With War of the Spark releasing last Friday, Codename: Handlebar, or the Bolas Arc has reached it's conclusion. There is a follow up novel coming in June(?), as well as the prequal shorts. With the threat of Nicol Bolas shelved for now, what comes next? Maro has confirmed that they have plans for Garruk and Kasmina (not necessarily at the same time), but what direction does the story take from here? Does the Gatewatch dissolve after losing it's heart and soul in Gideon? Does Karn take the fight to the Phyrexians? Does the pursuit of the three traitors get their own sets or just supplementary material? Speculate away!

For me personally, I hope the follow up novel helps explain why Chandra is a (mostly) solo act in her comics. I haven't actually picked them up yet, but from the summaries I've read, she seems to be taking Gideon's death really hard.
Also I hope that Ajani featuring in her comic is setting the two of them up for a return to Theros to rescue Elspeth and/or Gideon (mostly because I'm still in the denial/bargaining stage of grief).

It seems the era of the Gatewatch as a team is over. They're still active in the multiverse, but as individuals.
I think Ob is positioned to be a real threat and Ashiok has a ton of potential.

Did the novel give any insight on the wanderer?

-She knows Sarkhan somehow.
-She has Gideon punch her in the face to "recharge her batteries".

Dion Belmont wrote a song about her.

I feel like who knows who had kinda gone out the window
Somehow Sarkhan and Karn know each other

Ok I read that too and was confused so I’m glad I’m not the only one. I racked my brain trying to figure that one out, glad to know it was a mistake.

I don't think it was a mistake so much as a vain attempt at worldbuilding. While we've been following the Gatewatch for quite some time (there's a three month gap between Innistrad and Kaladesh, for example), the rest of the Multiverse has been doing it's own thing.

Perhaps, but there's a catch to setting up noodle incidents like that one.
1) it REALLY shrinks the multiverse. That everyone we've been following ends up knowing each other makes things seem way too small for the staggeringly large scale Dominia really should have. Even War of the Spark should only be a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what's there.
2) Karn and Vol are a really weird pair to attempt to build history between. Other than time travel, they've got nothing to bind them together.

The best I can think of is that Karn has specifically been looking for planeswalkers to help with Mirrodin for a while so he would have tried introducing himself to friends of friends. He knew Elspeth, who knew Tamiyo, who knew Narset, who knew Sarkhan.

I don't think he has, actually.
When we found him last, he was looking for a nuke to end it, not allies.
Besides that, Elspeth knew Ajani that knew Tamiyo. I can't recall precisely, but I don't think Tamiyo was ever directly attached to Tamiyo, only that Ajani was deeply upset and told Tamiyo about her.


As an aside about the trio set to hunt down the 'traitors', whose bright idea was it to send the gorgon after the blind man?

Dovin Baan is still out there. I hope he becomes the planeswalker jailer villain people were discussing long ago.

What I'd like to see out of a villain (very dark anti-hero): Dovin Baan, who can see the flaws in everything, as a kind of planeswalking hybrid of Judge Dredd and Doctor Doom.

I think Niv wanted the walkers back alive so they might have made Dovin her target so she wouldn’t be tempted to turn him to stone.

Edit:reading it again it seems Ral had already agreed to find Tezzeret and Kaya’s blades can kill zombies so maybe Vraska just got stuck with what was left and is at a slight disadvantage.

Also we can speculate how Karn knows Sarkhan but from the way they described their interaction it was almost as if there was some contempt behind it. Maybe it was just “will you help me,no? Guess we’re not cool” but it seemed like more than that honestly. Which would imply they have some history that never happened (at least on screen which leads to kind of a confusing moment).

Some of you guys have mistyped some walker names and it became very confusing.

I suspect Sarkhan knowing Karn may have more to do with Sarkhan working for Ugin. From what I could gather, it sounded like Ugin had been using Sarkhan as an errand boy almost the same way Bolas had, only with a tad bit more respect and a bit less condescension. If Ugin had been sending him out to recruit more allies pre-WoS, then it semi-makes sense if Ugin sent Sarkhan to start on Dominaria.

On a different note, what's going on with Elspeth? I haven't read Godsend yet so I don't know if it goes into detail there but is she dead dead or only mostly dead? The Guilds of Ravnica mythic edition version of her depicts her in the Underworld, but if she was killed by Heliod shouldn't she be desparked?

Well I think before she died died she was physically carried to the underworld by servants of Erebos (I think he wanted Heliods prizes champion) but I could be mistaken. She may have died and they may have just taken the body and someone may need to find a way to spark her again.

I'd like to see Dovin and Vraska end up on a Frank Frazetta inspired plane where our heroes are the amazons and barbarians while the villains are cadaverous sorcerers, warlords in scary black and red plate armor laden with impractical edginess, or primordial terrors from the dawn of the plane's existence.

Dovin would fit right in as a villain, while Vraska would work just fine as a hero there.