and gets to the heart of his conflict during this timeframe. He doesn’t try to deny her, instead ignoring her and her questions about who he is and why he wants to kill a barely-was and long-hasn’t-been Jedi, and then he lashes out with his trademark anger and swipes her down with his lightsaber. His ‘success’ with Grandea makes him confident he can face Luke Skywalker, in the flesh, and kill him for good, yet it’s Grandea, not dead just yet from his killing strike, who reveals she felt Luke’s passing in the Force, remarking how strange it is that Kylo didn’t; I never registered he didn’t know Luke died, so this was a neat reveal of such news to him. So focused is Kylo on suppressing the good in him, the Ben Solo that wants out and regrets his choices so far, he couldn’t even sense his own uncle died through the Force, when such a powerful and strong beacon of light passing should’ve been felt by anyone strong or well-trained in the ways of the Force. Kylo doesn’t sit in his new Supreme Leader throne for long because he’s afraid if he sits still, if he stops finding outlets for his anger, as we’ve seen in the opening 6 issues, then he’ll have to stop and think about what he’s done and face not only external reminders of the past, but the biggest reminder of all, himself, Ben Solo. This is a great way to show, while Kylo’s done a lot since this series started, all his angry outbursts and killing are only making the fracture inside worse, which helps sum up the series so far and what Soule’s been trying to bring to his character as we get closer to The Rise of Skywalker.
As for Grandea herself, she should be dead after what Kylo did to her, but she’s still kicking, her eyes glowing an eerie red and her body begins to float, almost possessed. It’s a creepy image and baffling to say the least, yet as she demands to know who he is, something he thinks he knows but really doesn’t, he cuts her floating body again, shouting for her to stop, and everything suddenly changes. It’s a bloody good twist, as where the quaint little snowy town, with its warm lights and cozy feel, is now barren, the warm lights gone, the homes in disarray, and no evidence Grandea, or anyone Kylo saw at the bar, was ever really there! When did Grandea’s influence begin? When Kylo crossed through the woods in issue #6? When they landed on the planet? How close did she have to be to mind trick Kylo for so long and so thoroughly? I paid for my initial concerns, as this is such a shocking and interesting usage of a mind trick, I never imagined it could grow to be such a powerful and deceptive tool; Grandea is no Jedi, for sure. Yet while this twist invites specific big questions right away, like the how and what she was able to do, I think there’s a far bigger question we should all be considering: why didn’t she kill Kylo Ren? Is it as simple as she still doesn’t have a weapon, after all these years, besides her mind trick proficiency? Did she see something when connecting with his mind that stopped her from doing so? Did she see his past? The future? Or was she concerned his death would bring too much attention to her, knowing he’d leave her be to avoid more embarrassment if she let him live, as she is a survivor? And/or did she realize it would cause Kylo more pain to stay alive and face all he’s done? While it’s fun to theorize how much of what we saw was real, wondering why she didn’t kill him will forever be what I think about after this issue.
Before Stefano Raffaele returns, we still have Luke Ross for this issue, alongside colorist Nolan Woodard and letterer Joe Caramagna. It’s not just Grandea’s dismissive and snarky dialogue which helps readers become fans quickly, it’s how Ross and team present her as well, often with an all-knowing smirk in the present, like she already knows she won, which, well we realize is the truth in the final moments. There’s an unassuming and comfortability to her design as well, her outfit draped over her, big and fluffy, with light colors which show she’s not worried about hiding, though she still has a utility belt, which I’m sure is packed with some bare necessities for survival. It’s a stark difference to the flashbacks, where she’s often in practical outfits, very limited in their colors and tight fitting or flowing, though whereas she was hiding herself with a hood when she first started on the run, the fact she has no hood shows her confidence in her skills. The coloring used to denote the flashbacks adds a sort of distorted look to the events, though the way Woodard still lights scenes despite the distortion, especially in the fire-filled panels as the two Inquisitors stand over Grandea, and as she crawls away after tricking them, makes it clear how lucky she was and how close to death she’d been in that moment. In the present, her body sort of floating there, like a marionette, with the backdrop of the quaint little village, is what produces such a creepy vibe to the panels, as well as the darkness consuming her otherwise soft colored clothes as she shouts at him, hanging in the air; oohh, I just got chills thinking about it again. The reveal of the true reality in front of Kylo, while in two small panels at the end of the page, are supremely effective, as Woodard ensures Kylo’s lightsaber swing is a big swath of white with bright red edges, lighting up the snow on the ground around him and the nearby buildings, while the lights in the homes remain warm and inviting, and then Caramagna gives the lightsaber slash a gnarly sound FX, with Kylo’s shout also ringed by red and large. And then one panel later, they downplay everything that made the previous panel stand out, Kylo’s lightsaber barely permeating the darkness of the town, looking more like a little stick than a big deadly weapon, his word bubble a normal one, just black on the edges, and all the warm lighting in the homes are gone, while Ross turns it into a rundown and broken town, broken bits on the roofs and windows shattered. The starkness of the change hammers in the change, leaving readers feeling as confused as Kylo.
Here are a few other things:
- The Ninth Sister was first brough to life in Soule’s Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith series, though she’s been in the Inquisitors miniseries and the video games Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor. She’s a favorite Inquisitor of mine and I hope we’ll one day get some glimpses of her past!
- As for the Thirteenth Sister, she was originally unidentified in Soule’s Vader series, where we meet and see her death, but she became the main character of her own book, written by Delilah Dawson, called Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade.
- There wasn’t much about the comics at SDCC in July, but the solicitations for October reveal Tava Ren’s time in the series, which starts in issue #8, could last for more than two issues, but we’ll see. This was a great little story, but I’m really looking forward to Kylo wrestling for control of the Knights of Ren with Tava.
Legacy of Vader #7 is one of those issues fans will be thinking about long after it’s over, not only for its neat twist, but how it dissects the conflict inside Kylo Ren.
+ Exposing Kylo’s further schism
+ Grandea’s grand reveal
+ Art team really makes the twist hit hard
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him and the website on Bluesky.
LEGACY OF VADER REVIEWS:
Reign of Kylo Ren: #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 — Vol. 2