Lame.

More of a Venser fan?

But seriously, what are people's thoughts on people coming back to life and remaining walkers? Does this break the "no undead walker" rule, or could they just count as "living again"?
Are we finally moving away from WOTC's unarguably foolish stance that the undead cannot be planeswalkers?

Resurrection and undeath are fundamentally different. On the other hand, it was formerly explicit that death is the end for the spark. On the third hand, I don't think we'd had an in-lore resurrection -- as in proper returned from beyond the veil of death good as new. Something something Bolas but honestly I don't know what the true lore for his return in Time Spiral is anymore. We could do it in game since Alpha (Resurrection), but the lore moved away from the idea, to the point where nonblack reanimation spells were usually flavored of some kind of cheat (Defy Death) rather than a proper return, or otherwise were left ambiguous.

If the soul is fully restored, I guess that should logically mean the spark as well. Even back when Brady was answering our questions the door was left just a little bit ajar for a lichwalker with the caveat that the phylactery containing their entire soul, separated from the body while they were alive, would technically be the 'planeswalker' while their rotting flesh would be expendable. You could even see Karn as kind of a lite version of this cheat, Urza and Glacian are supposedly in there with him in a spiritual sense thanks to their sparks being stored in the Mightstone and Weakstone, and while they didn't seem to have active cognition, more being facets of Karn, they weren't stored intentionally or completely.

I don't like it. It smells wrong. But I'm having trouble discerning exactly where and why it's wrong.

If you're asking me, hell no. Venser is on the short list of Walkers upon whose graves i happily dance.

What's lame is the fact they've removed yet ANOTHER piece of there being any consequences or weight to what happens. Every decision like this erodes the foundation of anything every meaning anything in their story.

And that's a bold claim to say it's foolish there shouldn't be undead Walkers.

In some fantasy worlds there is a distinction between, lets call them resurrection and reanimation. Mechanically there is little difference in the card game, you're either using a white spell or a black spell to return the creature from the graveyard to the battlefield (aside from a few of the newer black cards that turn the returned creature into a black zombie). But idealistically (if that is the right word) white magic restores the life to a creature, black animates the body, or what's left of it without restoring life, making a form of undead, from vampire to zombie to skeleton.

This distinction does work with many magic cards. However, there are also cards that do this which are both white and black at the same time, like many Orzhov cards, or stuff like Unburial Rites, plus white is also seemingly able to summon spirits which seem to be undead. So the line between the two is not always clear.

That said, we've had a significant number of planeswalkers die and come back with spark intact now with some sort of excuse to how they dodged the spark-losing rider, so they may as well just drop that it's even a thing. So far we have Sorin, Ugin, Bolas, and a few others I've probably forgotten.

Ugin and Bolas are weird ones, yeah, but Innistrad's vampires are living. They are just transformed, they don't die and return.

Once again want to point out that the story warps around Ugin because they could never really figure out what he does or why. Bolas is a substantially murkier area.

My problem with it is that we were given a rule that death means the end of the planeswalker's spark that ends up not mattering. We are never shown a planeswalker coming back but losing their spark in the process, which could have been an interesting story to tell. It is especially egregious since Elspeth is almost certainly coming back in Theros: Beyond Death. Seeing how

Here's another question altogether:
What story is there left to even TELL with Elspeth? What part of her character arc is left except for her to live happily ever after?

I'm guessing that they want to visit her home world that was conquered by phyrexians and they think that they need her to help facilitate that for some reason.

They will probably search for some sort of silver bullet to unphyrexize a world, have a big battle on her homeworld and use it as a test, and then go after new phyrexia and beyond.

I knew Zendikar's were still living, didn't know that it applied to Innistrad too. Is this something that was revealed when the Edgar Markov deck came out, or did I miss it elsewhere?

That was known from the first Innistrad set. From the planeswalker's guide:



In the same guide, it only alludes to Edgar Markov being the progenitor of all vampires. I think it's only later that it's clarified that an alchemical ritual is what created the first vampires.

Ah, I missed that bit. Thanks for the info. I imagine he's considered the progenitor not because he literally fathered them all, but because he was responsible for the ritual that created them.

For Elspeth there's the phyrexian thing. She might have redeemed herself by not running away anymore but it'd be even more cathartic if she helped fight against the source of all her problems.

Mostly I just want her back because she's cool and I like her.

The biggest issue is that she's at the point in her story where she's literally returning from the underworld. The only steps left in the mono myth is the return to real world with the token for the happily ever after.

Anything to do with the Phyrexians would drag her arc out and the supposed silver bullet would distinctly feel like an ass pull. Look at how much build up there was with the legacy.

There's been nothing like that to deal with the current crop of Phyrexia and if they put that kind of work in they'd definitely over stress Elspeth's welcome.

Getting out of a prison is not the same thing as running away. All other times she was scared or incompetent, now it's for everyone's sake and to spite Erebos and Heliod.

Of all the sets to stop doing this for......

Hope they at least offer a Planeswalker Guide.