How One Jedi Mind-Tricked Her Way Through The Empire's Deadly Order 66 Purge
The fall of the Jedi Order through Order 66 has been told time and time again in Star Wars stories, but Star Wars: Legacy of Vader #7 just introduced a Jedi survivor whose escape tactic might be the most clever we've seen yet.
In a galaxy where most Jedi fought and fell with their lightsabers ignited, the character Grandea survived not by clashing with clone troopers, but by using her mind in a way no one saw coming.
Written by Charles Soule with art by Luke Ross, this new story flips the script on Jedi survival by focusing on an underappreciated Force ability… the Jedi mind trick.
Grandea, now an elderly woman, recalls how she escaped death during the infamous Jedi Purge not through combat, but by weaponizing a skill many Jedi saw as beneath them. As she tells it, when the clones turned on her, she didn’t reach for her blade. She simply made them believe she wasn’t a Jedi. That’s it. No chase, no blaster fire. Just one well-placed suggestion in their minds and she was forgotten.
Her fascination with the Jedi mind trick, a technique many in the Order saw as crude or manipulative, became her salvation. "The danger did not end with Order 66," she explains. Knowing she’d be hunted forever, she destroyed her lightsaber, burned her robes, and abandoned the identity of a Jedi altogether.
Instead of hiding in fear, she embraced the power of the mind. Grandea spent years perfecting her ability, turning a once-dismissed trick into a masterful art. She pushed the limits, testing it against Hutts and Toydarians, beings notoriously resistant to Jedi influence. And she won. She erased herself from memory. As she puts it, “everywhere I went, I never went.”
Her ability was so effective, she even outplayed the Inquisitors. After a brutal encounter with two of them, Grandea used her mind trick to convince them she was dead. They reported back to Darth Vader with total confidence, officially removing her from the Empire’s kill list.
Decades later, when Kylo Ren confronts her in a tavern, he tries to read her mind only to be stopped cold. Instead, Grandea easily reads his. “He was screaming it to himself,” she says, casually showing that even someone as powerful as Kylo couldn’t break her defenses.
Grandea’s story adds a really cool and fun new layer to Jedi lore. She didn’t rely on her lightsaber and fighting skills, or go into hiding. She mastered a subtle art, one the Order underestimated, and used it to survive. No one sensed her. No one found her. And even when they did, she was already gone.
In a universe full of epic battles and Force-fueled duels, Legacy of Vader #7 reminds us that the most powerful weapon a Jedi has might just be their mind.