The Marvel Super Heroes season, the main Universes Beyond expansion of 2026, arrived with the full Avengers roster.This is a special moment for Marvel fans. In the groups I participate in, discussions about card design from people who followed the comics and/or the cinematic universe are almost as rich as those I had during the Final Fantasy season last year or at The Lord of the Rings in 2023.The way these worlds are themed and represented within the context of Magic: The Gathering gameplay is part of the magic and appeal of the Universes Beyond series. It brings people from outside the niche to discuss their favorite character or story arc, and it calls on fans of that brand who already play Magic to join the discussion and evaluate mechanics as to how they fit into the characters' lore or iconic moments.It is a feeling that Marvel fans deserved after the Spider-Man fiasco — a set reworked from a mini‑set, which ended up with a dozen repetitive designs and the feeling that the expansion was rushed and lazily designed.Super Heroes did a good job, but one card can overshadow the solid execution of smaller cards by a semantic and design mistake that turns it into a joke due to how it should work based on Marvel lore compared to how it actually works in a Magic: The Gathering match.The definition of who is worthy to wield Mjölnir, Hammer of Thor has been debated for decades. The consensus is that its bearer must have a mix of altruism, humility, conviction, and the heart of a warrior, willing to sacrifice everything — even their powers or their life — for the greater good and to protect the innocent.When we evaluate these requirements, what other figure common in many works of fiction fits this mold? The Heroes. The hundreds of examples from mythology, literature, and interactive audiovisual works like video games present the hero trope as this individual capable of self‑sacrifice and recognizing their own limitations for the sake of others or a cause.It would be easy to imagine that for a creature to be worthy of wielding Mjölnir in Magic, it would need to be a Hero. But that is not what the ability says — the artifact has "Equip worthy," but it has a specific characterization of what being worthy means: a legendary non‑Villain creature that is red, white, or both.Before the release of Marvel Super Heroes, 1,883 legendary creatures are worthy of equipping Mjölnir, and that number is expected to grow to around 1,900 with the set. Among them, there are heroic figures like Aang, Swift Savior, Frodo, Determined Hero, or Clive, Ifrit's Dominant, who would have, in lore, the necessary qualities to wield the hammer, in addition to Marvel characters like Thor himself, Captain America, and even Spider‑Man or Iron Man.On the other hand, due to the low number of restrictions, there are many cases where a character equipping Mjölnir, Hammer of Thor is very dissonant.Kefka Palazzo, the villain from Final Fantasy VI. The only one in the franchise who went so far as to destroy the world and spent the rest of the post‑apocalyptic days sadistically burning cities to prevent survivors from rebuilding any sense of hope. He is worthy.Sephiroth is worthy, but only if he is burning Nibelheim, killing dozens of innocent lives, and causing permanent trauma to Cloud, Midgar Mercenary and Tifa Lockhart. The Dark Lord, Sauron, and Nicol Bolas, the most narcissistic, manipulative, and tyrannical villain Magic has ever seen, are on the list of worthy creatures!Because of how Mjölnir's ability works, there are more legendary creatures that are worthy than those that are not. Consequently, characters that would not come close to it from an interpretive perspective can equip it, and the narrative importance is thrown away because the design team decided that being a hero — the embodiment of all the values that make a character worthy in the Marvel universe — was not necessary to wield it.The reason? Commander. Like other cards, some controversial, such as Nadu, Winged Wisdom or Vivi Ornitier, Mjölnir was designed with its implications in the game's most popular multiplayer format in mind.All it would have taken was for the equip text to include being a hero instead of not being a villain. However, adding that line would limit Mjölnir's viability for most Commander decks that are not Marvel‑themed, where the creature type has become common.With Magic's design increasingly oriented toward pleasing the Commander audience, the frustration of not being able to equip Mjölnir to your thematic commander sounds more annoying than, at the expense of the lore in the universe they proposed a partnership with, being able to equip it even to an embodiment of evil like Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls.Ironically, Mjölnir is one of the few cards that would make sense not to be equipable by just any legendary creature, and yet it could still fit into many decks: it works as spot removal when it enters, or it can be discarded to give a Pyroclasm effect that bypasses traditional counterspells. Add to that the abundance of ways to cheat equip costs with Sigarda's Aid, Puresteel Paladin, and others, and it would be plausible to run it in your list as board interaction, synergy with the rest of the deck, and even the challenge of attaching it to your Commander to deal 21 or more damage in a single attack.Marvel Super Heroes has reasons to narrow the scope if we consider how much the set's cards reinforce synergies among Hero or Villain cards for Limited, and that they will hardly reach Commander outside dedicated archetypes or unless they have abilities that fit another theme. But this is Thor's Mjölnir, and it would feel too bad to only be able to use it in one category.It is a shame and an evident shift in design philosophy compared to other times. Gone are the days when cards like Knight Exemplar, limited in scope but with support within their own set or in future sets, had creative room to flourish at Commander tables and become staples down the line — now every card must be designed to fit into multiple archetypes, or be custom‑made for a popular strategy.Perhaps this would be a negligible mistake in a Magic‑universe expansion. After all, it is the card game where Ghalta, Primal Hunger can pilot a Skysovereign, Consul Flagship and where 15 flying squirrels can defeat the world‑eater Emrakul, the Aeons' Torn. In a Marvel expansion, it becomes a joke, but it shows that the loosening of design can go so far as to subvert the rules of that universe to hype players, adding another argument for those who claim that the Commanderification of the game creates poorly designed cards.When the set releases, it will make little difference, except for a few laughs when a Kefka is attacking for lethal with a hammer that does not belong to him. For the future of Magic as a game, and compared to the richness of representation and lore accuracy in the cards of Lord of the Rings, Final Fantasy, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, it is a loss and proof of how much the game's current philosophy is willing to throw away self‑restraint and creative challenge for players to make something that pleases everyone.
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