Wizards of the Coast has announced that Marvel will be coming to Magic: The Gathering starting in 2025 as a part of the game’s Universes Beyond product line.
The companies “will develop collectible products and tentpole sets,” Wizards said. “The first tentpole Magic set based on Marvel’s fan-favorite characters and epic stories will appear globally in 2025.” Yes, that is plural sets, the first of which will arrive in 2025.
In the context of Magic, “tentpole” sets mean “full” card sets accompanied by the full suite of products like Collector and Play Boosters, Commander decks, etc. While Wizards didn’t confirm any of these in the initial press release, it is likely safe to assume that the upcoming Marvel Universes Beyond products will be similar to the product lineup for The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth—the only other Universes Beyond tentpole release. Tales of Middle-earth featured a full, draftable set, Collector Boosters, Commander decks, Secret Lair drops, and new “scene” boxes.
It is unclear what other “collectibles” will result from this collaboration with Marvel. For The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, Wizards created a one-of-one The One Ring card that was placed in a random Collector Booster. That card was found and sold for over $2 million.
Perhaps the Marvel collaboration will feature the Infinity Stones as moxen? (Hey, we can dream, right?)
Universes Beyond is Pushing Magic Beyond—Far Beyond
Marvel’s arrival in Magic is a massive expansion of the already massively successful Universes Beyond initiative, which brings third-party IPs into Magic.
Tales of Middle-earth, Magic’s collaboration with The Lord of the Rings, became Magic’s second-best-selling set a few months after its release in June 2023—and will likely be the best-selling set by the end of the year. With the Marvel collaboration scheduled to release multiple sets, it is reasonable to expect an impact (both financial and on the game) that surpasses that of Tales of Middle-earth.
Magic’s other Universes Beyond collaborations have also been incredibly popular. The first product, which featured characters from The Walking Dead and was released in 2020, was a Secret Lair drop featuring six cards. It was the source of controversy within the Magic community due to its inclusion of mechanically unique cards—that weren’t available outside of the drop—with non-Magic flavor/character names. The drop became the best-selling Secret Lair drop at the time and grandfathered into Universes Beyond when it was officially announced a few months later. The cards then received their own Magic-flavored (aka Universes Within) versions three years later in Wilds of Eldraine.
Warhammer 40k (2022) was the first Universes Beyond product to push outside of Secret Lair drops in the form of four Commander decks full of brand-new, mechanically unique cards. (There were three Secret Lair drops, too.) The release helped Magic’s tabletop revenue grow 40% in Q4 2022 thanks to tons of reorders (and thus reprints) of the product and marked the beginning of the flood of third-party IPs in Magic.
The next collaboration, with Doctor Who (2023), followed the same blueprint as that with Warhammer 40k. It featured four Commander decks and two Secret Lair drops and added Collector Boosters to the mix. Those boosters included special variants of the Doctor Who cards such as the alternate TARDIS frame variant.
The next two years will feature a ton of additional Universes Beyond collaborations. Magic’s next in-universe set, The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, will be released on November 17, 2023, and include special Jurassic Park cards to go along with Ixalan’s dinosaur theme. In 2024, Assassin’s Creed will get a special release made up of new “Beyond Boosters.” After that, 2025 will be packed with collaborations: Final Fantasy is scheduled to have a full “tentpole” release arrive sometime during that year, and now we know that the first Marvel set will also be released in 2025.