Star Wars: Jedi Knights #8 - Marvel Comics

STAR WARS: JEDI KNIGHTS No. 8, December 2025

It’s debatably somewhat difficult to determine whether Marc Guggenheim purposely penned the central character in this story to be so dislikeable, or if the American screenwriter just inadvertently caused Soona Taj to be the main reason behind poor Seera Longa and Berem Khana’s pointless deaths. In fact, the New York City-born novelist actually does a good job of making the two “recently knighted” secondary cast members pretty disagreeable too when they place the entire onus of becoming a Jedi upon the shoulders of one so insanely young; “How can anyone that small make a decision so huge?”

This aversion for the main trio arguably makes it a tad tough to feel much pity for the Force Users when they rather naively fall for a space pirate ruse and land aboard the villains' vessel expecting to simply fix their ship's engines. Sure, the soon-to-be-dead heroes were initially trying to help its crew – which even the young child understands they must do. But the pair genuinely appear to be holding their own against their would-be-killers until the infant decides to ignore their order to safely remain aboard their T-6 Shuttle and promptly blunders right into the middle of a desperate firefight.

Such disobedience also makes it somewhat hard to swallow Kelleran Beq's claim that the Youngling is apparently “a very brave little girl” after he has to conveniently arrive to ‘save the day' and free her from a cell. This high praise however is then sensationally overshadowed when Soona suddenly manifests enough power to hurl the pirate’s captain to his doom, and then, without any training whatsoever, uses her force abilities to call one of her dead recruiters’ light-sabres and outrageously joins the supposed "fan-favourite Jedi" in his battle against the remaining bandits.

Easily this comic’s most intriguing element is therefore Madibek Musabekov’s layouts which depict the narrative exclusively from the perspective of Taj. This technique certainly is quite unusual from how most books are presented these days. Yet is also means that anyone can plainly see Seera’s shocked expression at seeing Soona appear behind her when the Jedi Knight is busy fending off the pirates, and her resultant death due to being fully focused upon the child rather than the laser-gun-toting despots trying to kill her. To make matters worse, the author desperately tries to fool his audience by suggesting that that the Pirate were “just lucky” when they gunned down Longa and Khana, when through the pencilled panels it's clear that the tiny child's presence caused both their downfalls.

The regular cover art of "STAR WARS: JEDI KNIGHTS" #8 by Madibek Musabekov & Jesus Aburtov