Planeswalker, Netflix’s Magic: The Gathering animated series, will have a different art style for each plane

Netflix’s Magic: The Gathering series was initially announced in 2019 with the MCU’s Russo Brothers at the helm, though they left a couple of years later thanks to the all-purpose “creative differences”. That was all we heard until 2024 until Brandon Routh, who had been cast as planeswalker Gideon Jura, casually mentioned in an unrelated interview that the project had been binned.

Netflix announced soon after that actually the animated series was a go, now with Terry Matalas of Star Trek: Picard and the 12 Monkeys TV series as its head showrunner, with a teaser image showing pyromancer Chandra and leonin Ajani Goldmane silhouetted against a red sky.

Now, a mere seven years after the first reveal, there’s a “sneak peek” trailer with a bunch of excited Wizards of the Coast staff, art labeled “early development”, and a few seconds of Ajani and Chandra doing their stuff.

The most intriguing part is when, over a montage of 3D props including a car that looks like an art deco Batmobile from New Capenna, executive producer and supervising director Patrick Osborne says, “All the planes exist in their own pocket universe. That comes with culture, design language, architecture, and we’re even making the film-making style different depending on where it is.”

That’s a good idea. An animated series with different art styles for each plane the characters travel to would be a great way of representing Magic, a card game where every artist gets to put their own spin on how things look. “Each one of these cards is this window into this incredible world,” Matalas says in the trailer. “It’s not just world building—it’s worlds building.”

As for the plot, Netflix’s release sums it up as Chandra and a party of planeswalkers trying to prevent a war from consuming the entire multiverse. So a nicely low-stakes story then. It’s scheduled for release in 2027. There’s a live-action Magic: The Gathering movie still apparently in the works as well.