I love Ikoria, and I think long-term, the set opened up new design space for Magic that is wide open for exploration. The first time is always hard because there is no precedent. I am betting that Return to Ikoria is already on the schedule. And if it isn't, that's a major mistake. Wizards will be a fool not to explore Mutate and Companion a lot more.
The mistake with Coompanion's costing, and perhaps how some of the Companion cards work, is understandable. Companions are deck-building heaven, warts and all. Wizards deserves respect for daring new designs instead of just re-hatching old designs. I also don't mind when Wizards blatantly steals from other games (Mutate is a more open form of Pokemon evolution). Like Picasso used to say: 'good artists borrow, great artists steal.'
The Mutate cost-benefit was well thought out. Eldraine adventures are two cards in one whereas Mutate plays are one card from multiple cards, and that is a vulnerability; yet many of the Mutate cards hold their own in a format that has Eldrain adventures; although, parenthetically, I do find [[Unsummon]] effects to be the Achiles heel of Mutate.
