I'll put this caveat here that I don't follow the Magic the Gathering story super closely, but I kind of absorb it from wikis and YouTube videos, and occasionally the short fiction they publish on the website.
There was a several-year build up to War of the Spark, which saw Nicol Bolas (the one Elder Dragon Legend I ever got, even if it was just the Chronicles version) attempt to restore the godlike planeswalking power he'd had before The Mending by harvesting the planeswalker sparks of as many planeswalkers as he could lure to Ravnica. Given that this was a plot based entirely around killing planeswalkers, it came as a bit of a surprise that only a handful of established planeswalker characters died - most notably Gideon Jura, who tanked the lethal curse baked into Liliana's pact so that she could turn the Dreadhorde against the dragon. A lot of people complained that the stakes, which had seemed to be elevated so high, wound up feeling sort of lower.
Now, the plot also brought about huge changes to Ravnica, which might be the most popular plane, such as the fact that a lot of guilds have been totally reshaped - as a side note, the Ravnica D&D campaign I'm running has an Orzhov Cleric who now wants to kill the Obzedat Council, and while that's not really what my campaign is supposed to be about, I've been trying to figure out if I should introduce Kaya as an NPC and let that play out in-game as it did in canon, though with my party helping.
Still, following the conclusion of that plot 4 years ago (dear lord, time is weird) we're now gearing up for a new climactic arc-conclusion.
I will say, all of this seems to be much faster-paced than I remember older plot arcs, but on the other hand, I'm older. If you consider the original Phyrexian invasion plot to have started with Tempest Block in 1997, its conclusion with Apocalypse would have come after four years in 2001. We could say the current Phyrexian plot officially got going with Vorinclex's arrival on Kaldheim, which was in 2021, so... ok, yeah, that's only two years.
Anyway, very swiftly, the body count has racked up significantly. Not only was everyone's favorite Task Mage killed, but we've now seen a number of long-established characters compleated by the Phyrexians. The longstanding immunity Planeswalkers have to compleation (which, incidentally, is a major plot point in my D&D campaign) has been overcome, and so we've got beloved characters like Ajani and Nissa now playing for team body horror.
This kind of bleak, sweeping wipe-out of canon characters did, of course, happen once before in the past. In Invasion Block, the primary heroes of the past several sets were put through the freaking abattoir. Sure, Urza dying to destroy Yawgmoth for good (and so far it looks like that, at least, stuck) made sense, but we also lost Gerard, Hannah, and a number of other established figures. Basically, when the dust settled, there were only a few characters still around. The subsequent Odyssey Block introduced new characters as a new focus for MTG's story, though after the subsequent Onslaught Block, they decided instead to start jumping from plane to plane each year (and after War of the Spark, they'd start jumping from set to set - something I'm not 100% happy with, as it means we don't get to really become invested in any of these new worlds and plane-based mechanics tend to get swept away in favor of eternal deck archetypes - Kamigawa Neon Dynasty had a lot of cool ideas around Vehicles, but subsequent sets didn't really give us anything to develop that theme with).
That being said, I also think that MTG is a much bigger brand now, and as with all comic-book-like endless narratives, I'm always going to be a bit skeptical about their decision to truly kill off a character for good.
So, I see a couple possibilities for the aftermath of this plotline:
First, the Phyrexians have figured out a way to get to other planes without being planeswalkers. The Mending did bring Planeswalkers down to a power level where they could become cards, sure, but I think the total ban on non-planeswalkers traveling to other planes has been kind of stultifying for the story. We could never have something like the Weatherlight's journeys today (honestly, if there's one compleation I'm most upset by, it's that ship,) and I think it would be cool to have mere legendary creatures actually become recurring, plot-relevant characters once again. I think keeping Planeswalkers to just powerful individuals but then letting others journey between worlds could introduce some really cool new plot possibilities - I mean, just off the top of my head, wouldn't it be cool if House Dimir started planting agents on other worlds?
Second, I wonder if there's some redemption for any of the compleated planeswalkers. Phyrexia is a horrifying and implacable foe, but they've already established that while it's not clear that any Phyrexians are "good," so to speak, at the very least there are figures like Urabrask who are capable of resisting the hive-mind tendencies of Phyrexia and even tolerating the existence of un-compleated people. As it stands, any of the planeswalkers we've seen get turned have swiftly fallen in step with Elesh Norn's agenda of total conquest and conversion, but is it possible that some of them might simply develop new agendas that aren't entirely contradictory to more heroic characters' desires?
Third: is this the end of Phyrexia? I somehow doubt that they'd be willing to ever totally wipe out the Phyrexians. It came really close at the end of Invasion Block, with the destruction of Yawgmoth and even the original plane of Phyrexia, but then Karn had to accidentally bring a drop of oil to Argentum (I believe within the Mirari?) Again, we have to think of this in terms of comic book continuity. In any other medium, eventually bringing the Phyrexians back for a third time (arguably a fourth if you count Antiquities as their first appearance) would feel repetitive, but give it a decade or two and I'm sure that people will feel ready to face them again. I do, however, think that MTG needs to develop some new multiplanar threats (something that the first possibility could help establish).
Anyway, we've only gotten one card-art preview of March of the Machine, which seems to depict Thalia, from Innistrad, riding a legendary frog (can't recall the name, but he's summoned as a token) from Kamigawa, and possibly in Ravnica, which would seem to lend credence to possibility 1's likelihood.
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