It’s been a wild start to the week for Magic: The Gathering, with loyalist Tolkien fans taking issue with the color of Aragorn’s skin as part of The Lord of the Rings crossover. It caused a big commotion across Twitter and social media among a certain audience and forced MTG owner Wizards of the Coast to issue a response.
In a post to the official Magic site on May 30, WotC doubled down on its commitment to showing a different version of Aragorn and The Lord of the Rings world.
While the blog goes into detail about the initiatives the company was trying to encourage, it states its goals plainly with a single statement, as WotC wrote, “Some characters may look different from previous depictions—and that’s intentional.”
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Not only was it intentional, but it was agreed upon by both WotC and Middle-earth Enterprises, the IP holder of the LOTR series. That means any complaints these people have about betraying the original work don’t align with the core IP holder.
The complaint from some people on social media is Aragorn is changed from a white man in the movies to a black man in the specific art on the card. This change was a choice made by WotC in order to promote diversity, as some have suggested, but also to create a unique version of the character that’s reflective of a “modern take.”
It’s the hope of WotC that “more people will see themselves reflected in the characters and players and fans can find immense joy in telling these familiar stories through gameplay.”
