15-Second Video From WotC Hints at Possible Hobbit x MTG Crossover

Last updated on September 24, 2025

Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit | Illustration by Axel Sauerwald

Happy belated birthday, Bilbo Baggins, and happy Hobbit Day to all the rest! Hope you all enjoyed binging your directors cut of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Magic: The Gathering made sure to get their digs in too, with what looked like a teaser of something LotR-related coming to MTG.

Back to Middle-earth?

The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth was a smashing success for Magic, as the first full-scale Universes Beyond set, and one that fit the flavor and aesthetic of MTG well. In fact, it's more accurate to say MTG fit LotR well, given how much the game has drawn from those stories over the years.

Magic: The Gathering took to Twitter/X yesterday to show off a 15-second video zooming in on Bilbo's iconic Hobbit house, or as New Zealanders call it, Matamata. No text, no sneaky product announcement, just a humble clip and the message “Happy Birthday Mr. Baggins!” September 22nd is in fact Bilbo Baggins' canonical birthday.

Is The Hobbit going to finally get some love? Chances are there's some product in the works that Wizards will likely announce at MagicCon Atlanta next weekend, but let's explore some possibilities for now.

New LOTR Set

Smaug | Illustration by Jarel Threat

The chances of a new, fully-fleshed out Lord of the Rings Standard set is completely possible. After the smashing success of LTR in 2023, you can imagine why Wizards would want to return to Middle-earth so soon. Of course, there's the question of what a new LotR set would even look like. Tolkien has a pretty deep well of material to take from, but the original trilogy is pretty well-covered in LTR and its surrounding products. We already have six Gandalfs in the game, how many more could you possibly make?

That's lead people to speculate about a set based solely on The Hobbit. They milked three movies out of that book, surely MTG could get a full set out of it. And Smaug might finally get his due on an actual Magic: The Gathering card, rather than a cameo as the token from There and Back Again.

And then there's the The Silmarillion for people who dive pretty deep into Tolkien lore. The book is pretty dense with material for a potential MTG set, but it's also significantly more obscure than the original trilogy, or even The Hobbit for that matter.

Secret Lair Drop

A LotR or Hobbit-themed Secret Lair also seems plausible. Notably, the video was published by the official Magic: The Gathering Twitter page, not the Secret Lair page, so that takes away some of the credibility, but if they're hiding the fact that this is something product-related, it makes sense to do this.

LTR Re-Release

This one's pretty far out there, but there's a chance Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth just gets some sort of re-release, minus the whole 1:1 The One Ring thing. This seems slim, and there's probably licensing fees involved in reproducing a Universes Beyond set, but how else is MTG going to get LotR-related reprints out there? You can't just pop Aragorn, the Uniter in the next Core Set and call it a day…could you?

Probably best not to put your money on a full LTR re-release, but it wouldn't be that shocking to see it happen, either.

It's Just a Normal Birthday Greeting

Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant | Illustration by Billy Christian

And sure, for those who want to take the Twitter video at face value, this could very well just be a literal happy birthday to Bilbo Baggins. There's really no reason for them to go out of their way to animate this unless it was linked to something specific, but LTR did make them a ton of money, so maybe this is their way of showing thanks. Though no one seems to remember Samwise Gamgee getting a birthday shoutout back in April….

Further information about this cryptic birthday message will likely come out next weekend. Those of you with “New Lord of the Rings set in 2026″ on your bingo cards, get your pens ready.