Teferi has been a part of Magic for a very long time. He first appeared twenty years ago, during the Mirage block, already a fully fledged planeswalker. Mirage took place on the continent of Jamuura in Dominaria. Jamuura, consisting of Femeref, Suq'Ata and Teferi's homeland of Zhalfir, was Magic's version of Africa. Now Mirage block wasn't perfect. It did have some...shall we say...racial stereotyping in it. But it also had a very powerful good-aligned planeswalker who was not only black-skinned, but very African in tone. Which is pretty cool. Teferi was also a rather more sympathetic character than Urza, and genuinely cared about his homeland and people.
But if we are to start at the beginning, we must go forward a few sets to the Urza's Saga block, which takes place chronologically before Mirage.
The young Teferi was a brilliant and gifted mage. He was selected to join the Academy, a wizard school on the island of Tolaria, founded by Urza and run by the master wizard Barrin. There he befrended Jhoira and Karn, and frustrated Barrin and his other tutors with his many practical jokes. Teferi studied at the Academy for a couple of years.
Then the Academy was unexpectedly attacked by Phyrexians who killed most of the students including Teferi and Jhoira. Urza sent Karn back in time in order to prevent the attack, but the untested time machine exploded on it's arrival in the past, destroying the Acadamy and killing most of the Phyrexians, but also many of the students as well. The explosion completely disruped the flow of time on Tolaria, creating multible zones of slow and fast time across the island. Teferi and Jhoira survived this time, but Jhoira fell into a coma and Teferi was trapped in a slow-time bubble.
Now I must point out that Magic had rather strict rules on time travel. After much experimentation, Urza and Barrin had concluded that most substances - including the ones people are usually made out of - can't survive the stresses of travelling through time. This was the impetus for Urza's creation of Karn, a golem made of silver, the only substance that could withstand time travel. (It has not been explained whether these rules are still in effect, and if so, how Sarkhan managed to circumvent them on Tarkir.)
Teferi was stuck in the slow time-bubble for over 20 years (though it was only a few moments from his point of view). Eventually, Jhoira came out of her coma, and came up with a plan to save him. The time rifts had had an unusual effect on the water of Tolaria. Using her artificer skills, she constructed a water-powered portal that could bridge the gap between the different time zones on the island, allowing Karn and Urza to rescue Teferi.
Teferi's spark had ignited during the time in the bubble, and though he fought Phyrexians on Serra's Realm and helped Jhoira construct the Mana Rig factory that eventually produced parts for the Weatherlight, he soon became disillusioned with Urza's obsession with Phyrexia. Wanting nothing more to do with Urza's plans, he returned home to Zhalfir where he was appointed as royal mage, the protector of his people. He set up his home on a small island just off the coast of Zhalfir, which subsequently became known as Teferi's Isle.
It is here that we return to the Mirage block, where players met Teferi for the first time. Except...kind of not. Mirage begins with Teferi inexplicably missing, along with his entire isle. He was initially a bit of a McGuffin - his disappearance attracted the attention of three wizards, who traveled to Jamuura to investigate. The wizards didn't really get along, and their infighting plunged the three nations of Jamuura - Femeref, Zhalfir and Suq'Ata - into war.
It eventually turned out that Teferi's time experiments, intended to find a way to summon creatures more easily, had instead damaged the time stream. When Teferi noticed the damage and tried to fix it, he accidentally phased himself and everything on the island out of existence. About 50 years later, he and the rest of the island phased back in, and were rather confused at their apparent decades-long absence (to them, no time had passed at all).
It seemed that Teferi had managed to accidentally invent time travel, of a sort. He could freeze things, including people and creatures, in a 'phased out' state for a set amount of time, after which they returned to the time steam. From the point of view of those phased, they had instantaneously traveled to the future.
Teferi blamed himself for the Mirage War - though he had been absent for all of it. Perhaps he felt he had failed in his duty as the royal mage. However, the timestream on the isle was still damaged (his attempt at fixing it having failed), and Teferi felt he had to stay and try again to fix it. Instead of acting directly, he sent visions to guide the people of Zhalfir, which was instrumental to them winning the war. (Thus the name of the second set of Mirage block: Visions.)
When Phyrexia launched their invasion, a portal opened over Zhalfir. Teferi was quick to act. He contacted Urza, and the two of them teleported in and out of the portal multiple times, overloading it. Teferi then used the resulting energy wave to weave a huge phasing spell that removed Zhalfir and Shiv (Jhoira's homeland) from the time stream.
Urza was furious. He had been counting on Zhalfiran forces to join his coalition army to fight against the Phyrexians. To make matters worse, Teferi also refused to join Urza's Nine Titans and then left Dominaria, wanting no part in Urza's war. He took Jhoira with him (she was not a planeswalker, but had become near-immortal due to the time-altered water of Tolaria). Urza had to replace Teferi with a little-known planeswalker named Daria.
This leaves us with the question of whether or not Teferi was in the right. War with Phyrexia was inevitable. But Urza, as much as he was dedicated to stopping Phyrexia, was not a particularly nice person. Teferi knew him pretty well by now, and had seen how badly Urza could mess up (see the destruction on Tolaria). He had also seen the devastation of war in Zhalfir, and the horrible aftermath of Phyrexia's invasion of Serra's Realm. He wanted to spare the people he cared for from that fate. He was right to mistrust Urza - who had conscripted Tevesh Szat into the Titans knowing that Szat would betray them. And when Szat killed Daria and Kristina, Urza called them 'acceptable losses'.
But was phasing out his and Jhoira's homeland, and then just leaving, an acceptable course of action? Teferi had always had an arrogant streak, and here he decided what was best for multiple countries of people without even asking them. And what about the rest of Dominaria? Did Teferi not care about them? Or was it the best he could do with what he had? It is difficult to judge - Urza had co-opted nearly all of Dominaria for his plans, so what could someone who disagreed with him actually do?
While they were thus distracted, Leshrac Nightwalker entered the picture. He actually worked very hard to close many of the rifts across Dominaria. It's not entirely certain why the evil planeswalker sought to do this. Perhaps he feared (rightly) that if Dominara collapsed, all the other planes in the Multiverse would be devastated. He managed to mentally control the planeswalker Jeska into closing the rift over Zhalfir before it phased in, effectively erasing Teferi's homeland from existence.
Fortunately, Bolas decided Teferi was beneath his notice and left. Though it was too late to save Zhalfir, Teferi phased Shiv back in, and then sacrificed his spark to seal the Shivan Rift, giving up his ability to travel the multiverse. The Shivans were not his people, but they were the people of his oldest friend, Jhoira.
It is tragic that after all he had done, Teferi was unable to save his people after all. We don't know what happened to him after the Mending. It is probable, that like his friend Jhoira, the time-altered water of Tolaria had made him near-immortal, and therefore, it is possible that he is still living on Dominaria.
And so we come to Teferi's creature card. It does not depict Teferi before he was a planeswalker, but after he lost his spark. It's flavour text perfectly describes the sacrifice Teferi made.
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