Netflix Officially Finds the Perfect ‘Witcher’ Replacement for Fantasy Fans

One of the best parts of Netflix’s The Witcher when it first premiered in 2019 was all the different creatures roaming around The Continent and terrorizing its inhabitants. Although Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) was roped into a larger conspiracy and adventure, there was an irresistible appeal to the loose monster-of-the-week format, as he fulfilled his dangerous role as a witcher. From the insect-like swamp creature called kikimora to the less intangible but still mesmerizing djinn, the creatures were as diverse as they were uniquely ominous. They fleshed out the magical universe and were one of the main reasons the show was so immersive.

But with the fifth and final season of The Witcher approaching, fantasy fans will undoubtedly need another fix of their love for creative, dangerous monsters. Luckily, Netflix has already announced the perfect replacement, the long-awaited series adaptation of the popular tabletop card game, Magic: The Gathering. If you haven’t had the pleasure of playing the game, the animated show, which is in production, will still be the ideal must-watch for fantasy fans. It hosts a wide variety of creatures, characters, and magical objects, all necessary to build a vibrant world, and from there, potential storylines to get swept away in.

‘Magic: The Gathering’ Offers World-Building and Adventure at Its Finest

For those who are unfamiliar with Magic, it was first created by Richard Garfield in 1993 and is often recognized as the world’s first trading card game. Within it are different classes of creatures, enchantments, artifacts, equipment, sorceries, instant spells, tokens, and lands that are played in a turn-based fashion while operating on a mana system, where the amount of mana (essentially, a spiritual kind of currency) a player has will dictate the moves they can play. Already, you get a sense of the sheer variety of fantasy elements within the basic game, let alone when you incorporate characters like the powerful Planeswalkers or dice that completely alter the battlefield.

After sticking around for decades, Magic has an endless supply of ideas for the show’s creators and writers to draw from, making it brimming with potential for a riveting high fantasy series. The cards are often released in sets, with each one almost acting as a portal to another genre, so while the show’s foundation may remain in the realm of high fantasy, there is plenty of room for genre-bending and diversity. From huge dragons with impossible stats equipped with golden armor, steampunk artifacts that can decimate everything on the battleground, to horror creatures that can rise from the graveyard, the kinds of communities, threats, and visuals available for adaptation are vast. This is all threaded together with five distinct biomes (plains, forests, islands, swamps and mountains), each laying the foundation for effective and immersive world-building.

‘Magic: The Gathering’ Is Just One of Many Recent Hollywood Adaptations

Recently, video game adaptations like The Last of Us or Sonic the Hedgehog have been on the rise, and we even got a brilliant film adaptation of the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, but how do you adapt a tabletop card game? What we know so far is that the show will be focusing on Planeswalkers, who are arguably the most powerful characters in the game that depict figures with unique abilities and backstories that can — as the name suggests — traverse across dimensions. They will act as the fittingly dark and complex characters that drive the storylines, while the show will also be crossing different planes and drawing on the lore of their specific world within the Magic multiverse. The main concern is being able to execute a plot that is faithful to the extensive lore and diversity of the original, while connecting the markedly distinct worlds coherently and convincingly.

That being said, it’s a wonder that Magic hasn’t been adapted before, especially since now fans are being spoiled with a TV show and a film in the works. Hasbro has had the rights to Magic since 1999, and while they attempted to adapt the game, they haven’t had success until now. The last announcement of the game’s adaptation was in 2019, which was going to be a series helmed by the Russo brothers (Avengers: Endgame), but fell through due to creative differences.

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Now, Terry Matalas (Vision Quest) is on board as the showrunner and executive producer for the TV show, while Hasbro is collaborating with Legendary for the movie. With a plan to go down the animation route for the series, providing more freedom to showcase the breadth of magic, adapting the visual element of the game has hardly been an issue. Additionally, Magic has routinely done crossover sets by collaborating with the likes of Marvel or Lord of the Rings, so it’s surprising the script wasn’t flipped and no one decided to translate the card game to the screen until now.

Either way, Magic has been patiently waiting for its turn, and in that time, it has transformed from a basic tabletop game to a sprawling multiverse of unimaginable powers and creativity, or, as Matalas puts it, “the ultimate storytelling sandbox.” Whether you’re a longtime player or a fantasy fan, this potentially epic saga needs to be on your radar, and soon, you too will be batting alongside some of the most iconic characters of this world and shaking your head in admiration at a series that is egregiously overdue.