Does Magic: The Gathering need a Reboot?

Magic: The Gathering is a card game that has been around since 1993. These 32 years have been built around a progressive lore, with many loose ends, but also with long arcs that connect narratives of events that occurred in other times, with recurring characters and a notorious reluctance to end these same arcs (I mean, do we really need a possible "Bolas Returns" arc?).

From the Brothers' War to the Phyrexian Invasion, which connects with the Thran era when Yawgmoth, Thran Physician discovered an uninhabited plane that would become Phyrexia, to Urza's famous sacrifice to destroy the villain once and for all, to Karn, Silver Golem who later took the Mirari to the artificial plane of Mirrodin, but carried with him the Phyrexian oil that, almost a decade later, would lead to the rebirth of Phyrexia with the Praetors.

Almost a decade after the liberation of Karn, we would see the return of the Phyrexians to Kaldheim, which would begin to tie the knot for what would become, in 2023, the second Phyrexian invasion using the Realmbreaker, culminating in the defeat of Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines and the Phyrexians phased out from the Multiverse by Teferi, Time Raveler and Wrenn and Realmbreaker.

From this event, the Omenpaths emerged, and for some still-mysterious reason, many Planeswalkers lost their spark. For a year, we follow Kellan, the Fae-Blooded as he travels between these portals searching for his father, Oko, Thief of Crowns. When he finally finds him, Kellan, Oko, and their group of outlaws are surprised by the appearance of Jace Reawakened, who takes with him Loot, the Key to Everything and begins his plan to rebuild the multiverse.

To understand the events that led to Jace's moment, it's necessary to return to Ixalan and understand how his relationship with Vraska, Relic Seeker began when he lost his memories due to the Gatewatch's first clash with Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh.

The Gatewatch was originally formed on Zendikar to defeat the Eldrazi, that ancient and mysterious race that inhabits the Blind Eternities. Tezzeret, Cruel Captain discovered in the latest set that, sometime in the past, they had been at war against the Fomori, a race of interplanar conquerors who may have passed through Ixalan at some point and disappeared from the Multiverse.

Everything I've mentioned briefly refers to the card game's main story beats. Magic's lore is extensive, rich in reference material and narratives with engaging characters that spark the high fantasy imagination of players and fans. Who knows how many RPG campaigns have been, in some way, influenced or inspired by Magic's tales? How many times has a character created in Baldur's Gate 3 been based on the concept of a Planeswalker or even a physical resemblance to a character like Chandra Nalaar or Liliana Vess? How might other works have observed the development of the game's story and taken notes that were later applied to their own games, books, series, or movies?

But if Magic's story is so fascinating, why do so many people care so little about it? And not just in the player base: when was the last time we had any mention of the direction the card game's lore is taking from any designer? At what point did the community's questions and demands refer to the quality of the overall plot and not just the themes addressed in the "hat sets"? For something so crucial to in-universe expansions, Magic's lore seems abandoned in the public debate.

Universes Beyond is here to stay. The prospect that Wizards of the Coast will return and focus entirely on the Magic: The Gathering universe in the short-term feels almost like an illusion; after all, there's a purpose for the game to need partnerships with other brands and franchises today, beyond them selling better than any other expansion—to place Magic within the mainstream media.

Despite the many claims comparing this initiative to Fortnite, what Magic proposes is much closer to what Hasbro already does with Monopoly or, especially, what Lego does to its products: a set of systems and rules (in the case of Lego, this refers to the building blocks, their size, and the “final” goal of putting them all together in the appropriate way to build something) that fits with any outfit or layer. Spider-Man*? Of course! Britney Spears? Monopoly already had its own product with the singer! Horizon Zero Dawn? Lego even had its own console game! And let's not forget: Magic has already partnered with Post Malone for a product. How different is that from K-Pop's Demon Hunters?

The treatment may seem similar, but Magic is inherently distinct from Monopoly and a much more volatile product than Lego for one reason: card games have a constant progression line, and everything that enters the game stays there forever. Britney Spears' Monopoly or the $999.99 Lego Star Wars Death Star exist as standalone products with a very specific target audience, where the buyer will use it for that purpose and will rarely try to mix other pieces from other products of those respective brands into it—and the companies that sell them are content to sell that standalone product.

Magic not only has the mixing of game pieces as a habit, it actually motivates this behavior: consider, for example, the recent controversy surrounding the card Vivi Ornitier, which originated from MTG's partnership with the anthology RPG series Final Fantasy. While Vivi can work with several other cards from the Final Fantasy set, his competitive results in Magic tournaments have primarily occurred in a deck where he is the only card from the set in the list besides the land Starting Town. The other pieces, including Agatha's Soul Cauldron, which makes Vivi so powerful in this archetype, come from cards from other sets that work well as a complete archetype.

The same maxim applied to The One Ring, which, unlike Vivi, worked in so many Modern decks that it became the most-played card of the format by a wide margin, and rarely alongside another card from the Lord of the Rings expansion. They were being mixed with Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, with Emrakul, the Promised End, sometimes with Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, with Necrodominance and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Narset, Parter of Veils and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, among others.

But who exactly are these characters? Why should a Final Fantasy or Lord of the Rings fan care about Agatha of the Vile Cauldron or who Emrakul, Ragavan, or Yawgmoth are in the Magic universe? And let's assume they do care. How exactly can we present these characters and their stories to them in an engaging and fascinating way that doesn't involve reading a wiki or having to hunt down countless cards and/or old books searching for Magic's lore and general history for context?

Universes Beyond is, by far, the biggest commercial success in the game's history. Never before has it been consumed, talked about, and attended at Magic events around the world as much as it is today. The partnerships work brilliantly to cement the name "Magic" within the popular imagination as a game. But it doesn't stay there for long because as soon as the next Final Fantasy is announced or the latest Spider-Man partnership or movie comes out, this audience returns to their areas of interest, not including the card game among them.

For this audience to stick with Magic, the game needs to create an engaging narrative within its own universe. Titles like Final Fantasy and Spider-Man have been acclaimed by audiences for the quality of their stories over the decades, with a certain ease of access or loyalty among their audiences based on their long-term consumption (the average active Final Fantasy consumer is in the 30-50 age range). Magic can replicate this effect and retain both new and existing audiences… if done right.

It must be admitted that a card game with a story written three times a year over a few weeks is not the best source of narrative in the decade of rapid information, especially when investment in promotion and even coherent execution of this narrative seems scarce. It's necessary to go further and consider other media outlets that have greater ease of circulation within and outside the Magic bubble, such as a multimedia project.

The Netflix series is a great first step in this direction, despite low expectations that it will deliver much after a development hell with writer changes and changes to key characters. There's even less faith in the Magic: The Gathering movie, which still has no release date and could take so long that the hype surrounding Universes Beyond has not only died down, but also enough time has passed for the TCG to be completely forgotten in the mainstream media.

To succeed in the popular imagination, Magic needs its Arcane. An audiovisual product, captivating and inviting even for those who've never heard of the game or encountered the cards before, but even considering the partnership with Netflix, this seems like a difficult challenge to meet: suppose the work sparks the interest of a specific audience with the plot involving Ajani Goldmane and Chandra Nalaar, how much evidence will these characters have by the time the series is released so they can have more representation on cards and/or participation in the game's current lore? And how will the overall plot be explained to this new audience so they don't feel lost and forced to read walls and walls of text in a wiki to finally catch up on these characters' development?

More ways are needed to keep Magic's worldbuilding constantly active in consumers' imaginations, and with three major releases per year, it's difficult to imagine a company the size of Hasbro being unable to dedicate resources to comprehensible and easily accessible narrative audiovisual material on media like YouTube, the same platform where the company invests to make its announcements and present trailers for each eset.

Think of something like the trailers for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty or Dominaria United, which attempted to tell a portion of that set's core plot through short animations. Would it be possible to extend these animations into ten-minute episodes for each chapter of the game's lore? How much investment would this cost, and how would it reinforce Magic: The Gathering's brand identity in mainstream culture?

In both cases, however, Magic faces a fundamental problem of being a game over three decades old: the story, as it's interconnected, is convoluted for new audiences.

Even newer fans of the game tend to cling to characters they like or specific arcs, but most have little or no interest in the overall scope of events. Many older fans remember Urza, Lord High Artificer, and the story of the game's first recurring protagonist could be a great starting point… except that, upon arriving at a card game store to learn about "Urza's game," this new audience, captivated by the character's episodic narrative all the way through the end of the Phyrexian Invasion, will discover that those events took place over twenty years ago, and there are many events that that consumer (or the series) would need to catch up on.

On the other hand, perhaps there's no need for catching up. Urza's story is self-contained, with a beginning, middle, and end, despite the consequences that would later lead to New Phyrexia. Other short stories could also be told separately, similar to LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS, where each episode is a standalone theme and tells the story of a specific plot or character without necessarily following a chronological order.

There is also a third option, which connects the game's events for a possible chronological order in audiovisual products.

Throughout this text, I've mentioned several events, characters, and moments in Magic's history that could be portrayed, and how everything in the lore ends up interconnected because Wizards has trouble ending arcs without resorting to the possibility of reusing that trope or villain in the future.

When you're into Magic, these names and moments may be familiar, and, at least through the cards, players have a general sense of the main events of each expansion. But what about those who came to the card game because they liked the system when they first encountered it through Final Fantasy? How do they feel knowing that each story per expansion is now practically isolated, with a larger arc emerging in each set? Stories that haven't been as exciting in recent years, like Kellan's journey to find his father, wouldn't they have been more coherent for this audience by following a single character?

With so much that's already happened in the Multiverse... would it be better to go for a reboot?

Reboots are a common trope in American fiction. When something gets too convoluted, or when there's no longer any direction to take the story, or when the writers completely screw up in some arc, it becomes easier to create a new reality (alternate or otherwise) to reintroduce that universe with new characters or old protagonists with mannerisms different from those of the "original universe."

Starting from scratch (or not exactly from scratch) would give Magic's new audience a reason to follow the lore—and give Wizards a boost to integrate other media into the card game's narrative—and would also provide the opportunity to address some inherent problems that the long plot development brought, in addition to giving new opportunities to some elements. Things that weren't properly explored in other times. And at this point in the plot, there's even a plausible reason to consider the possibility.

In the final chapter of the current main story, Jace Beleren used Nicol Bolas's Meditation Realm to attempt to reshape the Multiverse, reversing the Phyrexian Invasion and, consequently, the damage caused by Phyresis's infection on him and Vraska. His plan involved using the mapping of the Multiverse present in Loot's mind to rewrite reality, but the magic was too powerful for his body, and Jace was presumably dead as the meditation plane collapsed.

The final sentence of the chapter, however, leaves a cliffhanger: Jace appears to still be alive, possibly within the Meditation Plane, and his plans are now clear—to rewrite reality and prevent all the catastrophes that have occurred in the Multiverse. If Jace succeeds, the Multiverse will likely be reset, the perfect reboot.

Then a new hero or heroine is born. Perhaps Jace himself in another multiverse. This one encounters other Planeswalkers who form new protagonists, perhaps each with an individual story that intersects with certain plots, as is the case today, or as a group similar to the Gatewatch for a new plot. Who knows, they might encounter a Nissa Revane who never awakened her spark? Or a Liliana Vess who never became a necromancer?

Or perhaps they won't encounter anyone they know for a long time because these characters have ceased to exist, and what remains of the "old Multiverse" are only fragments of what were once the marks of an invasion that caused permanent damage to the Blind Eternities. What if Tezzeret, Cruel Captain escaped this fate because he's on the Edge of Eternities? And what would become of Phyrexia in this new Multiverse?

The possibilities are almost endless, but so are the consequences. As someone who has followed the game's lore for over 16 years, considering that Magic could undergo a reboot makes me wary if it's not logically explained within the Multiverse's rules. Even then, it still raises the fear of excessive retcons and the need to erase the old story in an attempt to adapt it for new audiences.

It's impossible to deny that a reboot would facilitate the coherence of Magic's narrative for this new audience and, if well-applied in the right media, would increase the interest in following the lore and the new characters on their adventures through a Multiverse that, now, is unexplored territory even for those who played the card game thirty years ago. But abandoning all the previous worldbuilding to start from scratch would be disrespectful to the historical legacy of Magic: The Gathering and the characters that have defined the game for years. Even if this "Jace reset" were to occur, even having some glimpses or references to the "Old Multiverse" in the sets would be a way to honor the card game's long history.

Personally, there doesn't seem to be an "easy path" to making Magic the mainstream product Hasbro has sought to make it with its Universes Beyond partnerships. While this aspect of the game is well established, the aspect that involves reinforcing the "Magic: The Gathering" brand within this culture by investing in worldbuilding and creating engaging storylines in new media formats seems to be ten steps behind.

It's up to Wizards to decide what, ultimately, Magic needs to be. Without this dedication, the card game will eventually become just like Lego: a label and a set of rules for any brand that wants to slap its name on it. For the long-term good of the game, it's best that there be, within the boardrooms of the suited and booted and in the design team's discussions, an active project to make lore a crucial element in the project of turning Magic into a mainstream product and cultural phenomenon.

We'll just have to wait for the next chapters.

Thanks for reading!