#im sorry this is such a long answer! i amr really in my merthur feels tonight about to start my finale rewatch lmao

[piningeddiediaz]

I just started watching merlin for the first time (yes i already know things like how it ends etc) and some of the merthur scenes are?? Hello? "Can you walk on your knees?" Um? Their chemistry is really good! I was wondering, have the writers/producers ever commented anything on the ship? And is merthur generally regarded as a queerbait by fans or not?

omg hello!!! merlin is thee show of all time. they really went 'arthurian legend but what if everyone was young and hot and mostly dumb jocks' and it works better than anyone would have thought lmao. and merthur are sooo romance-coded it's not even 'code' it's just. super explicit. "two sides of the same coin???" "one half cannot really hate what makes it whole??" and listen, i was i think 16 when i watched merlin for the first time, a couple of years after it ended and i knew nothing about Arthurian legend except the whole arthur-guinevere-lancelot love triangle thing but i saw their first meeting and went 'why did no one tell me this is so gay?' "can you walk on your knees" "i can take you apart with one blow" hmmm i bet you want to arthur, i bet you want to 👀

and okay, it's been a couple of years since I've been as into the fandom as i have been the last few weeks so i don't remember all the instances too well but I'm pretty sure there have been many times when the makers/cast of the show have commented on them. as far as i remember, bradley james (arthur) and colin morgan (merlin) were very diplomatic about it, katie mcgrath and angel coulby were hardcore shippers in a kinda jokey but not really way? alex vlahos (who played mordred) once called it "a love story between merlin and arthur", and I'm pretty sure julian murphy (the creator) also called it a love story a bunch of times too. so take from that what you will. the beauty of the merthur - regardless of whether it is considered romantic or not - is that it was not disputed by anyone i don't think that they were the most important relationship of the show, and the most purest form of love in the show too. (i won't go into detail right now because i don't want to spoil anything for you, but shoot me a message once you've finished it! i could, would and have written an essay about it 😂)

(as for the queerbait question - no idea. a lot of people call it queerbait in a jokey way. i don't know how serious people are about it because i don't tend to engage in those discussions. i personally don't think i can comment much on it, because i watched it years after it had finished.)