Magic Creature Profile: Who Is Marit Lage in MTG?

Marit Lage | Illustration by Leon Tukker

It didn’t take long for Primo, the Indivisible to go from one-off legendary token to actual card (Primo, the Unbounded, from SOC’s Quandrix Unlimited), but not all legendary tokens are destined to get their own card. But when you’re an immortal avatar that’s stuck in a block of ice, you’ve got nothing but time.

In terms of gameplay, Marit Lage is one of those quirky parts of Magic that makes the game so fun. It’s the kind of beefy battlecruiser that you see early in your Magic career and you say: “I gotta play that.”

So, for the uninitiated and the cultists alike, here’s everything you need to know about Marit Lage.

Who Is Marit Lage?

Marit Lage | Illustration by Stephan Martiniere

Marit Lage is a kraken-like avatar that become trapped on Dominaria sometime before the Ice Age. Toward the end of the Ice Age, Jaya Ballard slayed the leader of Marit Lage’s cult and found the avatar trapped in a glacier. When Jaya realized that she couldn’t kill Marit Lage, she broke off a chunk of the glacier that contained the avatar and exiled them to the Blind Eternities.

Marit Lage is a Cthulhu-esque entity in many ways. She’s incomprehensibly huge. Her telepathic influence leads to the formation of cults that worship her and wait for her to return. And so. Many. Tentacles.

Marit Lage Cards in MTG

As of Secrets of Strixhaven, only two cards in Magic create a Marit Lage token: Dark Depths and Marit Lage's Slumber.

Dark Depths

Dark Depths combos with Thespian's Stage to make it incredibly easy to liberate Marit Lage from the ice to wreak havoc on the battlefield. Since both are colorless permanents, you can run them in any Commander deck, including snow decks and land decks alike. Cheating Dark Depths to get an early Marit Lage has led to bans in a few formats including Modern.

Marit Lage’s Slumber

Marit Lage's Slumber is a legendary snow enchantment that gives you a Marit Lage once you have a critical mass of snow permanents. You could also play it in decks that want to scry if you run snow lands in your mana base, which is how some control decks play it in Modern.

In Commander, you’ll usually find it in Isu the Abominable or Jorn, God of Winter decks, though it sometimes finds its way into other builds.

Other Mentions of Marit Lage in MTG

What little we know of Marit Lage comes from her original appearance in The Eternal Ice, the second book of the Ice Age Cycle, as well as some scattered flavor text and card names.

In Card Names

• Curse of Marit Lage
• Wrath of Marit Lage

In Art/Flavor Text

• Brine Shaman
• Claire D'Loon, Joy Sculptor
• Curse of Marit Lage
• Dehydration (Eighth Edition)
• Wrath of Marit Lage (Ice Age, Eighth Edition)

Marit Lage Tokens

• Marit Lage – Coldsnap Promos
• Marit Lage – Dominaria Remastered
• The Black Beast of Aaargh – Secret Lair x Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Vol. 2
• Aang, Awoken Avatar – Avatar: The Last Airbender Eternal

How Much Does a Marit Lage Token Cost?

Depending on the printing, you can get a Marit Lage token as a bulk token, around $0.25. Premium or older prints, like the original from the Coldsnap promos, the foil token from the From the Vault: Lore product, or the token from the Monty Python Secret Lair can go for a few bucks, though none of them cross the $20 mark.

What Color Is Marit Lage?

Marit Lage is a black creature permanent.

How Powerful Is Marit Lage?

In Magic lore, Marit Lage is incredibly powerful, but also mysterious. She can move from one plane to another, but she isn’t a planeswalker; that ability comes from something other than a planeswalker spark. She also has telepathic powers that allow her to influence people over incredible distances. In the BOOM! Comics continuity, Tezzeret finds cults dedicated to her on multiple planes after Jaya has banished Marit Lage to the Blind Eternities. And during her original encounter with Jaya, just her gaze and attention, through layers upon layers of ice, would have killed Jaya if she wasn’t a planeswalker. Yeah, there’s some eldritch horror levels of power here.

In the game, Marit Lage is really powerful and a potential win condition in formats that start at 20 life. You can attack with a 20/20 indestructible flier, or you can fling it directly at your opponent’s face. Even better, you can use those rare impact triggers that deal damage equal to the entering creature’s power.

Combos with Thespian's Stage and Dark Depths are hard to interact with and relatively easy to assemble, especially when you have cards like Crop Rotation that can fetch any land out of your library.

How Do You Get Rit of Marit Lage?

While Marit Lage is an indestructible flier, there’s a surprising number of ways to deal with it.

You can exile it (including blink, flicker, or airbend), you can bounce it to your opponent’s hand, or you can tuck it into their library. Since Marit Lage is a token, it can’t exist in any zone other than the battlefield.

Otherwise, you can reduce Marit Lage’s toughness to 0. You can use cards like Shadowspear to remove indestructible before you use a “destroy” effect. In formats where it’s legal, Oko, Thief of Crowns has a +1 loyalty ability that turns its target into an elk and removes its abilities.

Auras like Pacifism and Darksteel Mutation can mitigate a Marit Lage to a certain extent, though smart brewers run enchantment removal. Pacifism also doesn’t stop your opponent from using a Fling effect. Spells like Turn to Frog, while temporary, can also give you a window in which to deal with Marit Lage with a destroy effect, or even just a -1/-1 counter.

If you want to handle Marit Lage before it enters, you’ll have to destroy the cards that make them. Note that a typical Stifle effect isn't good enough, since Dark Depths will just trigger again as soon as the first trigger is countered. Nonbasic land hate and targeted land removal can handle Dark Depths, while enchantment removal takes care of Marit Lage's Slumber.

Is Marit Lage Still Alive?

In the official continuity, we don’t know for sure. Marit Lage hasn’t appeared in the Magic story since Ice Age; although she was banished to the Blind Eternities, there’s been no follow-up since, even when we went to The Edge in Edge of Eternities.

In the BOOM! Comics continuity, Marit Lage is still alive and is used as part of a plot by Tezzeret to kill Jace.

Can Marit Lage Be Your Commander?

No. Tokens can’t be your commander, so Marit Lage can’t be your commander unless you’re at a casual table and have discussed it with your pod.

Bonus: Marit Lage in Legacy

Dark Depths | Illustration by Stephan Martiniere

User storm995 piloted this deck to a 5-0 record during a Legacy Last Chance Qualifier event on March 24, 2026. This lands deck uses four copies each of Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage and runs no creatures.

Marit Lage is the win condition here. The deck runs all manner of fast mana and some Crop Rotations to help you to get whichever half of the combo you need.

You can contrast this with a Bracket 1 Jorn, God of Winter deck, which might also use the same combo as a finisher, but more for thematic purposes than as part of an elaborate strategy.

Wrap Up

Marit Lage's Slumber | Illustration by Randy Vargas

Fans of Marit Lage have been clamoring for an actual card depiction of the character for ages, but I don’t know if that’ll ever happen, even in a potentially bonkers set like Reality Fracture. It might be a bit hard to design a card for such a powerful being, a card that coveys her other powerful abilities without verging into design mistake or overpowered territory. So for now, we have to be content with our 20/20 indestructible tokens. Perhaps a Marit Lage Archenemy product is the way to go?

Do you have any theories on some of the mysteries around Marit Lage and her origin? What would you want to see from future cards, either as ones that create the token or as an actual legendary creature card? Let me know in the comments below or over on the Draftsim Discord.

If you want more from Draftsim, check out our newsletter, or join our growing community on YouTube at The Daily Upkeep.

Until next time, watch out for cracks in the ice!