Because of the ".*" on either end, it's just having a sequence of 8 somewhere that are mirrored, could be the first 8 or last 8, not strictly the middle 8.

Yeah, sorry for the bad formatting. I probably should've taken the time to make it not markdownify the asterisks. Without them, it is mirroring the middle eight.

I misread the parent post and I was interpreting the clue correctly after all. Thanks for helping clarify. It was a fun puzzle.