Magic: The Gathering May Have Pulled The Trigger Too Soon…

2025 is one of the busiest years in recent memory for Magic: The Gathering, with a total of six Standard-legal sets being released and one dedicated to reprints from the Innistrad block. While not all players are happy about the change to Universes Beyond becoming legal in Standard, they are a big part of the game now, between all the hype and interest they generate and the fact that they sometimes introduce interesting mechanics tied to their original IPs. Yet, one of the MTG sets coming in 2025 may have been revealed a tad too soon, or rather, its "spoiler season" started only to end abruptly shortly thereafter.

Currently, Wizards of the Coast is revealing new cards for the upcoming Edge of Eternities expansion, which is scheduled to be released in full on August 1, with the prerelease events starting in less than a week, on July 25. The spoiler season for Magic: The Gathering's Edge of Eternities cards fully began on July 8, a little over three weeks since the set's official release, but this is not always the case for all expansions. MTG's Avatar: The Last Airbender crossover is a perfect example, with the first (and so far, only) card from the set being revealed in June, whereas the set will come out in November.

Magic: The Gathering is Crossing Over With Avatar The Last Airbender

Magic: the Gathering has officially announced its next major "Universes Beyond" crossover, bringing Avatar: the Last Airbender to the card game.

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By Michael Brandon Ingram

Magic: The Gathering's Avatar Aang Card May Be Too Little, Too Soon

Magic: The Gathering's Avatar crossover is making cards surge in value thanks to the sheer power of Avatar Aang's flip side, called Aang, Master of Elements. This card can make all spell cost WUBRG less to play, meaning 1 fewer mana of each color, and combined with some older cards like Fist of Suns and Searing Touch, it can be a recipe for winning games with relative ease. As strong and thematic as the new Aang card is, Wizards of the Coast kept its text partly a secret.

Why Revealing Avatar MTG Cards Now May Be a Problem

In fact, the rules regarding the new element-bending mechanic in Magic: The Gathering are unknown, but it's obviously going to be a big part of the whole Avatar set and not just a gimmick for Aang. Considering that the so-called spoiler season for MTG sets typically starts around one month before their release, with some exceptions being a couple of months, instead, the crossover Avatar expansion is already breaking this "rule" of sorts by a huge margin. Barring changes to the schedule, the Avatar set is going to be released on November 21, whereas the new Aang card was revealed as early as June 20.

This is a whopping five months before the set's release, and while one of the likely factors to consider is that this was revealed at Magic Con in Las Vegas, it was arguably still a bit too soon to talk about Avatar: The Last Airbender cards before Edge of Eternities was even revealed in more detail. Considering that there is yet another set coming after Edge of Eternities in the form of Magic: The Gathering's UB Spider-Man set slated for September 26, it's plausible that more Avatar spoilers won't come until then, or maybe early October.

It's worth noting that six Spider-Man MTG cards were also revealed several months in advance, so this may be the new norm for UB sets with the current release schedule.

It does make sense to discuss Avatar Aang in Magic: The Gathering formats like Commander before its release, but at the same time, this card's reveal has already made multiple cards change in value, when this is mostly tied to speculation due to the current unknowable nature of the element-bending mechanic. Given that the Avatar set will be Standard-legal, it's plausible that waterbending, earthbending, firebending, and airbending will each have moderate requirements to achieve, so Aang, Master of Elements, will indeed be powerful. However, with the mechanic being up to speculation as well as all the other cards in the set, all the hype generated by the Avatar set may die down before it rears its head again.

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