If there’s one thing that defined Magic: The Gathering in 2025, it was controversy. In fact, there’s a pretty good argument that this was one of the game’s most divisive years in its entire 32-year lifespan. This was a year that had everything: broken cards, huge, polarizing systemic changes, and dubious artistic experiments.
The following cards are controversial in their own right, earning plenty of notoriety from the player base. More than that, however, they also represent wider issues that dominated the Magic conversation this year. When players look back on 2025 many years from now, these are the cards that will hold strong in the memory.
6 | Echoing Deeps
One of the stranger controversies that beset Magic this year was the Stellar Sights bonus sheet. Packaged as part of Edge of Eternities, this sheet reprinted a bunch of classic lands with a fresh, space-themed lick of paint. This sheet wasn’t particularly rich in value, which wasn’t a great start, but its bigger problem was an aesthetic one. Put simply, this sheet marked the point where Wizards took alternate card styles too far.
On several Stellar Sights cards, most notably Echoing Deeps, parts of the card’s rules text were obscured by added visual flourishes. We’d seen similar problems before with certain Secret Lair cards, but the fact that these were printed in Standard-legal play boosters amplified the issue. Players ended up taking to social media in droves to slam the sheet, and it’s hard to argue with their position.
As Mark Rosewater noted in the run-up to the set’s release, Stellar Sights definitely crossed a boundary in terms of visuals impeding card functionality. Hopefully, the poor reception this sheet got will prevent the Wizards from trying something similar in the future.
5 | Deadpool, Trading Card
This year saw a number of new, mechanically-unique cards printed in Secret Lair drops. From Sonic characters, to Playstation icons, and even to Spielberg’s infamous Jaws, there was no shortage of Lair-exclusive legends to pine after. Undoubtedly the most impactful of all of these, however, was Deadpool, Trading card, a new staple in high-level Commander, and even a bit player in cEDH.
Because of how powerful Deadpool is in Commander, playing without it can give you a distinct disadvantage. This puts players who don’t enjoy Universes Beyond in a difficult spot. While players could look forward to In-Universe printing in the past, that has gone away this year, highlighting the issue Deadpool represents.
Wizards has issued In-Universe reprints a few times in the past via The List, but since that disappeared, we haven’t seen any of these cards reprinted. Secret Lair exclusives from previous years, like Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, still have players yearning for a second printing. The price tags on these cards have swollen as a result, making them needlessly inaccessible. Unless something changes in 2026, the likes of Deadpool and Jaws will likely go the same way, continuing one of modern Magic’s worst trends.
4 | Cruel Tutor
Stellar Sights wasn’t the only bonus sheet that had Magic players divided this year. Avatar’s source material bonus sheet, which featured direct screenshots from the original show, caused a similar stir for very different reasons. Rather than an issue of functionality, this was one of aesthetics. Simply put, players did not like the art on these cards very much.
The over-zoomed face of Ozai on Cruel Tutor has become the poster child for this problem, but the rest of the sheet had issues, too. The art was too low-resolution and blurry to look good on a Magic card, even when the layout made sense. As a result, this sheet was widely panned and became the only blemish on an otherwise excellent final set for the year.
While they didn’t draw quite as much flak, the source material sheets for Final Fantasy and Spider-Man also had plenty of detractors. Many slammed these for the bizarre artwork chosen, and for feeling like shoddy proxies at their worst. Combine this with an increase in rarity for the cards, and it was a bad year for bonus sheets overall. While Mark Rosewater has confirmed we’ll be seeing more bonus sheets in the future, hopefully Wizards avoids the pitfalls of source material’s debut year going forward.
3 | Cloud, Midgar Mercenary
Perhaps the biggest change that Magic faced in 2025 was fully embracing Universes Beyond as part of the game. Between Final Fantasy, Spider-Man, and Avatar, half of this year’s Standard-legal sets were based on non-Magic properties. This caused a huge stir when it was announced back in 2024, and it continues to be a divisive issue today.
Before this year, Standard was a way for players who didn’t like Universes Beyond to avoid engaging with that side of things. Since all previous Universes Beyond releases were only legal in eternal formats, this worked as a decent compromise. Now, however, it’s pretty much unavoidable. Not only are there a ton of Universes Beyond cards in Standard, but they’re also some of the most powerful cards of the year, too.
Even with both Final Fantasy and Avatar being huge successes, the rise of Universes Beyond is still contentious among players. Mechanically, the pushed power level of Universes Beyond sets is a concern as well. With 2026 actually increasing the number of Universes Beyond sets in Standard, this controversy will likely continue for a while longer yet.
2 | Spectacular Spider-Man
While Aetherdrift was a miss for many, the consensus on the worst Magic set of 2025 is pretty firmly set on Spider-Man. This was a set with a ton of problems, ranging from the structural to issues on the individual card level.
For starters, Spider-Man having to change course and grow in size after being planned as an Aftermath-style release clearly had an impact on its design. The set definitely feels stretched in many places, with many players noting the abundance of countless variant Spider-Men as an issue. This impacted the set’s Limited format, too, which turned out to be both incomplete and extremely unbalanced.
There was also just a lack of exciting new cards in Spider-Man, even for Commander. With a few obvious exceptions, like The Soul Stone and Multiversal Passage, very few cards from the set have made a meaningful impact anywhere. Combined with high product prices that aimed to ride the coattails of Final Fantasy’s success, this left a sour taste in many players’ mouths.
Spider-Man was so poorly-received that it actually threw the status of Wizards’ Universes Beyond experiment into question after its release. While Avatar has since reset the scales, it’s hard to deny this was one of Magic’s lowest lows for 2025.
1 | Vivi Ornitier
While bad bonus sheets and Universes Beyond issues were certainly prominent, they pale in comparison to the biggest issue the game faced this year. Through absurdly broken cards like Vivi Ornitier, Wizards pushed Standard, the game’s flagship format, to the brink of destruction in 2025.
This started fairly early on, with Cori-Steel Cutter absolutely tearing things up on arrival. The card eventually caught a ban in June, alongside several other overbearing staples. Rather than fix the format, however, this simply opened the doors for a new menace to thrive in Vivi Cauldron. This absurd deck dominated for months on end, causing a marked drop in attendance for Standard events.
This was unfortunate in itself, but it was made far, far worse by Wizards’ refusal to address the problem via emergency ban. Instead, they let Vivi ride roughshod over Standard for five months, before finally banning it in the November update.
The response to this travesty from players was so overwhelmingly negative that Wizards has actually opened up seven new ban windows for next year to prevent the same thing from happening again. It’s a positive step, to be sure, but it doesn’t address the underlying problem. As long as Wizards keeps pushing the power envelope in a Standard that’s getting six or more sets a year, this will likely be a recurring issue.
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