Warning: This editorial includes extensive spoilers for the ongoing Magic: the Gathering story. If you are avoiding spoilers for the Tarkir: Dragonstorm story, or really any part of the Magic story since basically the beginning, maybe avoid reading this one. It mostly covers events since the story from Phyrexia: All Will be One, but also discusses events in older set stories including Ixalan, multiple Ravnica sets, and delves a bit back into the earlier Magic story that revolved around Urza Planeswalker. This is the last spoiler warning that this article will include, so please bookmark and come back later if you’re not prepared.
Sometimes the Magic story is absolutely incredible, so incredibly in fact that you feel compelled to toss away however many hundreds or thousands of words you’ve written about other topics for your weekly editorial column just so you can fawn over the storytelling. Friday’s drop of Tarkir: Dragonstorm Episode 6: How Wretched Love, by Cassandra Khaw, was one of those moments.
With several exceptions, the Magic Story has been primarily told through short stories shared on the Wizards website since 2014. This has allowed the creators of the story to cover a much wider breadth of characters and worlds than they could under the previous model that focused on set-connected novel releases. The result is that the stories end up serving two purposes.
First, they tell the story that reinforces the aesthetic, flavor text, art, names, and themes that appear on the cards of the related set. In this case that would be Tarkir: Dragonstorm. This gives fans some connective tissue so when they open a pack and see Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant, or Narset, Jeskai Waymaster, they have more context for who the characters are. When they see cards like Barrensteppe Siege or Rally the Monastery, if they’ve read the story, they can perhaps better imagine the conflict between the Abzan and the Mardu forces, or relate the card art back to the story moment where a dragon attacks a Jeskai monastery.
Second, there is a bigger story being told, similar to in comic books, where there is a connecting arc between the events of one set to the next. For the Magic story these connecting arcs tend to last several years. This allows for smaller stories where natives to the planes (and sometimes non-natives) resolve a conflict confined to that plane, while there are connecting story components that move along the story of large groups of planeswalkers (and sometimes non-planeswalkers) resolving a conflict that involves more than one plane, and often addresses issues that affect the entire multiverse.
This is also similar to how the Marvel Cinematic Universe manages their storytelling. Content like Iron Man tells the story of Iron Man solving Iron Man problems but also pulls on the threads of Avengers stories. A great example of this in the Magic story is the Ixalan block story (Ixalan and Rivals of Ixalan) which tells the tale of Jace and Vraska’s search for the Golden Sun but also pulls on the threads of the larger story that would ultimately conclude with War of the Spark.
The Tarkir: Dragonstorm story marks the fourth time Wizards is concluding a multi-year story arc, and I would argue they’ve made significant improvements over the previous three major story arc conclusions. I’m so impressed I’m even writing about it before the final chapter of the story drops (which should be the same day this editorial goes live). What’s likely very impressive about this story arc is that it’s really the first one that not only follows the arc preceding it, but also draws from the threads of the arcs that came before as well.
I promised spoilers so here they are. When it is revealed to Narset (1st appeared in Dragons of Tarkir, 2015) and Elspeth (1st appeared in Shards of Alara, 2008) that Jace Beleren (1st appeared in Lorwyn, 2007) and Ugin (1st appeared in Worldwake, 2010 on Eye of Ugin) have been conspiring to keep Nicol Bolas (1st appeared in Legends, 1994) alive, and deceived the rest of their friends into thinking the elder dragon was dead, it was the payoff of years, and years, and years of storytelling leading up to this moment, the moment where Jace is willing to sacrifice the safety of the multiverse to try to undo the events of the Phyrexian Invasion.
It’s a lot to take in. The story moments along the way that bring us from the inception of these characters, through their trials and tribulations with the Eldrazi, Nicol Bolas, Phyrexia, and now ultimately Jace himself (something about living long enough to see yourself become the villain) has created one of the more impressive story payoffs not just in the Magic story but perhaps across this fledgling genre of MCU-style storytelling.
The closest analogue I could come up with would be Marvel’s Incursions/Secret Wars event which was crafted by Jonathan Hickman and primarily spans comic stories from 2012 to 2015 but also has deeper background seeds planted in Hickman’s run on Fantastic Four beginning in 2009 and ended up spanning multiple smaller story arcs including 2014’2 Marvel Infinity, and 2015’s Original Sin before having its own prologue event called Time Runs Out featuring various characters from around the Marvel universe.
I wish the Magic story had a better title for these kinds of multi-year arcs. A few of them are obvious such as War of the Spark and March of the Machine. The story arc prior to War of the Spark could be titled Oath of the Gatewatch as it primarily deals with the forming of planeswalker super-teams. But what about the current arc? The Omen(paths)? Jace Beleren Kills the Magic Universe? The Loot Saga?
Whatever we end up calling it, I can’t help but wonder if this is actually the end of what would aptly be called the Planeswalker era of storytelling. Tarkir: Dragonstorm is in many, many ways a culmination of the story that began with Nicol Bolas’s return to the mortal plane as part of The Mending story that took place alongside the release of Time Spiral. We’ve now come full circle as planeswalkers have continued to meddle in the multiverse and all of existence could be ready to shatter.
And then we’ll move on to Final Fantasy. Will there be a story to go with Final Fantasy? Given the implications of intellectual property and licensing I’m guessing not. Then in August, we will get Edge of Eternities, the first mainline Magic set with a space setting. After that it’s Spider-Man and then Avatar: the Last Airbender. With only one “Magic IP” set in the next four releases, there’s probably never been a better time for the story team to take a victory lap.
Wouldn’t it be something if the story for Edge of Eternities was a remote outpost, a million years in the future, and some weird little archaeologist goblin digger stumbles on the skull of Nicol Bolas… and it says, “Hello?”
Ed. Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly claimed that Elspeth first appeared in Scars of Mirrodin when she actually first appeared in Shards of Alara.
Rich Stein (He/Him) is the President of Hipsters of the Coast. He has been playing Magic the Gathering since Ice Age and has been writing about it since Return to Ravnica. His competitive resume consists of this one time he finished in the top 16 of an SCG Open, and the time he beat Darwin Kastle at a Time Spiral Sealed Grand Prix by using Avalanche Riders. Rich has never made day two of a Grand Prix, but he has gone 7-0 in the MTG Arena Chromatic Cube.