For the second year in a row, New York Comic Con served as a launching pad for a new Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond expansion. While 2025's reveal focused on four teenage turtles, this year's panel revealed Marvel Darkhold Destiny, a deep dive into the more mystical elements of the Marvel universe.
To learn more about the mechanics, monsters, and magic of this new Marvel set, we sat down with lead designer Mark Rosewater, narrative designer Dillon Deveney, art director Merideth Mulroney, and Marvel director of product development Jesse Falcon. We spoke about the right time to launch this new set, the brand-new character debuting in the cards and comics, and a returning mechanic that many old-school Magic fans haven't seen in decades.
Picking the right moment
As Darkhold Destiny was being revealed, one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind was how closely it marries both Magic: The Gathering and Marvel, a first for the Marvel-themed releases Magic has seen so far. Considering how thematic this set is, an argument could be made that Darkhold Destiny should have been the first Marvel set released, but Rosewater doesn't see it that way.
"This being the third Marvel set gave us some freedom that it being the first Marvel set would not," Rosewater says. "When we say 'we're doing this property,' there's a certain amount of things you have to deliver right out of the gate. With Marvel, it's 'show me all the characters I know, because I've seen all of the movies,' and while [Darkhold Destiny] is a really cool thing to do, we had to work our way into it, we couldn't just do this right out of the gate."
Deveney says that while this set is "a treat for enfranchised Magic players because it speaks the same language," the team is also relying on newer players brought in by the Spider-Man and Marvel Super Heroes sets to garner excitement. "If we start at only meeting the Magic fan expectation, we run the risk of alienating all the Marvel fans we want to teach how cool our game is, because this set is also going to be a little bit more complex," Deveney says. "There's a bunch of new keywords, we have dimensions and things that don't appear in other Magic sets, etc.
"Part of the effort of Universes Beyond is to hold the door open for new players," Deveney adds. "This set can do that, but since it's difficult to go see a movie and see very few of the characters [in Darkhold Destiny], if you already have a wider awareness of Magic, you are already one layer deeper as an enfranchised fan."
The return of Arcane
Darkhold Destiny marks the return of Arcane, a mechanic that has not been seen in Magic: The Gathering in nearly three decades. Arcane is a subset of instant and sorcery spells that, while appearing in a small number of cards in Marvel Super Heroes, was last prominently featured in 2005's Saviors of Kamigawa. While the mechanic was previously thought to be lost to time--largely due to the companion "Splice onto Arcane" mechanic which is not returning in Darkhold Destiny--the team says this set was a great way to reintroduce the subtype in full.
"Many things were done wrong in [Kamigawa] block, I don't blame the Arcane subtype particularly, and here it was the perfect word," Rosewater said. "We wanted to be able to do some stuff with spells to reward you for casting spells, and we could have made a brand new word, but Arcane was a really good word we already had, and we had been looking for years for a place to put it, and this just seemed like the perfect place.
Deveney compares it to the Lesson mechanic, which returned in 2025's Avatar: The Last Airbender set without its companion mechanic Learn. "Lessons debuted in Strixhaven, and then they returned in Avatar, but we didn't bring Learn back, just the same way we didn't bring Splice Onto Arcane back here," Deveney said. "The subtype was really resonant, and we know that a lot of people do like Arcane, they just don't love Splice Onto Arcane, so it's a way to turn something that maybe is seen as a bug into a feature."
The legend problem
One of the major critiques of the Marvel Super Heroes set was the number of legendary creatures included: Between the main set, the preconstructed Commander decks, and the other supplemental products, 375 legendary creatures debuted in June's superhero set. The design team acknowledges that there have been a lot of legends in recent sets, but they also say that this Marvel set allows more freedom with non-legendary design.
"We want to deliver on what the players want, and in Universes Beyond, they want the characters they know and love," Rosewater said. "I hate the legendary drawback, I just hate it and I've been wanting to get rid of it for 20 years, but at the core of what we do, we want you to open up the thing you're most excited by. That thing could be called 'Spirit of Vengeance,' but people want to be THE Ghost Rider because they want to be Ghost Rider. That said, this set has fewer legends total than some of the other Marvel sets, because there's more mystical monsters and other things we get to do."
Having access to more generic creature types also allows the art design to freely interpret these monsters as they wish. "Marvel let us redesign characters and update their costumes for this set, and it was going so well that we finally said, 'Why don't we just tweak as many creatures as we can?'" Mulroney said. "They let our artists revamp and reimagine things like demons; maybe at first that demon is wearing a bodysuit, but we could then say, 'No, you make it skin, I want to see skin and weirdness, just go at it.'"
That number of legendary creatures will also be impacted by the tighter focus on spells, as is fitting of the overarching theme of the Darkhold and its power. "We want you to feel like a spellcaster," Deveney said, "so there are more instants, sorceries, enchantments, and things that care about them."
A debut with infinite possibilities
Perhaps the most surprising announcement from the New York Comic Con panel was the development of a new, original character within Darkhold Destiny. This character will be highlighted through a special one-off comic story leading up to the set's release, after which they will then appear both in Darkhold Destiny and as part of the broader Marvel universe moving forward.
The idea for a new character, Deveney revealed, came from a need that arose during the storybuilding process. "I was struggling with one part of the story where I really needed something I can't get into right now, as we haven't revealed it yet," Deveney said. "I was trying to find characters to fill this spot, and I felt like I was forcing other characters to do a thing, when they were better off doing what they do best. When we hit this narrative hole, we had this idea, 'Well, if they've already said yes to a new story, will they say yes to a new character?'"
The pitch was successful, though one particularly surprising reason stuck out. "Marvel came back to us and said they actually had a character hole themselves, something they'd been trying to spin out and hadn't found the right home for," Deveney said. "We started to "mind meld" with each other, and eventually we found a throughline of things that both teams needed."
Creating an original character like this also creates a unique problem, thanks to the lack of familiarity with fans of both Magic and Marvel. "With all of the benefits that this opportunity had, we wanted to ensure that we were doing right by both of us, but most importantly, also doing right by the fans. They don't know this character. There's no nostalgia to latch onto," Deveney said. "So we need to really spotlight this character in just enough light where they're not overshadowing the fact that Doctor Strange and Moon Knight and Blade are all here, but it's also a character that's adding enough texture to make people interested in them."
This isn't the first time Marvel has done something like this, as Luna Snow was first introduced by Netmarble in the 2015 mobile game Marvel Future Sight. She debuted in Marvel comics in 2019, and has played a role in the comics storyline ever since. Both sides hope that this new character can follow a similar trajectory.
"We don't want to just make a character because we can, we want this to really be in keeping with our existing stories," Falcon said. "That's what my goal is here with this: once we're done [with Darkhold Destiny], where does this character live? Where can we place this character in other venues moving forward?"
Magic and Marvel fans will meet this new character, along with many of Marvel's more mystical elements, when Darkhold Destiny launches April 9 in local game stores and big-box retailers.