Token Wizard

Pity Gandalf isn't in his White version, as the Snow White jokes would write themselves.

"Oh hello, it seems you're forming a fellowship for a noble quest. Well, you can't have one of those without a wizard now, can you?"

—The Shame Wizard, Human Resources

The Token Wizard (or Token Witch, Mage, Shaman, etc.) stands out among their Super Team as the only member whose wheelhouse is magic and the supernatural. It is handy to have someone with deep knowledge on spells, demonic possession, and mythical creatures when a team is facing up against such threats. And against non-magical foes, the esoteric nature of their abilities makes them a wildcard the villains can't easily predict.

As magic is an art that requires less actual fighting and more concentration and scholarly wit, these spellcasters usually act as a Support Party Member, casting Status Buffs on their allies and status ailments on their foes. If the Token Wizards all get together to form their own group, then this makes them a Supernatural Team.

This trope may be downplayed if the character isn't a spellcaster per se, but is still the only one on the team whose powers are supernatural in origin, making them the team's magic expert by default. And they probably have a wizard or two on speed-dial if the team really needs one.

Sub-Trope of Fighter, Mage, Thief; Physical, Mystical, Technological; and Token Super. Compare to Court Mage and Military Mage. Contrast Badass Normal and The Team Normal. See also Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards (if the Token Wizard far outclasses their teammates), Magical Girlfriend and The Smart Guy. Not to be confused with Ethnic Magician, though they do overlap.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Delicious in Dungeon has Marcille the wizard as Team Touden's only magic user. Originally she shared duties with White Magician Girl Falin until the latter was eaten by a dragon, forcing Marcille to play double duty as a Black Mage and healer.
• Doraemon: Nobita's Three Visionary Swordsmen has the gang entering the High Fantasy-themed Dream Land of Yumemiru, where Nobita and friends are knights and warriors. Doraemon on the other hand is a wizard; accordingly, Doraemon wanted a non-warrior class and the only available option is as their mage.
• Sailor Moon: Sailor Mars is a Shinto priestess by day and is unique among the Sailor Scouts for having magic abilities in her civilian form due to her heightened spirituality. This includes psychic premonitions, exorcism, and her Signature Move, flaming ofuda scrolls.

Asian Animation

• In Happy Heroes, any time Huo Haha is working alongside the villains Big M. and Little M., he's the only wizard in the group.

Comic Books

• America's Best Comics: William "Bill" Woolcott/Promethea and Splash Brannigan are the only known magical science-heroes in the Super Team America's Best, the former being a Legacy of the Chosen and the later being a person composed of magic ink.
• DC Comics:
  • Justice League of America: Zatanna often serves as this for the Justice League, being the most consistent spellcaster and magic expert in the team. While Wonder Woman and Aquaman have some understanding of magic due to their origins and powers, neither of them actually specialize in sorcery like Zatanna. Wonder Woman serves this role when Zatanna isn't around as she is the most associated with magic after her.
  • Manitou Raven, Jason Blood, and John Constantine have also served this role for the Justice League.
  • Teen Titans: Raven is usually the Token Wizard of the Teen Titans, with the only other spellcasters being Tempest and Omen, and neither started out as having magic.
  • Suicide Squad: June Moone aka The Enchantress has served this role on the Suicide Squad thanks to her being the only one with knowledge of spellcasting. However, her tendency to get Drunk On Power meant that she wasn't always reliable (Amanda Waller later said she hates working with sorcerers for this reason). When she joined Shadowpact she was technically this as while the other members had abilities of magical origin, she was the only one who was actually a spellcaster.
• Josie and the Pussycats: Alexandra Cabot is not only the Token Evil Teammate of the group, but also wields witchcraft powers, though somewhat less powerful than those of printmate Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Whether Alexandra needs her Team Pet familiar Sebastian to cast spells, or whether her brother, Alexander, is aware of her powers or not is Depending on the Writer. Generally, when Alexandra tries to embarrass or humiliate Josie, or acts as a Josie x Alan Shipping Torpedo, her spells result in Laser-Guided Karma; whenever Alexandra uses her powers to benefit her friends or to thwart the villain of that chapter, her effectiveness is much improved.
• Marvel Comics:
  • Alpha Flight: Shaman serves this role for Alpha Flight, though unlike most examples of this trope, he isn't the only one on the team with magic-based powers.
  • The Avengers:
    • Scarlet Witch herself is this for the Avengers. Whether Wanda's powers are purely magical or a mutant power that can be attuned to magic (it changes Depending on the Writer), she is the Avengers' longest-serving spellcaster.
    • During Wanda's disappearance after House of M, Doctor Strange served this role for the Avengers.
    • Not counting the Scarlet Witch whose history with magic is complicated, the first "proper" sorcerer to join the Avengers was Dr. Druid.
  • Runaways: Nico Minoru. Karolina is an alien with a Flying Firepower powerset, Alex, Chase, and Gert don't have powers, and Molly is a mutant with Super-Strength. Meanwhile, Nico wields the Minoru family's Staff of One, which allows her to cast any spell she can think of once. She's also this of the second iteration, where Alex and Gert by then are killed and replaced with the Cyborg Victor, the Skrull Xavin, and the Green Thumb Klara.
  • X-Men:
    • Magik was this for the New Mutants and presently serves this role for the X-Men. Other spellcasters associated with the team include Amanda Sefton^note Never officially an X-Man, but a longtime ally as Nightcrawler's on-and-off girlfriend trained in sorcery by her mother, Forge^note  A Cheyenne shaman who was the first magic-user to join the team, but he vastly prefers working with technology and only resorts to sorcery when facing a magical foe, and Pixie^note Had a portion of her soul replaced with black magic, giving her the capacity for sorcery.
    • Temporarily invoked in All-New X-Men when the teenage original X-Men spent time in the present day, and Beast took up sorcery to complement his scientific knowledge. He even had a demonic, grey-furred, horned "Beast" form that he involuntarily turned into whenever he used magic.
  • Young Avengers: Billy Kaplan (aka Wiccan) in the first run. In a team with Badass Normal Kate, Super-Soldier Eli, heavy-hitter Shapeshifter Teddy, Sizeshifter Cassie, speedster Tommy, and robot Jonas, Billy is the only spellcaster, owing to his being the "son" of the Scarlet Witch.

Fan Works

• While all four heroes qualify as Magic Knights, Naofumi in A Special Kind of Magic by virtue of being a sorcerer's apprentice is this to the team as a whole.
• In the Ed, Edd n Eddy Assassin AU, Rolf's weapon of choice is magic—specifically Haitian and West African Vodun (a nice aversion of the Hollywood Voodoo trope). This stands in contrast to the rest of the cast, who use ordinary weapons like guns, swords, explosives, needles and poison.
• The Mountain and the Wolf: While the Wolf has several warriors with magic powers on his crew (most notably a Slaaneshi hermaphrodite able to change people's appearance, including itself), Sven Swordeater serves as the main link to the Chaos Gods. However, this doesn't get him much respect from the Wolf, who has a bad (and entirely justified) case of Warrior vs. Sorcerer, constantly deriding them with the same contempt he holds for weaklings and cowards.
• In SlifofinaDragon's Sengoku Basara fanfics, Kyogoku Maria, teaching hex education, is the only faculty member at Basara Academy to have magic powers. Of course, local shrine maiden/magical archer Tsuruhime steps in to teach divination occasionally.

Films — Live-Action

• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Among the original line-up of the Avengers, Thor Odinson is the most different among them as being the only one among them associated with magic. In his case, he is a Sufficiently Advanced Alien from a culture that harnesses magical energies. With the help of his hammer Mjölnir, he has the power of flight and command over the weather, and was even able to temporarily connect with the Odinforce. Combined with his Asgardian physiology, he is an incredibly powerful Magic Knight (with emphasis on "knight").
  • In Avengers: Infinity War, Doctor Strange fills this role when he, Tony Stark/Iron Man and Peter Parker/Spider-Man are abducted by Ebony Maw. This continues when they are joined by Star-Lord, Drax and Mantis, being the only one among them proficient in magic.
  • Word of God claims that Ebony Maw is also a wizard, making him the only known magic-user to the Children of Thanos and Evil Counterpart to Doctor Strange.
  • One of the Ravager captains introduced in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is an alien wizard named Krugarr capable of using the Mystic Arts (as introduced in Doctor Strange (2016)).
• In Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Simon the sorcerer is the only spellcaster in the team. He is the one who gives exposition on things like artifacts and magical security systems, and he needs to match his magic against the wizard villain in order to save the day. The trope is applied as a matter of Pragmatic Adaptation, since in the actual tabletop game, Edgin the bard and Doric the druid would also have spellcasting abilities (and so might Holga the barbarian depending on character choices), but Simon's struggle with self-confidence and his mastery over his magic are central to his character arc, and multiple spellcasters on the heroes' team would have diluted that focus as well as being very demanding on special effects.

Literature

• Among the Fellowship in The Lord of the Rings series, Gandalf is the Wizard Classic among knights and Badass Normals that make-up the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that is The Team, and can be considered a Trope Codifier of the trope.
• In Dracula, Mina Harper is the only member of Van Helsing's Vampire Hunter team who has supernatural powers, owing to her unpleasantly close encounters with the title villain.
• A Practical Guide to Evil: Both the Woe, as well as their predecessor villains the Calamities, have on mage each to their team: Masego, the Apprentice (later Hierophant) for the first, and his father Wekesa the Warlock for the latter.
• The Afterward: Landros is the only full magic user in the seven companions, however he also had begun teaching Kalanthe magic too during their quest.

Live-Action TV

• Legends of Tomorrow: Invoked. In Season four, the team has to deal with accidentally releasing numerous magical threats that have long since been locked away for being too dangerous. Whilst having dealt with magic users in the past and had (one current, one former) members who derived their power from magic, it quickly becomes clear that they are hopelessly out of their depth. So Sara turns to her old friend John Constantine, a professional warlock and expert in magical problems.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:
  • Among the humans and the Elves he was deceiving, Halbrand is the only being with explicit supernatural powers because he is the evil sorcerer known as Sauron.
  • Among the Harfoots, the Stranger already was a Token Super, but in the final of Season 1, it is revealed he is one of the Istari, or a wizard.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The Defenders: Downplayed with Danny Rand. He's not an out-and-out spellcaster, but he's the only one in the group whose powers are magic-based, having Supernatural Martial Arts abilities whereas Matt Murdock, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage received their powers from scientific sources. He is also the most knowledgeable of the Hand and their sorcery.
  • Runaways (2017): Not only is Nico the token wizard among the kids like in the comics (though it took until Season 3 for her to fully embrace her magic), but her mother Tina is the token witch among PRIDE, as her husband and Nico's father Robert is just a normal human in the show.
• While the Ninja Turtles are all regular ninjas adept in martial arts, Venus De Milo from Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation is a shinobi. While in Real Life, "shinobi" is just another word for "ninja", here this means she can manipulate chi to cast spells. That's not to say that she's a Squishy Wizard, as she is capable of fighting hand-to-hand when either her magic fails or is unnecessary.
• In Penny Dreadful, Vanessa is not the only supernatural member of the main cast (Dorian is immortal, while Ethan is a werewolf), but she is the only one to purposefully make use of her magical abilities and knowledge.

Video Games

• Spyro the Dragon:
  • Out of all of the protagonists in Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!, Zoe is the only member who has any level of magical skills. In this case, she is a Fairy Companion that zaps Spyro with her wand to save her progress.
  • In Spyro: Year of the Dragon, Bianca the Rabbit - the Sorceress's amateur apprentice - defects to the heroes's side and becomes their token magician, Spyro the Dragon being the main hero, Hunter the Cheetah a Cowardly Lion athlete and Zoe the Fairy being a... well... a Fairy Companion.
• Downplayed in the case of Donald Duck in Kingdom Hearts. Goofy uses a shield, meaning he is adept at both offense and defense and is all-around the physical fighter of the trio. Sora is a Jack of All Stats, his keyblade acting as a sword, a blunt weapon, a magic wand and an object that could be used to block attacks, being an unbreakable Cool Sword. Donald Duck on the other hand is the most adept at magic, most useful as both a teammate to use Limit commands and as a White Mage to heal his teammates... and on occasion, deliver the most powerful spell known to Final Fantasy. This is to be expected from Disney Castle's official Royal Magician.
• Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising has Jonah Orion, a Blood Ravens Librarian. Of course, in this case, "wizard" means "seven-foot-tall gene-engineered killing machine in Power Armor who happens to use Warp magic".
• Sly Cooper:
  • Mz. Ruby from Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is the "Chief Mystic" of the Fiendish Five, a team of international super-criminals. Mz. Ruby was born into a family of mystics and uses Hollywood Voodoo to commit crimes against "man and nature."
  • The Guru in Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves joins the Cooper Gang after they drive out the miners and stop the Mask of Dark Earth and become their primary mystic member, his mastery in the Dreamtime allowing him to the control the minds of others and even bridge the minds between people. Bentley even refers to him as "Telekinetics" in their heist on Kaine Island.
• Lampshaded in Midnight Suns. Magik's codename is a lot less generic when she's the X-Men's Token Wizard, but here, where she's working with several magic users, Iron Man gets confused by references to Magik the person and magic in general.

Web Animation

• RWBY: Oscar is the only one among Ruby's group who can wield magic, due to being Oz's reincarnation. However, not only is he still unused to it, but he senses that the more magic he channels, the quicker his soul merges with Ozpin's. And he's not yet ready for that. Oscar first uses magic in battle against Salem, firing streams of green magic at her in an attempt to save Yang and Emerald.

Web Comics

• Arrio from Jupiter-Men is the only magical member of the titular team. He inherited magical powers from his mom, an extradimensional visitor from the Magi Dimension. While his abilities are myriad and powerful, they're less reliable than the Avalon twins' because he has to activate them with special incantations and a Badass Fingersnap. Worse still, his Language of Magic is Spanish, his worst subject.
• Isaac of Val and Isaac is this to the rest of the main cast (whose abilities mostly come from being highly trained, robots, aliens, cyborgs or highly trained alien cyborgs). This is typically played for laughs when the arcane nature of his powers clash with the scifi aspects of the Science Fantasy setting (e.g. a massive monster which can just be shot, as it's "only" weakness was the only weakness on its planet).

Western Animation

• While all three of the teens in Trollhunters possess magical weaponry — Toby possessing a Lethal Joke Item War-Hammer and Jim possessing the Amulet of Daylight with a Cool Sword and Instant Armor — Claire acts as the closest thing to a combative magic-user (before they find Merlin) the trollhunters possess. Her weapon is a magic staff that can summon shadow portals that she nicked off of Angor Rot, and after she manages to regain control of her body from Morgana, she ends up learning a spell that allows her to call the staff to her on command.
• In Ben 10, Gwen Tennyson was originally only acting as support to Ben's full-on muscle given to him by the omnitrix. After they manage to defeat Charmcaster, Gwen manages to get ahold of her spell-book, Gwen becoming proficient in the mystic arts. It is later revealed in Ben 10: Alien Force that the reason why she is so proficient in magic is that she is part Anodite, an alien species made-up of and is highly proficient in the use of Mana.
• Dr. Byron Orpheus from The Venture Brothers is a powerful necromancer and wizard. The world established is mainly a Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink filled with super-scientists, superheroes and supervillains born from sci-fi shenanigans, with pure magic-users being unremarkable, but comparatively rare. This makes Dr. Orpheus the primary magical ally of Team Venture (which is predominantly science-based), eventually joining a Supernatural Team composed of his old friends.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • Raven is a member of the titular team and is the only member that has powers that is explicitly magical in nature, with Starfire being born with her powers naturally, Cyborg having gained his abilities through cybernetic augmentation and Beast Boy through genetic experimentation. Aside from essentially being The Antichrist with an all-powerful demon father, she is also expert in a variety of magics, possessing tomes and eldritch knowledge that the rest of the team lacks.
  • Jinx is often referred to as a "sorceress", implying that her powers of probability are magical in origin. This makes her the only member of the Hive with explicitly magical abilities.
• In The Magic Roundabout, Zebedee is the only main character who can do magic. One episode reveals that fairies exist, but they're still not part of the main team.
• Arthur: Nadine is the only character who can do magic, justified because she's an Imaginary Friend. Prunella and Rubella sometimes try to do psychic things, but aren't actually psychic.
• The Loud House: Zigzagged for Lucy Loud, a young Goth. She tries to do magic frequently, and while a portrait of her great-grandmother was seen to smile after she attempted a spell, one game has things floating around her, suggesting she's telekinetic, and she sometimes appears as though she's teleported, she's never proven to be magical.
• Young Justice:
  • Zatanna is the most full-fledged magic user of the team, though Aqualad does draw power from magic as well, but it's not nearly as prominent in his case.
  • In Outsiders, Thirteen takes the place of Zatanna as the magic user, even being trained by her to do so.

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