Last week, Brandon Routh, the only confirmed actor for Magic: The Gathering’s Netflix series, told Collider that the show wasn’t happening. This animated series was supposed to air in late 2022, but it never emerged, and we all feared the worst. Now it turns out it’s not canceled after all, as during Netflix’s Geeked Week the company released a teaser for the project.
In this image, we can see two MTG planeswalkers silhouetted against a red sky, with embers flying all around. One of them is clearly Ajani: Magic doesn’t have two lion-man heroes who wield a great big double-headed axe.
The other is slightly less obvious, but given that it appears to be a woman with short hair holding a fireball, it can only really be Chandra. These would make sense as protagonists; they are, after all, two of the most recognisable characters Magic can muster.
Along with the teaser image, Netflix has revealed that Terry Matalas (12 Monkeys, Star Trek Picard) is the new showrunner for the series. The MTG Netflix show was originally going to be produced by the Russo brothers (of Marvel fame), but in August 2021 it was announced the whole creative team had been swapped out, apparently parting amicably due to differing visions for adapting the IP.
The show was then placed in the hands of Jeff Kline, writer-producer of a bunch of animated series. It seems like for whatever reason that didn’t work out either. Can you say ‘development hell’?
The Kline version of the Magic: The Gathering Netflix series was going to be centered around Gideon Jura, who would be played by Brandon Routh. During the MTG showcase in August 2021, a Wizards of the Coast rep said the scripts had been finalized and the voice talent cast, while Routh’s comments suggest he had recorded lines for the series.
But since Routh thought the whole thing was off, and the new teaser features Chandra and Ajani instead of Gideon, we can safely assume the latest iteration of the TV show has taken a different direction.
If this single, not very illuminating picture is all Netflix has to show us, it’s also probably fair to say that the Magic: The Gathering Netflix series is not just around the corner, but apparently it’s “now in production”. Perhaps the company is wary of revealing too much too early, given how much has already changed about the series.
However, is it just me, or does this teaser smack of something that was hastily thrown together. We wonder if Netflix only released it to put to bed the idea that the show was canceled.
For more content, check out our MTG release schedule to see all sorts of information on upcoming Magic: The Gathering sets like Duskmourn and MTG Foundations.
Source: Wargamer
