Note: This piece contains spoilers for 2026’s Reality Fracture and 2014’s The Magician’s Land.

How can we ever expect one person to fix the world and, more importantly, who would want that? The chosen one, the hero, the figure at the centre of it all, they’ve been through too much. Time and again they are called upon to achieve what others cannot; the world, and story, demand it. With the weight of the world on their shoulders, no wonder they break.

Yet we can’t help rooting for destined heroes. And there always seems to be someone happy to carry the weight.

For an author, the chosen one is a boon. I’ve written before about the Gatewatch era of Magic storytelling, where the assembled team provided every reader a surrogate, an identifiable character they could root for and, ideally, craft a deck around. These disparate heroes were brought together to overcome a common villain or collective goal; the goths, hot heads, jocks and nerds unite to take down the God-Pharoah Dragon — typical high school. Even with the Gatewatch, there was no mistaking that WOTC prioritized some members above others. In the post-Phyrexian era, the stage was set for Jace to be the planeswalker above all planeswalkers. He stepped into the chosen one role — or reaffirmed the mantle — and shattered in the process.

In the wake of the tears in the multiverse that we call Omenpaths, and the repelled Phyrexian Invasion, Jace Beleren is a man haunted by wrong choices. What’s fascinating is that Jace does not limit the onus he takes on to his failures, he’s burdened by all those who came before. Key decisions and pivotal moments that, like dominoes cascading in force and momentum, nearly led to the multiverse overtaken by glistening oils and subservient machinery.

And I want to credit Wizards for creating a story structure where the narrative threads and ideas of several sets and writers can come together in the final chapter for a satisfying conclusion. I doubt that every beat was plotted out from Vraska and Jace on Ixalan through to the Echoverse. There’s space in Magics lore for readers to pencil in their own theories and rationale, enriching their connection further than if every reference was spoon fed.

Yet Jace was the living Guildpact, a planeswalker, the most powerful mind mage in his lifetime, even still he could not do it all; at least not alone. Multiple worlds brought to the brink, and though the denizens clawed their freedom back, things could have been different. Things could have been better.

Even though the Phyrexians were repelled thropu8gh collective action, Jace decided to shoulder the burden of his plan alone. Even leaving Vraska to bring his perfect world into being.

Another world away, another mopey mage considers fixing his reality. Quentin Coldwater is the brilliant, chronically depressed protagonist of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, and despite his golden ticket into Augustine higher education, he is dissatisfied. The world he is in is not what he expected or what he was promised.

Instead of juggling offers from competing Ivy League institutions, Quentin enrolls at Brakebills University for Magical Pedagogy. The magician finally encounters magic. But it’s not enough. Perhaps Quentin would have been happier, more content filling his binders with exclusive foiling treatments and convention exclusives, rather than delving into the secret world of spell work. There is a piece of our magician that is still missing, a gnawing hole that he can’t ignore. Quentin’s introduction to magic isn’t the salve he once hoped for, instead the possibility arrives with a portal to Fillory.

The high fantasy storybook world, chronicled in the Narnia-adjacent series Fillory and Further is a short step away from Quentin’s New York. Through the trilogy, Quentin Coldwater becomes Fillory’s hero, king, pariah and, ultimately, god. Even as his fellow magicians come into their own to keep Fillory safe in his exile, Quentin can’t let the land go. He needs Fillory as much as it needs him.

In its final hours, with the world on the brink, Quentin undergoes deification to save his home. Armed with the powers of divinity, he could recreate the world in his image and align the land that cast him out to his every whim and desire. Instead, he performs some minor mending and steps away.

One man can’t live with the burden of fixing the world. Quentin finds his solace and strength in others.

Jace isn’t the first figure in Magic’s history to think himself a god. The bounds of a planeswalker’s power are in flux; uneven and malleable given the necessities of the story. Before the Great Mending, there were figure like Urza, who rose from princeling in exile to seemingly one of the most powerful beings in the Blind Eternities. This is regarded as a pretty unfortunate outcome for all involved, as Urza’s decisions often spiralled into some of the greatest calamities in history. Like a wizened asshole butterfly flapping its wings.

All agreed Urza was too powerful, within universe and WOTC, leading to a scaling back of planeswalkers to more reasonable levels, though the spectrum. Ob Nixilis and Arlinn Kord are indicative why we don’t have more battles pitting werewolves against demons.

Jace by virtue of his importance in the game’s ongoing narrative has had his power wax and wane. From memory wipes to Guildpacts and compleation, he’s been what the narrative asks of him. Only in the Echoverse have we seen what Jace Beleren is capable of. The results left his friends and loved ones horrified.

The author of Reality Fracture’s story, Alison Lührs, portrayed the dehumanization that can occur with uncheck power. The Theorist regards all those he once held dear as game pieces in his grand design and the realization of the Echoverse. The ludicrously powerful in our world aren’t wielding reality bending magic, but they often see themselves as separate, beyond the rest of humanity. They are alone.

If only Quentin could loop time like the Theorist, less hearts would have been broken along the way. He is by no means the strongest spellcaster, and Grossman takes pains to remind the reader that brilliant depends on your context and can only get you so far. It’s never laid out whether an individual’s capacity for the arcane is derived from their pain, but a student’s high tolerance allows them to withstand the demanding regime to grow. Where his potential rests is in his connection with the other young magicians that round out the series’ cast. It’s a lesson that takes years to learn, but eventually Quentin comes to find he is never more powerful, or happy, than when he is among his friends and working toward a common goal. Only then can he allow himself top let go of Fillory, leave it to grow beyond him, and step into a fresh chapter of his life. There is an opportunity for reinvention, without tossing out what came before.

In the lead up to Reality Fracture, it was uncertain what Wizards had planned from the sprawling history woven for the game over the decades through sets, novels and the accumulated detritus that has been assembled into a reasonably agreed upon timeline and lore.

There were wild guesses after the early reveals that WOTC would take this as a fresh start or reinvention for the game. Imagine the Blind Eternities 2.0. Retcons and reworking timelines have grown more popular as curious newcomers are turned off by the weight of history — or that’s what we’ve been told whenever a franchise is rewound to basic principles. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an executive, annoyed by words like Urza and Fblthp, who would love to expunge the universe and hold onto the ruleset. Instead, the multiverse endures.

From a certain point of view, this approach to Reality Fracture serves as a rebuttal to Jace’s ultimate goal — and the doomsayers who have been calling the time of death for the Magic multiverse since the earliest days of cross promotional IP. WOTC had the opportunity to close the book, instead they started a new chapter; while celebrating iconic characters and moments throughout Magic’s history. Instead of the Theorist alone as the one ‘real’ person among the Echoverse, the Blind Eternities continues with the hundreds of heroes and legends that serve the world’s lore.  

Jace, as we knew him, might be gone. All plot relevant revelations from Reality Fracture are out, though I’m sure there are theorists working out a scenario where the mind mage could return in a future set. I won’t dismiss the possibility. For many, Jace Beleren is the protagonist of Magic, and dead is not synonymous with out of print. Many of the characters from the earlier eras have been allowed to die, then receive new designs all the same. Nicol Bolas and Emrakul have both been freed, and the mystery of the Fomori continues to build in the edges. For the moment, there are enough dangers to imperil the multiverse. Jace may be allowed to rest.

Given the incredible final chapter to his story, it would be for the best. Jace may not have fully redeemed himself by the end, but Lührs presented a compelling story of a man whose reach far exceeded his grasp and ended up destroying himself in the process. Only in the final moments of his life, held by Vraska and surrounded by the very same planeswalkers who arrived in the Blind Eternities with him, Jace reconstructs his humanity. Quentin, in contrast, never allows himself to become fully unmoored from his mortality.

Both men try to fix their world, put the pieces together in a configuration that makes more sense, though their driving emotions differ. Jace is terrified by what occurred with the Phyrexians, the power that such being exerted over others with tremendous power. If they were all at risk of compleation, then wouldn’t it be better for him to be in control? Terror and anger drive his need for a perfect world. From the screaming flowers adorned with his face to the pain he endures will trying to meld the multiverse with his faltering echo, Jace howls at the failures of the past and what the future might have in store. Uncertainty can be discomforting; Quentin Coldwater was once uncertain. But instead of lashing out the terrifying variables and endless choices, he learns to trust those around him. If he was ever the destined hero, the chosen one to save Fillory, it was better that he allowed his friends to work alongside him and help carry the weight.