#i think both of your opinions and observations are very fair and intruiging and i wanted to discuss it a but further

[artical3237]

gonna throw my own 2 cents into this discussion because its quite intriguing

the tonal shift between s1-2 and s4-5 was so jarring even with s3 supposed to be acting as a buffer/transition. i love the observation with merlin's trajectory getting more and more narrow as the show goes on until he has no other option than to blindly believe that things will get better and that the golden age of albion will come about. while i dont think a psychological horror of the implications of being trapped in a prophecy and having things be predetermined for you fits with what the writers wanted, it would've explored some really interesting themes and would probably better expand on merlin, morgana, and mordred (i call them the m&m&m trio in a my head). one of the things i dislike the most about merlin is that its a tragedy yet the show never treated itself like one before s5. the whole point with tragedies is that you know that it will end badly and us the audience are invested to see how it plays out. yet, time and time again kilgarrah and merlin keep on reminding us of the optimistic prophecy. in a way, it properly hurts us because we are taken on the same hopeful belief as merlin and we experience it being torn from us the same way he did. but at the same time, that approach takes away the dramatic irony and the suspense which are essential parts of a tragedy.

i absolutely despise the way morgana's motivation against arthur is because she believes that she deserves the crown and throne to camelot instead like?? i get that the writers had to give her an unsympathetic motivation as a villain but that doesnt make any sense whatsoever. she has never shown any interest in ruling throughout s1-2 and for the first half of s3 but suddenly when she finds out shes actually uthers biological daughter she feels entitled to the throne for some reason? i understand any and all growth of her hatred for uther because of that but certainly not the entitlement. while i doubt it was deliberate or intentional, it frames her as the stereotype of a hysterical woman and i just. dont like that. in general, the feminism in the show is extremely surface level and lacking but i dont want to get super out of topic here by yapping about my girl gwen and how she deserved better. in the earlier seasons, morgana is depicted as someone who has a clear moral compass and who believes in justice and righteousness according to said compass. she is compassionate to everyone except uther which makes it even more jarring at the start of s3 when she returns and doesnt have even an ounce of empathy towards any of the main cast, not even gwen whos wellbeing was one of the things morgana cared for the most. while it definitely would not have helped with the show's issue with feminism, i would've rather seen morgana being forced into becoming more radical in her approach if the writers truly wanted to make her parallel uther and merlin. i want it to be further emphasized that she is a product of her circumstances. would it strip her of agency even more? yeah, sort of, im not saying this is the best solution, just my personal thoughts, but i do think it would make her seem less hysterical and also less like a stereotypical karen. as for her motivation, i have absolutely no idea how its possible to fix that while still making her a villain. generally, you can make her a righteous villain, one who believes that they are just and doing acts for a proper cause but i dont know how to give her a specific motivation. make magic accepted is obvious so like. she would try to murder supporters of the magic ban/people who villainize magic??? i dont know but im not here to fix this show's problemsss. plus, that would make her fundamentally indistinguishable from merlin which i guess you can make that the entire point? that theyre both forced to take extreme measures for their cause which is/includes making magic accepted. that would make the main difference is that merlin is on arthurs side and morgana isnt. but that would make merlin appear worse than morgana because he's actively supporting the rulers that are enforcing the magic ban because ultimately his loyalty to arthur goes above his other wants. it makes an even deeper moral dilemma which while intriguing, is very hard to trudge through. though if we circle back to merlin being a tragedy, i feel it is kinda possible to navigate even if its difficult.

anyways i actually really like fact that gaius didnt die as i feel that its so unfair that part of arthur's development as he becomes king is that he doesnt have to rule alone because he has gwen, merlin, and his knights meanwhile merlin remains mostly alone in his journey especially after lance dies. merlin 👏 needs 👏 a 👏 support 👏 system 👏 and im glad that gaius, despite his flaws and fuckups (esp with morgana in s2 like srsly dude) was able to stay a reliable and steady presence for merlin. weirdly enough, i feel that his role and relationship with merlin in the later seasons is much healthier compared to the one back in s1 and 2 and it makes sense. gaius too goes through character development and learns to abandon cowardice disguised as caution for the people he loves and if he died any earlier than season 3, that character development couldnt be put to use and wouldve actually been a waste. though, if we're looking at merlin through the lens that it is a tragedy, then the death of gaius can very much be part of merlins downfall. in any case, i will not take gaius slander im sorry guys i like him too much however i do accept gaius criticism i feel like thats fair.

anywaysss kilgarrah. i do like the observation that the writers at first wrote him to have self-serving motivations and that they changed him to be wiseman communicator of prophecies. it cements him in my mind as a true neutral which makes sense. he's not benevolent towards merlin but he is willing to help him out outside of his own interests. i still like gaius over him but thats just bias

Jumping in on the Merlin thing for a second and his awful, upsetting character arc from beginning to end... like I fully get where the bootlicker accusation is coming from, but I do think the show is actually like borderline horror if you start taking the destiny thing into consideration. My personal view of Merlin as a character is that he comes to Camelot in s1 completely unaware of what he's stepping into. Truly unprepared to come to The Anti Magic Capital that Classism and Genocide Built and witness a public execution within the first 5 minutes. His WHOLE deal in s1 is him like dangerously stepping into situations he doesn't fully understand because the social rules governing them are so nonsensical to him.

But by the time s2 starts he is Very Aware of how much Camelot is actively a terrible place for him to be and also he is in some deep and frightening level bound to that place and to Arthur. He is genuinely desperate to get out in s2 (he's a little angry and reckless throughout) and every attempt he makes to go against Destiny* ends in tragedy. Freya is the biggest example, but (wait sorry this in the back of s1) I also think a lot about how Will was pushing him to go against the grain only to get killed saving Arthur's life and to have Merlin's own mother tell him he belongs at Arthur's side NEXT TO WILL'S FUNERAL PYRE. It's a really scary moment if you concede that some element of Fate is at play and is working to keep Merlin in place.

Anyway, anyway I think by the end of s2 Merlin has been forced to accept "his place" (he betrays Morgana and is so furious that he acts out and let's Kilgarrah loose which I mean a lot of people probably died right??) so you get him being more cheerful in s3 because he is has to be happy right? He can't ever leave so he Has to believe in the prophecy and Arthur. It's a sunk cost thing, right? People have died for this. Merlin is killing people over it.. Morgana is lost forever. So it HAS to be leading to something beautiful. Merlin will keep supporting this regime because The Future will be better (undefined when or how and who cares that Arthur never really gets better). And the end is s3 is so hopeful and Merlin probably really believes it's all coming together at that Round Table they are really on the edge of something and then... and then.

Well Lancelot dies. And Uther dies in the worst possible way. And Arthur never, EVER gets better. And Merlin's world gets smaller and smaller and his ability to imagine anything but the path he's been stuck on forever goes away completely. And in the end the only thing THE ONLY THING he has is Arthur's life. Arthur staying alive, the thing which will mysteriously lead to the perfect future that makes all the previoys atrocities ok, is the only thing he can believe in. He will sacrifice anything and anybody for that one fact. It is the entire crux of his tenuous personhood.

Sorry I'm getting carried away here and not even talking about Fate very much here, but like it is absolutely chilling to get to the last episode and have Merlin confront Kilgarrah** over the fact that Albion did not in fact happen and have his answer be roughly "all has happened as it was meant to, this has been the story the entire time, you've done everything you were meant to". And so of course Merlin is going to spend the next millenia still on the same path, still forced to wait for The Promised Future to make good.

AND LIKE TO BE CLEAR its all bad writing. Genuinely, the first half of the show did not set up the back half. The writers were going for something in s4 and s5 entirely beyond their means. The politics of the show were abysmal (see: never knowing how to handle the genocide or fucking picking a side with Uther) and ultimately the writers were too in love with the status quo to tell a functional story. Like I am not in anyway suggesting that Merlin's relationship to fate and possible lack of conplete free will is something they did on purpose (if only because I'm never convinced the show fully understood how bad Merlin's situation was... one too many jokes where the knights played keep the food away from him, you know?) but I do think it's a necessary talking point to see what does happen to Merlin or to others in the first two series when he makes these attempts to act outside of his circumscribed role (like his attempt to free Morgana from Camelot that gets a lot of Druids killed).

*On the topic of Destiny I do think the show plays coy on how much of what happened was truly inevitable, but ultimately the viewer is meant to believe that Mordred and Morgana's fall and Arthur's death were all things that could not be changed because that's Arthurian Legend and also because, well, everyone starts to look pretty indefensible if Morgana wasn't always going to turn into a "villain" (as dubious as the politics of positioning her as such are). (Though actually I do think one thing that people let slide when people talk about Morgana is YES she correctly wanted to kill Uther and those who supported the magical genocide, BUT ALSO she was ultimately unable to break away from her class allegiance as a noble woman who believed she was entitled to a hereditary crown. Those two causes were inseparable for her. THAT'S why people kept telling her she took after Uther so much.) So anyway I think it's valid to say that if Merlin could have brought himself to completely ignore Gaius and Kilgarrah in s2 then maybe Morgana wouldn't have gone evil, but well. The show (for the much worse) simply wasn't built that way in-universe or out of universe (because, again, the politics of bbc Merlin Are stunningly awful).

**Kilgarrah has the avatar of Fate is also such an interesting question. I think the first two series kind of play with he idea that Kilgarrah is, well, certainly self-serving and looking for vengeance and that possibly he is misleading Merlin to that end. But then the show doesn't really do anything with that idea and in his subsequent appearances has Merlin treat Kilgarrah's advice and wisdom with complete good faith (though in-universe this is obviously partly the result of his never to be resolved grief over the sudden and violent loss of his father and becoming the last dragonlord). So I do think the writers intention with him by the end of the show is, unlike Gaius***, that he really was a mentor/wiseman figure for Merlin and was Truthfully communicating the prophecies.

***Gaius can go kick rocks truly. He is so terrible and like I get why Merlin feels like he's the only permanent, stable (parental) relationship in his life (I love you Hunith! I'm so sorry the show hates mothers!!!!) but genuinely Gaius should have died by the end of s3 at the latest this is LITERALLY Hero's Journey 101 to have the mentor/parent die. If we're taking my No Free Will Conspiracy Theory at face value then the fact that Gaius didn't die is all the proof you need that he was toxic to Merlin's well being and development of self hood outside of the prophecy.

Ok ok. I'm done for now, but literally I am always down to talk bbc Merlin, I am so upset about it all the time.

HI!! Okay I had to reopen my laptop in order to answer this because the mobile app was shitting itself lmao. Let me go point by point here because you said a lot of compelling stuff

your destiny + sunk cost fallacy theory is really interesting, and i really wish the showrunners/writers had realized this for themselves--and if they did, actualized it in the writing of the show. that would have been so interesting if we had gotten true moments from Merlin of him regretting where he has gotten to in life to that degree. god if only bbc merlin was actually a psychological horror about how you can't avoid your fate that's been predetermined for you. honestly if bbc merlin had grappled with predeterminism at all beyond a shallow skim of the surface of the idea it would have been 10 times more interesting

"Though actually I do think one thing that people let slide when people talk about Morgana is YES she correctly wanted to kill Uther and those who supported the magical genocide, BUT ALSO she was ultimately unable to break away from her class allegiance as a noble woman who believed she was entitled to a hereditary crown. Those two causes were inseparable for her. THAT'S why people kept telling her she took after Uther so much." <- this is actually incredibly true and honestly i do think it is a side effect of the show refusing to grapple with class dynamics as a whole because it lets the audience ignore it as well unless you're purposefully thinking about it, though i do still think her arc is what a previous anon said: the stereotype of someone who's Too Radical and Goes Too Far, and i'm not a fan of that at all. I'm not saying you're saying her arc isn't that, but it's just so badly written like you said 😭

"but genuinely Gaius should have died by the end of s3 at the latest this is LITERALLY Hero's Journey 101 to have the mentor/parent die. If we're taking my No Free Will Conspiracy Theory at face value then the fact that Gaius didn't die is all the proof you need that he was toxic to Merlin's well being and development of self hood outside of the prophecy." <- WHAT I'M FUCKING SAYING!!! Gaius should have died and it's a crime he didn't!!!!

Anyways overall I find your fate conspiracy theory to be super compelling and it has a lot of implications i didn't consider... ugh if only Merlin (and the writers of the show) had like an ounce more of self awareness and then it would have truly been horrifying for him to realize the cycle he's stuck in... ugh we could've had it all.