Urza was [𝕟𝕠𝕥] a villain 

Urza approached everything in a calculated manner, but damn if he wasn't bad at math.

Both the brothers were inherently flawed but when faced with yawgmoth, gix, and the phyrexians, one stood on business while the other folded

As one who knew him, he may not have been a villain, but he was quite a prick.

Its really easy to complain about someone when you're alive. Its a hell of a lot harder when you're dead. Or a Phyrexian.

I love urza as a character, I remember once when he was showing the plans for the whether light they tell him it sucks and he goes on a tantrum. Just finished my commander deck with him yesterday

Absolutely nailed it. Urza's story is interesting precisely *because* he wasn't an obvious, clean-cut hero. He was the ultimate pragmatist, fuelled by and battling against oscillating sanity, hubris, and guilt. The archetypal unthinking thinker. He was a mess who initially just wanted to bathe his intellect in the patterns of machines and later, occasionally hang out with Tawnos. He did a LOT of stupid and questionable stuff as both mortal and planeswalker, and spent a few thousand years chasing solutions to his own mistakes. But he was also an absolute indictment of the passive attitude/obliviousness of most of Dominaria in the face of an existential threat. The bio on the official Magic Story page is an embarrassment..."While perhaps the Phyrexians would have destroyed Dominaria without his intervention, Urza trampled upon countless lives in his pursuit of vengeance." Perhaps?! Engage with the nuances of your own story yo! I totally understand that he'd be a jaw-dropping villain for modern Dominarians, or, you know, real people who haven't dug into the lore much. Eugenics programme?! Absolute emotional constipation?! The brokenness of the Urza's block?!!! He wasn't a cool or 'good' guy, and he had no ability to form healthy human relationships of any kind. But he was all Dominaria had, which was about the best and worst news the plane could get. Most of us are neither heroes nor villains. Or we're both. Urza took that to the nth degree. Thought experiment: what should Urza have done differently, or done better to defeat Yawgmoth? There's plenty (and I mean plenty) to interrogate in terms of ethics and morals, but his victory was contingent on quite a lot of what he did...

Urza would have used the cylex on new phyrexia and saved us all from the lame story of march of the machine

The abyss stared back and he said bet.

Urza is utilitarian to a point that is uncomfortable for most normal people. Especially, y'know, everyone on Argoth.

It's surprising to see how many people think of Urza as some sort of monster. His character embodies the cost of war and what it takes to stop an enemy who is truly unfeeling, soulless and without any shred of humanity. He saw their measures and he hated what he had to do, but unfortunately felt as though he needed to fight fire with fire using the Metathran, Karn and the Legacy Weapon. He was harsh and manipulative, but in the end he understood that one could not be a fence sitter when faced with a foe who had no interest in bargaining or preservation.

Urza is the hero Dominaria needed but didn't want to have

I think that Urza did his best to prevent the coming Phrexian invasion, but at the same time he justified way too easily his actions with the greater good. He succeeded, but perhaps he could have been a bit more careful

Urza was a tragic dark hero. Without him the entire multiverse would've been taken over by the phyrexians. I think people don't understand what drove him to do what he did. The books really do a good job giving you a new view point

7:25 his choice: a) "throwing everything he can at it" or b) "losing everything their is". but when that is the choice, their is no choice...

The thing was yawgmoths was likeable dude offered and delivered power consistently. He also walked the walk on his teaching it was the only reason urzas won. The apocalypse book straight up admits it.

Yeah, The guy desperate, broken And afraid. You want to be mad at the guy cause he destroyed places beyond repair but many of the people alive were because of his intervention. He did what he did Not because he wanted to but because he had to to survive Despite looking for alternatives.

I mean regardless of what necessary evil things he did previous Planeshift block, he actually changed his mind and side with Yawgmoth half way though the war, and even Yawgmoth was like "Nah bro" and throw him to Phyrexian Arena and rig the game to let Gerrard cut his head off. Took him a head ripping off to get him to back to the sense. So I wouldn't say he's not Not Villian, but that also what make him, such a great character that modern story lack off.

I think Urza realized that he would be hated for what he had done. But he did what needed to be done.

he was just a dude that had to make a lot of "Damned if I do, F@*ked if I don't" decisions. And in most situations I'd much rather be the former than the latter.

I will give him props for creating the Legacy, he had vision beyond his deeds and his life.

Urza saw the horrors of Phyrexia, doing everything he could to avoid it consuming his world was the sanest thing to do.

I don't think any character better captures what becoming an immortal pre-mending planeswalker does to a person better than Urza. The capacity to view the big picture on a multiversal scale and let nothing but his own goals bind him. It's funny how modern wotc tries so hard to make their protagonists relatable when that borderline inhuman calculation was Urza's strength.

A complex and imperfect character...Wizards take notes

I would like to cast this video for its cleave cost Jokes aside as many atrocities as he did commit ultimately the only person that still has to put up with it is Teferi and I guess Jodah. Edit 2 I forgot Lim-Dul and by extension Mairsil is still around Like yeah the effects of the first Phyrexian invasion will likely never not be felt on Dominaria (and RIP Serra’s Domain) but at this point on the timeline it’s mostly “but gods, he was such a bitch”. And then we have Karn, who followed on his father’s footsteps by solving barely more problems than he caused.

We're you talking about Urza or about CEDH players I can't tell. 😅

I'm glad I finally brought you around on this

Not the hero dominaria deserves but the one it needs

Urza's story is proof of how the lore used to be based on way more intelligent and morally complex media and how WotC didn't understimate the players' ability to engage with it. At some point, they decided to dumb down the whole product and stay away from anything more complex than a Marvel movie.

It certainly doesn't help that the New Phyrexian Invasions have also undermined the necessity of Urza's actions. You have to believe that the New Phyrexians were just really incompetent, despite having whatever 12 years is in multiverse time to prepare their attack. That, or assume the defenders and Gatewatch were effortlessly better than Urza, a Godlike genius.

Cool video and an interesting take, but you are missing some important points. As a human, Urza is pretty much a psychopath who only sees people as resources to achieve what he wants. Urza marries Kayla only for the dowry. He abandons Mishra after the death of Tocasia, he corrupts Tawnos, turning him from a sensitive toymaker to a ruthless warlord. He absolutely destroyed Dominaria before he even knew Phyrexia existed and blew up the Cylex knowing it would kill his child and didn't even spare that a thought. "He did eugenics and genocide but it's ok because he was fighting a worse bad guy" is a terrible argument. We can acknowledge that Urza fought Phyrexia and that Phyrexia was worse without lionizing the man. A monster is a monster even if it kills worse monsters. But the most important point that you are missing is that Urza didn't fight Phyrexia to defend anything. He just wanted to be better than them. He wanted to beat them to satisfy his own ego. That's why he always went about confronting them in a roundabout and underhanded manner. He could have easily rallied the people of the multiverse to his cause, but he didn't because it was never about them. It was about him. Even as early as the Timestream novel, we begin to see hints that Urza'z entire problem is that he is jealous of Phyrexia. In the end, Urza submitted 'to the glory of Phyrexia' because he realized he didn't hate Yawgmoth, he wanted to be him. TLDR: Urza is a sociopath with a Yawgmoth fetish.

I consider Urza to have been a villain but a necessary evil to counter an even worse evil. Without Phyrexia, I think he could have been a great man, albeit still an asshole. In a world of shades of grey, he was a pretty dark shade. The unfortunate reality is that the phrase "Fight fire with fire" exists for a reason.

Unlike new Pyrexia, Yawgmoth is way too potent and most planeswalker back cant even fight his army. one even got caught and tortured despite the godlike power of planswalker of old.

This makes me wonder, if the shoe was on the other foot, how would Mishra have handled this herculean task if he was not the primary target for Gix's manipulations and ascended on Argoth. While Urza had a calculated mind like no other, Mishra was equally brilliant, but much more adept at understanding people and how to use that to his advantage. I strongly believe he too would've decided to stand against Phyrexia as a planeswalker - after all he is cut from the same cloth as Urza - but I'm curious how he would've gone about that with his set of skills. Perhaps there's potential for a video exploring that concept?

What makes Urza the perfect character and hero is because he was not perfect and not really fit to be a hero.

Urza is kind of like Batman, the hero that was needed

He was absolutely based. But him giving into Yawgmoth was incredibly stupid.

Urza isn’t a villain sure. But he’s definitely the kind of character that the Doctor would chastise for not bothering to find a better way to resolve a conflict. 😅

A victim of the self

people's criticism of Urza isn't that he was wrong for taking extreme measures to combat phyrexia, it's that he was emotionally callous towards the people whose support he needed most, allowed /unneccesary/ atrocities in the war, and spat on his own efforts & sacrifices by turncoating at the last possible moment. of course, all this is part of what makes him so interesting and effective as a protagonist- but he's not a good man doing bad things, he's a bad man doing bad things for the right reasons.

It's easy to diminish Urza's decision ,when you only need to nerf Phyrexian's, girl with plot armor and one wizard who first runs away and then comes back with The One attitude. Happy ending, boring child's story. Phyrexian's are like Mythos in H. P. Lovecraft novels, you win or you cease to exist.

Can't agree more with you. Like other franchises (SW) they retconned, humiliated and warped the figure of a powerful man, in this case Urza, ignoring the fact that most of the lore of the Multiverse (even today) is built upon his shoulders. Now, is cursed, even questioned as artificer (by Saheeli, for example). Now we have Jace with a Furby and planes condensed in five short stories and one set. It's ridiculous.

Pragmatism Ursa's legacy

If only urza was a strong female instead he wouldn't have to struggle and instead unleash his inner god like ability that just win and beat the phyrexians in the blink of an eye.

I don't agree. Urza was a monster, illustrated by the fact that he 'solved' a moral dilemma by recruiting someone he knew would betray them and, instead of acting prior to the betrayal, allowed the traitor to kill multiple of their strongest allies. After all this, he wasn't even willing to use the weapon he set this whole thing up to power. He may have saved Dominaria, he may not match Yawgmoth's sadistic evil, but don't mistake that for heroism. His cruelty may have been from indifference, but it was cruelty all the same. He was just a mad god who happened to be playing on Dominaria's side.

You're wrong, but I respect your audacity.

My biggest issue with Urza's story is less an issue with him as a character and more an issue with how the topic of eugenics was handled in his story by the people writing it. Spice 8 Rack's video on Yawgmoth lays this out very thoroughly, but to summarize: Depicting eugenics as a "grim, but necessary act to overcome threats to society" is dangerously close to retoric used by real life eugenicists to push their ideology, and repeating it in media can lend credibility to these arguments. This is bad because eugenics loves to depict itself as science when in reality it is one of the most harmful and hateful ideologies out there. To be clear, I'm not saying "this story had things I think are bad in it, so you're not allowed to like Urza or his story." I'm going for a more nuanced take of "I think older media is worth examining to see what we can learn from it when producing new media in the modern day."

Same as he is both protagonist and antagonist, he is also victim and villain.

Urza was a eugenicist, that makes him a villain by definition.

With this logic it is like saying it is okay to destroy a whole civilization just because a few might come up and destroy you. Hmm...now, what historical group think like this? Says a lot about OP. Just saying. ☕

Your video starts by saying that urza wasn't a monster who was simply the lesser of two evils the you spent ten minutes explaining that all of urza's atrocities are fine actually because yawgmoth was so bad and you said it all in the most annoying overly dramatic voice I've ever heard. I want my 10 minutes back

Not all monsters are villains