#there's more stuff here but i closed iplayer and cba to get more screencaps now

[oswinsdolma]

It's half past eleven at night but this has been on my mind for DAYS and I need to write it down-

Okay I know we treat A Servant of Two Masters as a comedy episode for the most part, and don't get me wrong, it is HILARIOUS, but I cannot stop thinking about the scene near the beginning where Morgana is treating Merlin's wounds, so let's look a little closer at that:

Look here at the hatred on Merlin's face. He clearly despises Morgana in this moment, as he fully believes that the friend he used to have is gone, convinced of her selfishness and disloyalty. But now let's look at Morgana.

Now, at first glance, it looks like her usual cruel smirk, basically her default way of addressing someone from series four onwards. Now, I'm not a gifer, but if you look at this scene, there is a flash of tenderness in her expression beneath it all as she takes in the sight of Merlin. After this we cut back to Arthur and the Knights, who also show their concern, but we don't see Merlin's reaction to this.

Skip forward a scene and we're back in the "hovel".

Now the lighting in this scene is awful, and I'm not sure if that's for a reason or not, but we can still see Merlin's face. At this point, Morgana has stopped sending jibes towards Merlin and is cleaning his wounds. She is still less than civil to him, but it's never really explained why she's doing this. One reason could be the fact that she is intending to use Merlin as a tool to kill Arthur, and Merlin (being the chaotic little shit he is) needs all the help he can get. And this is no doubt what Morgana is telling herself, but I think there's something deeper here, and I have two main reasons for this.

1. Merlin's face in this scene. He is in obvious pain from the wounds, and he and Morgana are at odds. Poisoning your ex-friend isn't something that heals quickly in a relationship, even if one if you hasn't developed regicidal tendencies towards your other best friend. But amidst the physical pain, there are clear signs of emotional pain here underneath all that. Merlin is constantly told that his destiny is the most important thing, and that it must be carried out at all costs. But regardless of who she is now, Morgana was his friend, and that's harder to forget than the betrayal.

2. Morgana's visual tells in this scene:

See here that she is furrowing her brow as she attends to the wound on Merlin's chest. Now this isn't a great screencap, but notice that furrowing her brow is something that she does a lot when concerned about things in earlier seasons. I can't think of any specific instances off the top of my head because it's literally midnight now but this isn't an isolated thing. Therefore, while Morgana may have other motives for helping Merlin get back on his feet, but she definitely still cares a little for him in the same way he cares about her.

Moving on to this screencap here (I put the brightness up but it really is terrible) you can see Merlin's face, and it's strangely... Blank. If there's anything there at all, it's regret. This is an image from where Morgana is saying "don't think that I don't understand loyalty just because I have no one left to be loyal to". This line is absolutely perfect for summing up the whole dynamic here: Merlin is full of regret and grief for a doomed friendship, but in this moment, so is Morgana. For her, Merlin was the one person who wasn't afraid of what she was, who helped her find people who could make her hate herself less for how she was born. Merlin was the bright-eyed genius who was the only one stupid enough to save her brother from being quite so much of a bully in his early years at Camelot, and for him to betray her like that? Above nearly anyone else, Merlin was the one she was loyal to. She even admitted this in The Moment of Truth. This phrase is well calculated, and it hits. Hard.

Morgana's anger overtakes her now, because Merlin has just accused her of neglecting what they had. She was loyal to him until he betrayed her. This is not his high ground. And look:

Merlin looks for a moment like he's going to fight it, but then slumps back. Why? Because he knows she's right. Because it was his fault. Because he chose destiny over his friends. And I'm not saying Morgana is innocent here, after all, she is the one brainwashing Merlin. But Merlin is the one that shoulders the guilt, and because of who he is, he will always remember that he was the catalyst for the explosion.

So what's my point here? On the whole, I really dislike how Morgana's descent into evil was handled. They did a good job of showing her as a villain, but we never really saw how she got there, because she seems to have found it remarkably easy to swing between caring, compassionate person to "I don't care who dies as long as I get my revenge". But in this scene, we get a glimpse of who Morgana was, and the parts of herself she had to destroy in order to live with what she was doing. And we see a little of that in Merlin too: we see him letting go of his idealistic fantasies of peace coming about without a fight. We see him realising what he has become and that he is just as much as a pawn of destiny as she.

And most importantly, we see them say a private goodbye to the impossible hope that things could have been different.