#so many merlin thoughts in my brain they're spilling into my star trek content

[hauntedhikingsociety]

God i’m having thoughts now i got so blindsided by that goddamn merlin post

merlin could have been a well written tragedy. it could have been cathartic instead of rushed or unsatisfying, the elements were there.

my top most tragic ending for merlin is like, midway through season 5, merlin’s magic gets revealed. and arthur’s pissed, he’s angry, he banishes merlin (even though deep down he doesn’t want to he’s just reeling and upset about not knowing before) and then the knights and gaius and gwen all come to their own conclusions and convince arthur that he was wrong to banish him and magic isn’t evil. and arthur goes “>:( okay, i guess you’re right let’s get merlin back”

but merlin has been on his own adventure, possibly been picked up by morgana who doesn’t know he’s emrys and is willing to forgive and forget if merlin joins her side and somehow, he discovers the latest plot to take down arthur and camelot. and he stops it just like usual, but this time, he dies in the process. arthur gets there just in time to see merlin die for him.

naturally this changes everything for arthur knowing that merlin risked his life for him after being so poorly treated. in a dramatic gesture he goes back on all the laws against magic and the last few episodes involve a few battles that create albion and it’s all great and happy ever after.

if you are thinking “hey well that’s not very tragic” you know what breaks the immersion and makes the ending of merlin a lot less hard hitting? the fact that the prophecy of arthur uniting the land doesn’t come true. arthur uniting the land to become the greatest king that camelot has ever known was a hard fact for the whole first four seasons and the fact that it doesn’t come to fruition in any kind of satisfying way is what makes the ending of merlin frustrating instead of sad. look at fucking macbeth. all the prophecies in that believably come true even through loopholes. the merlin writers really said fuck the conventions of tragedy we can do worse.

the prophecy had to come true for the ending to feel complete. the tragedy had to come from another angle so in this angle the tragedy is that merlin is dead. no prophecy ever said that merlin would be alive to see albion. and merlin has spent five seasons fighting tooth and nail for this kingdom where he would finally be safe, only to die believing arthur had forsaken him, thinking that he’d failed. how would you emotionally recover from that?? you simply wouldn’t.

i also like this idea more because merlin spends five seasons going “oh well if arthur knew. if he knew all i’d done” and this offers the opportunity for arthur to say “if merlin knew.” it gives us a bit of long awaited role reversal which the canon ending did not give us.

at this point i’m just spitballing things i would have liked to see but the tl;dr—

s5 of bbc merlin is a poorly written tragedy and maybe if the writers had a little more appreciation for shakespeare and/or the tragic conventions they would have been able to write a better finale.