It’s been an absolutely phenomenal few years for the world’s first ever collectible card game (or CCG), Magic: The Gathering. Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2023, Magic: The Gathering also managed to grab serious mainstream attention, thanks to its one-off The One Ring card; with only one copy printed in the entire world, it was found within a week of Magic set The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth’s release. The card ended up in the hands of none other than Post Malone, who bought it for a cool two million dollars!
Celebrating its own anniversary in 2023 (its 60th, no less!) Doctor Who also featured as a Universes Beyond Magic set, and iconic video game series Fallout, which was also adapted into a TV series, proved to be popular subject matter for its own Magic: The Gathering set in early 2024. Other, more traditional MTG sets have still released during this time of course, with some, such as the anthropomorphic animal-focused Bloomburrow, garnering significant success in their own right.
Now, with an update announced as part of Netflix’s Geeked Week, it seems that Magic: The Gathering is finally being adapted into a series for the aforementioned streaming service. Though initially announced five years ago, things have been pretty quiet for the last few years, with no notable details coming to light except that the Russo Brothers, directors of Marvel movies Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, had dropped out of their proposed roles as showrunners.
However, that’s now changed, with Terry Matalas announced as the new showrunner for the Magic: The Gathering animated series. With writing, producing and directing credits under his belt for shows such as the MacGyver reboot, 12 Monkeys and, most recently, Star Trek: Picard, it seems that the Magic: The Gathering show is in safe and very capable hands.
There’s no word on a proposed release date as of yet, and all we have to show is the single promotional image, but fans of the CCG are likely to be very excited just by taking a quick glance at the picture. That’s because it shows the game’s logo, along with what looks just like two very popular, long established Planeswalkers in Magic: The Gathering: pyromancer Chandra Nalaar and the leonin (that’s a Lion-esque race) Ajani Goldmane. We’ve included an image above of two Magic decks which featured each character as Planeswalker cards, so you can see exactly what they look like, and how they actually appear in-game.
Both of these Planeswalkers have a long, deep involvement in the lore behind many Magic: The Gathering sets, so seeing them appear on the single image that’s being used to announce news of the new showrunner sparks the imagination in all sorts of ways.
Still, anything beyond those tantalising details is just idle speculation, but we’re very excited to see Magic: The Gathering in animated form; the game has incredible scope for nearly limitless stories to be told, with the variety of endless planes that make up the CCG’s Multiverse sure to provide fertile ground for a show that could, theoretically, run indefinitely.
Despite the fact that we have no idea how far along production is at this stage, hopefully the wait won’t be too long; we’re definitely looking forward to Planeswalking and protecting the Multiverse alongside some of our favourite Magic: The Gathering characters!
