Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Four/@comment-5102537-20131229110740/@comment-5102537-20140110155045

This is one of the many episodes that made me wonder why Morgana never considered Emrys to be a potential ally and someone who has good reasons to protect Arthur. Her doom or not, she knew that he was a very powerful sorcerer, thus not exactly someone who would support Camelot's ban of magic and persecutingfellow sorcerers and magic-users. It would have been logical to question the whole situation, and for her it would have been logical to question her own actions. From season three onward I've never seen her as someone who wanted to free her kin from oppression, and this strongly contributed to my point of view. Why would a powerful sorcerer want to protect the ban of magic? Morgana should have known instantly that something was very wrong, unless she didnt care about freedom for her fellow magic-users but only wanted to gain power, no matter the costs. And this was the case indeed, though it never made sense in regard to her former character in seasons one and two.

Arthur and Merlin playing childish games in Arthur's chambers again was once again quite ridiculous and most certainly not appropriate for the Once and Future King. I'll leave it to that.

Alator: he was quite a violent man and none of his actions towards Gaius made sense. He knew about Emrys and the prophey and he was on Emrys' side. So it was completely unnecessary to torture Gaius first. He could have told and tried to convince Gaius that he wanted to help Emrys. Even if Gaius hadn't believed him and kept the secret, what would have changed for Alator? His knowledge of Merlin didn't help Merlin/Emrys at all. The only consequence would have been that Alator had kept guessing who Emrys is, and that's it. Torturing a fellow magic-user only to show afterwards that he was on their side didn't make the slightest sense, plus it was totally cruel. Who said again that sorcerers and magic-users were the good guys here? I don't see any good in torturing others, no matter what happened before. It made no sense either to tell Morgana later that he knew who Emrys was but would never tell her. Had he pretended to not know, she wouldn't have hunted him down and wouldn't have killed him. But had he let go of Gaius, telling Morgana that he somehow escaped, Gaius may have believed him and they could have worked together. Morgana on the other hand should have asked herself again why even Alator wasn't willing to help her but instead protected the one who protected Arthur and Camelot.

Sense?

Agravaine and Arthur: words fail me how illogical the whole thing was and how unclever Arthur acted here. After they opted out all the knights and everyone else as potential traitors, leaving only two people, namely Gaius and Agravaine - who, for goodness sake, was the only left when it was evident that Gaius had been kidnapped and was innocent? Arthur said it himself that only Gaius and Agravaine knew about the route (in the previous episode) and that only one of them could be the traitor. So Gaius turns out to be innocent. Which leaves only one option: Agravaine. Yet Arthur still doesn't see that Agravaine is the traitor? Where is the logic here? When there are two people sitting at a table and suddenly a fork is missing and only one of them could have taken it. Then the pockets of one of them are searched but he doesn't have the fork... who is left? Who is the thief then?

And wasn't it extremely weird that after Gaius had been questioned by Arthur and Agravaine that he suddenly leaves Camelot and leaves a book about sorcery behind for everyone to see? Arthur should have known from the beginning that this was a much too obvious and cheap set-up. He also knew that Gaius wouldn't be so stupid to "admit" his guilt by riding away.and not taking his books about magic with him.

Gwen didn't exactly cover herself with glory in this episode either. She didn't do anything about the situation with Gaius even though he was one of her closest friends. Yet, although she didn't think that he was the traitor, she didn't fight for him by trying to bring Arthur to senses. Why?

And why was Merlin so bitchy towards Gwaine all of a sudden? I thought they were friends? Why didn't Merlin ask Gwaine to observe Agravaine in order to prove to Arthur that his uncle was betraying him? Arthur would have believed Gwaine. And why didn't Merlin tell Arthur everything he knew about Agravaine? Arthur surely wouldn't have killed Merlin. Why didn't Gaius tell Arthur about Agravaine in the end? There was no reason whatsoever to keep it a secret, especially not after Gaius was proven innocent. Nothing here made sense.

Speaking of the conversation in the end: When Gaius tells Arthur that Dragoon didn't kill his father (which wasn't quite true, actually) and Arthur also accepted that many sorcerers/magic-users believed in Arthur and had even helped him, why the hell did Arthur cling to the ban of magic then? If he believed that Dragoon really tried to help him, not to mention that he was the very one who had taken the blame when Gwen was falsely accused of having used magic, wouldn't he then have second thoughts about the entire ban of magic-thing? And why didn't Gaius tell Arthur the truth about Morgana, that she was the one who enchanted the necklace and that there even was the necklace? Why wasn't Arthur supposed to know that Morgana was one of those who killed Uther and that her and Agravaine's actions reversed the healing spell?

It was all so totally pointless.