Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Four/@comment-5102537-20131116154357/@comment-4814726-20131118003807

I know! Same here. And was it too hard for Merlin to just sneak in later and heal Uther instead of the whole fiasco with Dragoon? A lot of what happened in this episode was un-needed and it actually took away from the episode's rating in my opinion. Like at the beginning, it was happy and funny and birthday parties and circus people and then uh oh the king is stabbed now the atmosphere turns dark. That part is OK and the sudden change is well done. But then the whole thing with Dragoon happens and there's comedy again with the pot and Dragoon getting a piggy back ride and it was just weird. I got the same feeling from that as I would get from watching a clown cracking jokes at a funeral or something.

And why is Merlin suddenly so callous in this episode? It seems to me that his morality bends and contorts itself an awful lot. Merlin is generally compassionate, loyal, kind, clever, and he looks out for other people often putting their safety and welfare before his own. He is bitter about his magic being outlawed, how that made his life so hard, but he still does what's best for others rather than what's best for himself. In season 1, in "To Kill The King" he is tested when he has the decision to let Uther be killed or to save him. And in his turmoil he asks Gwen what she would do if she had the chance to avenge her father and she says the line that I think is among the highest moral lessons in the show "That would make me no better than him." Merlin takes that advice and saves Uther. Before that, he saved Mordred even though his cold calculating side(the voice of Kilgharrah) was telling him that Mordred should die so that Arthur would live.

(Unfortunately the writers take this decision, a moral decision, and turn it into a horrible decision by making it clear that if Merlin had killed Mordred then Arthur wouldn't have died. Because Merlin did the right thing he was punished.)

So Merlin is a moral character right? But then his character just changes. Like he's got a multiple personality disorder. He poisons Morgana, tries to kill Mordred, murders Nimueh, mortally wounds Morgause, and in The Wicked Day he is unnervingly cold. Instead of healing Uther for his friend's sake, and/or b/c of the same reason he saved Uther in To Kill The King, he does it mostly for his own agenda: freeing magic. Not that bringing back magic is a bad thing, but the way he tries to do it is just wrong.

You following me?