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Mara was taken from her homeworld as a child and trained by the Emperor and Grand Inquisitor as an Inquisitor. Over the course of the Galactic Civil War, many of the Inquisition fall - to Ahsoka, to Kanan, to other Jedi and Rebels, and to Vader (who is increasingly jealous and paranoid about the Inquisition and begins sniping them when he can). The Emperor, meanwhile, is increasingly frustrated with their inability to kill Luke Skywalker - and Vader's disinterest in doing so, obsessed instead with the more dangerous option of turning his son to the dark side. By the time the Battle of Endor rolls around, there is only one Insquisitor whose competence he trusts: Mara Jade.
He sends out an order shortly before he dies: YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. The Inquisitor is, of course, obsessed with his final order. After the Emperor's death, for the next several years, she keeps trying to get close, and keeps failing. She falls in with black market folks for money, and ends up with, for the first time in her life, friends.
Here's where I think her story diverges meainingfully from Legends. There's no clone of Luke to kill - no way to technically fulfill the Emperor's Last Command. Instead, the voice slowly fades in her mind as she takes up more immediate, and more rewarding, priorities: protecting friends, building relationships, finding purpose. By the time she gets her opportunity to get right up behind Luke Skywalker, weapon drawn...it is right after he has saved her friends' lives - put his own life on the line for a bunch of underworld types, because they'd done nothing wrong and didn't deserve to die at the hands of Hutt goons. She fingered her lightsaber...and put it away. Why did the long-dead Emperor get to force her to kill a perfectly nice man who'd just kept her life from falling apart for the second time. Actively refusing that order was...freeing. She talked with Luke after that. He invited her to train with him. She refused. She had a life now, her own purpose.
Maybe they ran into each other a few times over the years. Fought alongside one another. Mara gained a whispered reputation as the Smuggler Jedi - one she always laughed at. She was no Jedi. No hero. But you don't fuck with those Mara Jade loves.
But she never joined the academy. She grieved for the galaxy when Kylo Ren slaughtered his classmates and the master disappeared. She watched anxiously as the First Order grew and the New Republic fell. She's still out there. And maybe she's ready to step up.