Final Fantasy was a success, but Marvel's Spider-Man not so much, in this new era for Magic: The Gathering.
2025 has been a watershed moment for Magic: The Gathering. For the first time ever, Universes Beyond sets are making an appearance in Magic: The Gathering’s Standard format, despite reassurances from Wizards of the Coast a few years ago that Universes Beyond sets will not appear in the Standard format.
What is Universes Beyond, and why was it not a part of the Standard format?
For the uninitiated, Universes Beyond sets consist of characters, stories, and world-building from other IPs that are not a part of Magic: The Gathering’s own stories. This has resulted in a huge multitude of characters appearing as Magic cards over the last few years, from The Walking Dead in 2020, to the latest Avatar: The Last Airbender in 2025.
The Standard format was always meant to be the starting point for new Magic: The Gathering players, as its frequent rotation of cards means that the card pool for competitive play always remains small and relatively lower in power, making it ideal for beginners to dip their toes into what is arguably the world’s biggest card game.
However, the reasons for Wizards' exclusion of Universes Beyond cards in Standard were never very clear (it was only explained that Universes Beyond are “above, and, well, beyond (their) normal Standard releases”). Wizards had previously released Universes Beyond sets for the Modern format, and outside of the wildly successful Lords of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth set, the rest of the series were not as memorable.
Final Fantasy enters the fray
In the year 2025, Wizards of the Coast announced that several Universes Beyond set will be Standard legal starting from Final Fantasy in June, thus marking a huge turning point for Magic: The Gathering. The release of Final Fantasy turned out to be a massive success for Magic: The Gathering in many ways. According to Hasbro's second quarter earnings report in 2025, Final Fantasy is already Magic: The Gathering's highest-grossing set ever.
The set also brought in many fans of Final Fantasy unfamiliar with Magic: The Gathering to the game. Hasbro reported that the set has brought in a record new player growth, with more new players joining the game in the first two weeks of Final Fantasy's release, compared to any other set over the course of an entire season. Anecdotally, this writer has also observed many more new players trying out Magic: The Gathering since the Final Fantasy set was released.
The Final Fantasy set was also obviously designed with a lot of love for the games; the set featured new original artwork from the original Final Fantasy artists such as Yoshitaka Amano and Tetsuya Nomura, while many cards such as Rhystic Study featured iconic scenes straight from the popular franchise. Many of these cards are now chase cards for both collectors and players alike, and the demand for them remains high.
The set has its own share of issues, of course, although they mostly revolve around the potentially game-breaking card Vivi Ornitier. Despite almost instantly dominating Standard tournaments after the release of Final Fantasy, it took Wizards quite a while before they finally banned the card in November.
There were many things to like about the Final Fantasy set, and the set seemed like an ideal blueprint for what a Universes Beyond set in Standard should look like… until Marvel’s Spider-Man came out in September.
Spider-Man swings into the picture
For all of the success of Final Fantasy, Marvel’s Spider-Man was the opposite. For one, none of the tabletop cards from Marvel's Spider-Man could make its way into Magic: The Gathering Arena and Magic: The Gathering Online (probably due to a licencing issue). The entirety of the set had to be represented digitally as a new Through the Omenpaths set with different art and names, while retaining the mechanics of the cards from Marvel's Spider-Man.
The cards in Marvel’s Spider-Man also felt half-baked; it was originally designed to just be a small set of 100 cards, similar to the previously-released Assassins’ Creed set. It was also not meant to be a draftable set, with its small card pool and the lack of cards in the Common rarity.
However, with Marvel’s Spider-Man eventually becoming a Standard legal set, Wizards had to expand the set’s card pool so that players could draft with the set. Despite that, the set was underwhelming when it was released: players have complained that there was not a lot of synergy among cards in the set, and it was not a very enjoyable set to draft.
Perhaps the biggest criticism centered around how Marvel's Spider-Man fundamentally did not feel like a Magic: The Gathering set. With cards like Hot Dog Cart and Taxi Driver now released and available for play, they just fall foul of the high fantasy worlds players have associated Magic: The Gathering with. While Magic: The Gathering has already broken some of its own immersion with previous in-world sets like Outlaws of Thunder Junction and Edge of Eternities (in the genres of western and space fantasy, respectively), Marvel's Spider-Man was doing so with entirely ordinary everyday things that players can interact with in their own daily lives.
The outlook of Magic: The Gathering in 2026
With Wizards of the Coast announcing that there will be four Universes Beyond Standard legal sets releasing in 2026 (namely Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Marvel Super Heroes, The Hobbit, and Star Trek), there are now going be more Universes Beyond sets than in-world sets for the first time in a year.
Whether the reception to the upcoming sets will be positive, as seen with Final Fantasy, remains to be seen (or negative, like with Marvel's Spider-Man). Still, the question remains: will Magic: The Gathering fans eventually get tired of the ever increasing collaborations, or will it evolve into something else, with a new and very different fan base appreciating its crossover of different IPs?
2026 is likely the year we'll all inch closer to the answer, but players will come to remember 2025 as the year that started it all, and for better or worse, the year that brought us Tifa squaring off against Spider-Man in the Standard format.
