When Wizards of the Coast announced it was creating a Magic: The Gathering Secret Lair for the children’s cartoon Spongebob Squarepants, my reaction, like that of so many other Magic fans with miserly, small-hearted natures, was to puff and groan.
In fairness, it’s hard to think of many properties that would be a worse tonal fit for the trading card game than Spongebob, even if its science fantasy setting has been switched up in recent MTG sets for experimental dabblings with other genres. My ire was calmed when Avatar The Last Airbender was announced, though: I was more than happy to take the bad with the good.
But now the Spongebob Secret Lairs (turns out there’s three of them) have been revealed, and it’s not nearly as bad as I’d feared. There are basically three reasons for that. The first is: one of the drops has cards that are entirely focused on internet memes. Even the most cynical player can surely get a chuckle out of the mocking Spongebob meme on a counterspell, and even the regular version has humor: for instance Patrick Starfish is just a terrible vanilla legend.
Realistically, I think these cards are still going to be pretty divisive, but I’m coming down firmly on the positive side. I’m way more on board with Wizards of the Coast leaning into the silliness of this crossover rather than trying to ‘play it straight’.
The second point in this drop’s favor is that this MTG Universes Beyond release doesn’t have unique cards; instead it’s just reskinned reprints. This is the best way to do these smaller batches of UB cards, I think. I’m not a fan of mechanically unique cards in Secret Lairs with their limited availability, and this approach is pretty much just official card alters – fairly inoffensive.
Finally, the third Spongebob drop, named Lands Under the Sea, is just straight up good art. You wouldn’t even realize it was tied to Spongebob at first, but the omnipresence of Gary the Snail helps tie the collection together.
Since I’ve never been a massive Spongebob fan, I’m probably not going to pay the $29.99 to get these packs of cards, nor $89.97 for all three (though perhaps there’ll be a bundle deal). But if you wanted to, they’ll be on sale from the SL website on March 24, 2025.
As well as the five meme cards in Internet Sensation, there’s seven cards in Legends of Bikini Bottom which reimagine the most famous Spongebob characters as popular Magic legends, and then there’s a full playset of five lands in Lands Under the Sea. All three collections will go on sale at 9 AM PT.
For more Magic: The Gathering news, check out our MTG release schedule or check out our guides to upcoming sets like MTG Final Fantasy and Tarkir Dragonstorm.
Source: Wargamer
