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It’s been a big week for news for the Magic community between the new booster pack setup, the unionization announcement, and perhaps most widely, the announcement of Darkhold Destiny this past weekend at NY Comic Con. I think that the booster packs and union stuff are really important and we’ll be covering them in the coming weeks, but something about the new Universes Beyond announcement seemed absolutely absurd in a way that needs more discussion.
Wizards used this set to create a new original story for Marvel’s characters. You should let that sink in for a moment because I think it marks a drastic shift in both the future of the Universes Beyond product line as well as the Magic story itself. The three burning questions I have are, is this the new normal, how will it impact the Magic story, and where is this all going?
Will this be the New Normal for Universes Beyond?
It’s actually kind of shocking this hasn’t happened before, especially when you consider Dungeons & Dragons is owned by the same company and wouldn’t have required a third-party approval for a new story. Sure, some sets obviously wouldn’t have worked out this way, or made sense, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Avatar: the Last Airbender, where the stories are mostly tied to traditional television production.
So why now? What’s different about Darkhold Destiny? When talking with Wizards at NYCC it became clear that they really saw the overlap of Magic’s creative focus and the magical part of the Marvel universe as something that lined up very nicely. At the panel the team showed off the tokens and honed in on the inclusion of creatures like the 2/2 black Zombie, 1/1/ green Elf, and 3/3 white Angel as tokens that could show up in any Magic set and feel like Magic.
Adventures in the Forgotten Realms had similar commonalities with 3/3 white Angel, 2/2 black Zombie, 1/1 red Goblin, and 2/2 green Wolf tokens. I think that would have been a great opportunity for the Magic creative team to take a crack at storytelling in Faerun and I wonder if that could be on the table in the future now that Darkhold Destiny is paving the way.
The reality is that if you just look at tokens, a lot of sets have a lot of overlap with Magic, because we’re making Magic sets, but these things feel at home in many settings. Magic’s story is great, but outside of Planeswalkers it isn’t really re-inventing the fantasy genre that came before it. The Hobbit has 1/1 white Human Soldiers, 6/6 red Dragons, 1/1 green Elves, and 2/2 green Wolves. Marvel Super Heroes has 1/1 white Soldiers, 1/1 blue Merfolk, 1/1 green Squirrel and 1/1 green Insect tokens.
But some are definitely pretty far removed, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Avatar: the Last Airbender, and Final Fantasy which had very little token overlap.
Additionally, this set focuses on characters who are inherently magical. Doctor Strange is an all-powerful spellcaster and Thor is a powerful deity. Hela is the embodiment of death and Dormammu is a demonic entity. This could have been Jace and Heliod vs. Belzenlok and Erebos and felt right at home in the Magic story. The conflicts between our magical heroes and their dark elf and daemonic foes is pure fantasy storytelling.
So the fit is clear, but is this a one-time deal or will we see more storytelling in Universes Beyond products? My guess is it will happen again, but don’t expect it more than every few years, after all, there’s another story to tell!
What does this mean for the Magic Story?
Obviously Reality Fracture ended with quite the bang and the Magic Story is in an interesting position, similar to the end of the War of the Spark. The next few expansions will be Star Trek (November), Nauctis: the Sunken Realm (February), Darkhold Destiny (April), Kamigawa: Titanbreach (June), an untitled Universes Beyond set in August, Zhalfir (October), and one more untitled Universes Beyond set in November.
Since Darkhold Destiny is getting a full story, if you add in the three main Magic sets (Nauctis, Kamigawa, and Zhalfir) then we’re getting four new stories from the Magic creative team this year. To put that in perspective, 2026 so far has had Reality Fracture, Secrets of Strixhaven, and Lorwyn Eclipsed. In 2025 we had original stories in Edge of Eternities, Tarkir: Dragonstorm, and Aetherdrift. You have to go back to 2024 when we had Duskmourn, Bloomburrow, Outlaws of Thunder Junction, and Murders at Karlov Manor for a calendar year that featured four original stories from the Magic team.
Obviously the proliferation of Universes Beyond product has crowded out mainline Magic sets but three stories a year is usually the norm. Before universes beyond, and back in the “block” era, we’d get three block sets with stories (really three chapters of a single story) and then a core or supplemental set. So 3 or 4 stories a year was the norm.
So four stories will be nice, and it will be great to have a real story for a UB product, but I don’t expect any significant impact to the Magic story as a result.
Where is this Going?
How many more Marvel sets can there be? With the Soul Stone and Mind Stone already out and now the Time Stone coming in Dakhold Destiny, there’s only three more Infinity Stones to print. So there’s likely only three more Marvel sets after Darkhold Destiny yeah?
I wouldn’t be so sure. Marvel and Magic are clearly a match made for each other and let’s be honest, Marvel has years and years of content to explore beyond the existing two (almost three) sets and beyond. Spider-Man got his own set, do you think Wolverine, or the Hulk, couldn’t do the same?
The missing heroes from Marvel Superheroes paints a pretty clear picture of what’s yet to come. Darkhold Destiny fills out a lot of the roster but we’re still missing the X-Men which will almost certainly be one of the remaining sets. My money would be on another NYC focused set, maybe featuring the local heroes popularized by Netflix and Disney+ content. That leaves one more infinity stone which could truly be anything.
But if Wizards wants to find more opportunities and write more stories? Why wouldn’t Marvel let them pay for the privilege? If you ask me, Magic is going to be making Marvel sets until the game is 90.
Rich Stein (He/Him) has been playing Magic since 1994 and reading comic books even longer. He fell in love with Marvel’s occult and arcana as a child when he bought his first issues of Ghost Rider with Danny Ketch in the early 90’s and never looked back. He plans on using this space in all of his articles between now and April to convince Wizards to let him preview any Danny Ketch cards. If Rich was in charge of Universes Beyond there would be an entire Ghost Rider set.