So, the other day Merlin came to an end. As such it seems as good a time as any to tell my opinions on it.
I'll start by saying that I enjoyed Merlin overall, and thought it was entertaining, though it wasn't without it's flaws.
The story is a retelling of the Arthurian Legends told from the point of view of Merlin, who in this version is a young man and of a similar age to Arthur. Merlin journeys to Camelot and is taken in by Gaius, the court physician, who very quickly becomes aware of Merlin's immense magic and warns him that he must keep it a secret as magic has been outlawed by Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father and the current king of Camelot. Merlin soon finds himself in Arthur's service and meets within caves deep beneath the castle, Kilgharrah, the last of the dragons; the dragon informs Merlin that his destiny is to protect Arthur and help him build a kingdom where magic can be seen as a force for good once again. Then the first two series or so follow a basic pattern every episode, bad person with magic turns up to Camelot and tries to kill Arthur, Merlin stops them with sneaky uses of magic. Some important exceptions as that they rescue a young druid boy named Mordred; Arthur falls in love with Gwenivere, a serving girl in the castle; they meet Morgause, the half sister of Morgana, ward of King Uther and Merlin sets Kilgharrah free and learns from his long absent father that he is a dragon lord and as such can control and summon the great dragon. Series two ended with Morgana being taken away by Morgause. Morgana returned at the beginning of series three and a new type of predictable story occurred, Morgana being secretly evil and doing evil things and looking at the camera now and again to remind the audience at home how evil she is... However along the way that series had some important developments, like they met Gwaine and Percival and Elian, Gwen's brother, who, along with Lancelot, who they met earlier in the show, would later become knights. Upon the discovery that Morgana is evil and a sorceress and that she was secretly Uther's daughter, she was banished from Camelot and set out to claim the throne she felt rightfully hers and planted a mole in Camelot in the shape of Agravaine, Arthur's Uncle, who does is secretly evil and does evil things and looks at the camera now and again to remind the audience at home how evil he is... Uther is killed, which makes Arthur king, and gives Merlin more hope that magic will return to Camelot. Ultimately Agravaine and Morgana are defeated, though Morgana is still a threat and Arthur, who has pulled the sword from the stone, is safe as king and now marries Gwenivere. The final series then sees Arthur give a now grown Mordred entrance into the knights of the round table, which causes Merlin much grief as he has forseen Arthur's death at Mordred's hand. What follows should be an epic mounting of tension until something finally snaps and the prediction comes true, and some of it is... but also you get a bit where Gwen is possessed by Morgana and starts doing secretly evil things and looks at the camera now to remind the audience at home how evil she is... fortunately this gets fixed, and they get back to the actual plot, where Mordred leaves Arthur's side upon an old druid friend of his being killed, and he and Morgana mount a war against Arthur. Arthur is mortally wounded and must be transported by Merlin to Avalon, it is here that Arthur finally discovers that Merlin is a sorcerer and slowly comes to terms with this news, however Arthur dies because Merlin didn't think to use his dragon friend to fly them to Avalon. However Kilgharrah tells Merlin that Arthur is The Once and Future King and one day he shall rise again. However, hundreds, if not thousands, of years later as an aged Merlin walks past the lake of Avalon there is no sign of Arthur rising. The End.
So yeah, there are a few problems with Merlin, chief amongst these being it's amount of recycled, predictable plots especially the secret evil person within Camelot one... Another flaw is that it could never seem to find a consistent tone, it often managed some good drama and as a result whenever it fell back to slapstick humour whilst the soundtrack was practically just playing wah wah wah, it could be somewhat frustrating as you couldn't tell if the show was trying to be serious or not.
But, despite these and a few other minor flaws, like why does Sir Percival never wear sleeves?, I still found the show to be ultimately a good entertaining watch, particularly from series 3 onwards, where it started to actually have a continuing plot and was bringing a bit more dignity to some of the best stories of folklore in existence.
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| Because Sir Leon never gets enough credit |
Merlin (Colin Morgan): Merlin is the central character of the show, and he starts out okay, but he's so bumbling and dopey that it seems hard to believe he'll become the wise old wizard of legend. That said as the show started to take itself more seriously and Colin Morgan improved as an actor the character became stronger, with a determined resolve and many skills at his disposal. Also developing a strong relationship with Arthur, which is more what you would expect from the two.
Arthur Pendragon (Bradley James): Bradley James is actually a pretty good King Arthur, he started out brash and pompous, but along the way learned humility and what it means to be a great king. It was a pretty good character arc and he did well to give the character dignity as far as was possible.
Morgana Pendragon (Katie McGrath): So Morgana went from being a whiny snob who thought her problems were more important than everyone else's to being basically Rita Repulsa who thought her problems were more important than everyone else's. She was meant to be intimidating and demented when she went evil, but I was always just kind of laughing at how silly it was, I mean come on, she sits around in a giant throne in an abandoned castle between evil missions...
Gwenivere (Angel Coulby): Pretty much my only quibble here is that Gwenivere was played by a black actress... this isn't meant as a racist thing, just that in the sort of time this was set there probably wouldn't be any black people in England, and they certainly wouldn't be allowed to marry royalty if they were. But other than that, she was an okay Gwenivere, though I didn't really see that much chemistry between her and Bradley James... maybe I'm just being overly critical.
Gaius (Richard Wilson): Brining something more of a comic touch, Richard Wilson plays Merlin's mentor and chief father figure for the show and it must be said he does it quite well, giving the role a bit of dignity and nuance, though the one thing he could never get me to believe was his wigs...
Kilgharrah, The Great Dragon (John Hurt): You know how you make a dragon awesome? Give him the voice of John Hurt. The great dragon (whose full name I only know from the Merlin wiki, I usually just call him The John Hurt Dragon) is a very good character, acting as the Merlin figure to Merlin... if you get what I mean... The voice of John Hurt really gives the role a power and epicness that it needed to not become boring.
Uther Pendragon (Anthony Head): He was a good constant threat to Merlin for the first few series, and they took him out of the show at the right time to give Arthur his time as king. Not really a lot to say about the character, but Anthony Head did as good a job as you would expect from a seasoned veteran like him.
In short, an entertaining, but flawed, show, I'd say worth a watch, but you can pretty much skip the first two series.
