Star Trek’s Best Showrunner Heads To Netflix For Magic: The Gathering

Terry Matalas was announced as the showrunner for the Magic: The Gathering animated series coming to Netflix. Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast have their hands in this as well. It’s been a long time coming, considering the project was first announced all the way back in 2019 and has gone through more than a few different leadership changes in that time span. 

But the time and delay seem more than worth it if Terry Matalas is going to see this through to the finish line. His most recent work came as showrunner for Star Trek: Picard for the third and final season of the Patrick Stewart series.

While the show went through its ebbs and flows through the three seasons, fans agreed that the final set of stories was the strongest on the show. Terry Matalas joined the series in Season 2 and led it through the end of the third season. Previously, he had worked on Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise in various production roles. 

For Star Trek: Picard, Terry Matalas wrote and directed “The Last Generation,” the series finale. The show brought to a close a number of nostalgic elements of the franchise, paying homage to much of what had come before. From this standpoint, many agreed Terry Matalas understood the assignment. 

As far as Magic: The Gathering on Netflix is concerned, Terry Matalas isn’t the first name in the mix for this project. The Russo brothers were attached as of 2022, but ultimately left because of creative differences. And there even seemed to be some concern the series wasn’t going to happen at all. That came after Brandon Routh, who was cast a lead, said that it might not happen. 

Details about Terry Matalas and the Magic: The Gathering series are few and far between on a story front, but considering the crazy depth of the game, there are any number of directions to take stories about the Planeswalkers. Different seasons could explore different planes or feature specific characters from the game. There’s an overwhelming wealth of source material here for sure. 

Frankly, it could be this latter piece which has become a sticking pointing in the Magic: The Gathering series production over the years. There is so much to work with that disagreements about path and story are sure to have cropped up.

In that way, it’s not all that dissimilar to Dungeons & Dragons planned productions over the years. Because the franchise is around a dynamic game and not a book or video game, the world is wide open.

Here’s to hoping Terry Matalas sticks with the gig and brings to Magic: The Gathering what he brought to Star Trek. 

Source: Variety