Magic: The Hidden Planeswalker is a Magic: The Gathering miniseries created by Boom! studios, set concurrently with their other Magic comic series, Magic (Boom!).
The comic follows Liliana Vess, once a war criminal and power hungry madwoman, now a teacher at the prestigious academy of Strixhaven. After being enlisted for aid in battling the gruesome Marit Lage by her fellow planeswalker Kaya (events that are told in Magic (Boom!)), she returns to Strixhaven to resume her daily life, only to be attacked by the rogue planeswalker Tezzeret. Using a device for memory extraction stolen from the Dimir guild of Ravnica, Tezzeret reads some of Liliana's memories of the defeat of Lage, focusing on a mysterious figure that was briefly seen battling Lage.
Not knowing of his plans, but knowing that he is up to no good, Liliana is joined by one of her students and fellow teachers to hopefully foil Tezzeret's wicked schemes.
The comic ran for four issues in 2022. As it is set after the first arc of Magic (Boom!), be careful with Late-Arrival Spoiler.
The Hidden Tropewalkers
- All for Nothing: Maive, the titular planeswalker, brought peace to Aykan, but it was destroyed by Marit Lage soon after.
- An Ice Person: Marit Lage's destruction of Aykan took the form of freezing the entire world solid. Subverted when it turns out that this was not the case; Marit Lage wants worship, and freezing an entire plane to death is a poor way of gathering worshippers. The freezing actually happened because of Maive herself, siphoning power from Lage without knowing of the ice spell that came with.
- Apocalypse How: Aykan, Maive's home plane, no longer exists as a place for the living due to Marit Lage. Or rather, due to Maive accidentally channeling and amplifying the ice spell imprisoning Lage.
- Crying Wolf: Tezzeret is able to get Maive on his side by framing Liliana as a selfish schemer who only helped her to have her in her debt. Liliana may have been like that once, but isn't anymore, and saved Maive out of genuine altruism.
- Deadpan Snarker: When Maive asks how Liliana dares, Liliana asks her to be more specific because she dares quite a bit.
- Detrimental Determination: Maive is determined to destroy Marit Lage and avenge her plane. Liliana warns her that it's futile, since even the Physical God planeswalkers of old tried and failed. Maive doesn't listen.
- Dramatic Irony: When she tries to teach about the ethics of necromancy, one of Liliana's students derides her as a bleeding heart academic who doesn't understand real power. Liliana, a pre-mending planeswalker who spent millenia gathering the power to kill demons, understands power better than he ever will.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Isona thought she could tap into Marit Lage's enormous supply of mana to defeat the last tyrant of her plane. The result killed her entire plane, though for once it was actually not intended on Marit's side.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Isona Maive has been frozen in a half-dead state for a long time and has no idea about the current workings of the multiverse. How long is a bit unclear, but she apparently got frozen after the Mending of Dominaria.
- Gone Horribly Right: Isona Maive wanted to save her plane from endless war. Channeling an Eldritch Abomination was already a bad way to do that, but one can't deny that the war ended when Maive accidentally froze the entire plane to death.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Dina calls Liliana a hero after hearing about how she helped defeat Marit Lage. Liliana makes it clear that if she qualifies as a hero, then the multiverse is in dire need of better ones.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: Liliana has no idea what Tezzeret is actually planning, but, since he's Tezzeret, it can't be good.
- Logical Weakness: Maive amplifies and redirects magic cast against her. She's practically useless against Liliana's reanimated corpses.
- Never My Fault: Maive blames Marit Lage for the destruction of her plane. This is a fairly understandable reaction, as Maive is a traumatized young girl and Marit Lage was involved in Aykan's destruction, but it's actually Maive herself that's at fault; She attempted to channel Marit Lage's power to defeat a dangerous tyrant, but wasn't aware of the ice spell that imprisoned Lage and accidentally channeled and amplified that as well, freezing Aykan to death.
- Power Copying: Maive can copy the powers of mages she works with, as well as amplify them.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: More like "sealed traumatized and easily manipulated powerhouse in a can", but Liliana, having no way of convincing Maive that she's not the evil monster Tezzeret has framed her as and unwilling to let Tezzeret have her power, does to her what Sorin Markov did to Nahiri and immobilizes her on Innistrad, guarded by reanimated spiders, and leaves her to think things over.
- Survivor's Guilt: Liliana is still dealing with her guilt over how Gideon Jura sacrificed himself to save her life from the consequences of betraying Nicol Bolas.
- Unequal Rites: Liliana's chosen field of Necromancy is frequently derided and villified across the planes.
- The Unmasqued World: While this is vague in the canon storyline, the comic runs with the interpretation that Strixhaven knows about the existence of other planes, and even studies phenomena of said planes. In fact, the Biblioplex has several wings about planeswalkers alone.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Maive, who already doesn't like necromancy, is convinced by Tezzeret that Liliana, as a necromancer, is not to be trusted, so she should throw her lot in with him, an artificer, instead. This is a very bad idea.
