bingewatches

After wrapping up 30 years of plot with the Avengers: Endgame-style crossover set March of the Machines, Magic: The Gathering’s storytelling has taken a backseat in the past few years. Wizards of the Coast increased its focus on Universes Beyond sets based on popular IP like Final Fantasy, The Lord of the Rings, and Doctor Who. Even when Magic returned to its own world of Planeswalkers, the game mostly focused on taking the characters through a series of genres from the Wild West to a Gothic murder mystery. With little changing beyond how the heroes and villains dressed, these releases have become dismissively dubbed “hat sets,” with fantasy powerhouse and Magic superfan Brandon Sanderson comparing them to having the game’s iconic characters playacting on a Star Trek holodeck.

Now, Magic seems to be trying to get back to the rich worldbuilding that enamored fans to places like Ravnica, Tarkir, and Dominaria with Edge of Eternities, a space opera-inspired set releasing on Aug. 1. To introduce fans to the new setting, The Traitor Baru Cormorant and Exordia author Seth Dickinson is penning a choose-your-own-adventure-style story that released its second chapter on June 24. The tale follows Sami, a down-on-their-luck ship’s captain searching for a lost cat. A sketchy job takes them to a mining planet that may or may not be abandoned, but is certainly deeply creepy.

Between the story and a Planeswalker’s Guide to Edge of Eternities that goes more in-depth on factions and the mechanics of space travel, the Sothera system feels like one of the weirdest worlds Magic has built in years. Sothera is a star that was set to go supernova in 200 years, leading to a United Federation of Planets-like spacefaring alliance called Pinnacle arriving to try to help evacuate and preserve knowledge that would otherwise be lost when the sun engulfed its planets. Instead, a religious order called Monoists turned the sun into a supervoid, a black hole that still emits some light and heat, creating a new front in a long-running holy war between them and the knights of the Celestial Palatinate, who have little regard for anyone caught in the middle of their crusade.

The Monoist’s plan to unite supervoids to reach the realm of a prophet known as the Immortal Faller unleash a perfect future, seems like it might have big implications for Magic lore. This world of Edge of Eternities was already the site of a major conflict involving the Eldrazi and the Fomori, a new faction introduced in Outlaws of Thunder Junction that Jace seems very interested in. So does the always scheming Tezzeret, who now has his own ship and is trying to learn everything he can with the help of someone called Mm’menon. The name is evocative of Memnarch, so could Mm’menon possibly be another creation of the Mirari? The fiction contains sly ties to other sets: slivers are portrayed as fictional creatures akin to the Alien franchise’s xenomorphs, while Sami’s cat is named Mirri, like the cat warrior of the iconic Weatherlight Saga.

The best Magic sets are battles between factions with richer identities than just creature type, and Edge of Eternities seems to be going this route. Beyond the warring faiths and Pinnacle, the new lore introduces a sentient version of Dominaria’s Kavu, a private research group studying something mysterious, terraforming bug people, space angels, and androids. Faster than light travel involves weftwalking, which might be like planeswalking except all cats can do it. The setting is rich for opportunities for adventure, intrigue, and exploration from the asteroid belt populated by enormous greatwurms, to a space station where people from all over the galaxy mingle, to a windswept planet where almost all the animals fly.

But perhaps the best part of the worldbuilding is that the only Planeswalkers confirmed so far are the always scheming Tezzeret and maybe also the silver golem Karn, since Sami is working for someone called the Metalman. It’s a relief to see Magic caring about building something new rather than just leaning on genre tropes and its large cast of established characters. Overall, it’s been years since Magic: The Gathering has presented a setting so rich in lore and so different from everything else in the franchise’s established imaginary. The Edge seems to be a microcosm physically separated from Magic’s Multiverse (at least according to Tezzeret’s speculation), which, creatively speaking, feels like a bold statement of intent.

The next chapter in Dickinson’s story will shift perspective, so hopefully it continues this trend rather than just pivoting to Jace flying a spaceship.