MTG’s Lorwyn Eclipsed debut is an existential rock opera with puppets

Every new Magic: The Gathering set comes with some kind of hype video. Tarkir: Dragonstorm and Edge of Eternities got epic 3D-animated trailers last year. Others, like Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty and Bloomburrow, leaned into stylized 2D animation. For the upcoming Lorwyn Eclipsed set, Wizards of the Coast has created something entirely different: a full-blown rock opera performed by puppets designed by The Jim Henson Company.

Many of the creatures — like the Kithkin or Boggarts — from Lorwyn-Shadowmoor already look like they wandered off the set of a late-’80s Henson Company dark fantasy, like Dark Crystal or Labyrinth. But the video that debuted today on the WeeklyMTG livestream dramatizes themes of duality and identity that are essential to what makes Lorwyn-Shadowmoor unique. Lorwyn and Shadowmoor are two mirrored versions of the same world, cycling between a bright, whimsical day side and a dark, twisted night side. Historically, most of the inhabitants are unaware that the other half exists — or that the Great Aurora flips the two, rewriting the memories and identities of all those inside.

Two voices, one feeling

The new video produced by The Henson Company follows two Boggarts: Squen from Lorwyn and Cragg from Shadowmoor. While it’s easy to assume they might be literal reflections of one another, the story makes it more metaphorical. Each longs to understand the other side of their world, but it’s a sense of loss they instinctively feel rather than some grand conflict at play.

For Brian Henson, that emotive structure immediately suggested a musical solution as he discussed story pitches with writer Eliza Skinner.

“One of the pitches that she was hoping for, and we all thought, ‘Oh, this is a great way to do these two boggarts,’ is they’re basically singing a duet,” Henson told Polygon in a group video call late last month.

The duet of Squen and Cragg makes Lorwyn’s defining tension easy to comprehend, without explaining it outright. Two worlds and two voices mirror each other, even harmonize, with identity split between light and dark.

“The metaphor is that it’s these two parts in all of us,” Henson said.

Squen and Cragg both feel incomplete without an understanding of the other half, which itself is also a metaphor that sits at the heart of Lorwyn Eclipsed’s world-building. It’s not exactly subtle, so Henson didn’t want the performance to be subtle either.

“To go hard into rock opera basically means you have to perform it so powerfully that you’re trying to stop the show and make the audience stand up and give you a standing ovation,” Henson said.

That instruction shaped how the characters were performed. Henson told veteran Jim Henson Company puppeteers Ben Schrader and Kevin Clash (who puppet Squen and Cragg, respectively) to approach the performance as if they were commanding a stage, not underselling emotion for realism.

Image: Wizards of the Coast

What begins as a musical expression of longing escalates into something far more operatic that Henson describes as a “big, Tim Curry-style rock opera,” drawing inspiration from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Existential fantasy instead of physical conflict

The drama at play echoes how Wizards of the Coast thinks about Lorwyn and Shadowmoor and how the team approached designing Lorwyn Eclipsed. According to the set’s world-building lead Neale LaPlante Johnson, the plane has always been less rooted in conquest and more in identity.

“The main conflict isn’t necessarily physical fighting,” Johnson told Polygon. “It’s existential, and basic identity.”

In the original Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block released throughout 2007 and 2008, only a handful of characters were aware that another version of their world existed beyond the veil. Lorwyn Eclipsed expands on that idea, exploring what it means to live in a place defined by incompleteness, where something essential always feels just out of reach. There’s a sense at play that two versions of the same boggart aren’t two different people at all, but two halves of the same being, divided by the world they live in. What would that feel like? Now, there’s a musical video with puppets that tries to answer that very question.

The story of Squen and Cragg doesn’t get bogged down in metaphysical philosophy, but it does explore the emotional weight and spiritual crisis created by the bizarre nature of this world. Johnson said the short captures ideas he wishes could be communicated more directly through card art alone.

“This trailer communicates out loud what I wish I’d been able to say for 200 to 300 pieces of art through the set,” he said.

Image: Wizards of the Coast

Image: Wizards of the Coast

Image: Wizards of the Coast

This fixation on split identity also defines many of the mechanics at play in the set. Duality is represented with hybrid mana that allows you to pay one of two colored mana to cast something, so the cards themselves essentially exist between two color identities. Other cards can literally transform, and flip over, to reflect a change in its state. None of these mechanics are new by any means, but when used in a set like this, they carry extra narrative weight.

A world that feels made

The strangeness that makes Lorwyn-Shadowmoor stand out in this way also extended into the illustrations for the set.

​​For art director Deborah Garcia, the world needed to feel materially strange rather than smoothed into something purely digital. Garcia told Polygon that art in the new set emphasizes traditional painting styles or digital painters with traditional sensibilities, particularly because the visuals from the original block always had a vintage feel compared to most of Magic’s more modern stylings. One of the biggest challenges for the team was conveying that vibe in a way that felt “puppety,” but not distractingly so. Since there are no humans in Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, and even the humanoid elves have horns and cloven-hooved feet, creature design leans on the fantastical and surreal. So she wanted it all to feel textured, fabricated, and emotional — just like puppets.

Image: Wizards of the Coast

“There were places I recognized as good spots for getting a tactile, puppetry feeling across,” she said, “Boggarts were a huge one, especially how no two boggarts look the same.” Even the Changelings got a redesign to “feel like they were made of acrylic fluff, foam, fabric, and paint.” Garcia even said that very early in the set’s design process, she joked that a Henson Company reveal would be the dream trailer for Lorwyn Eclipsed.

“To see all that come to life and translate so well into actual puppets that move, talk, interact with objects, and even cast shadows?” she said. “That’s just the coolest thing.”