Board Thread:Series 5 Discussion/@comment-209.196.232.2-20121230195253/@comment-29289194-20180111140435

I agree. Merlin kind of fell flat in many ways and not just in the final ever ep. The golden age never really felt like a golden age, to the point where many don't even think it happened! At the heart of the show, is magic. And yet nothing ever changed for it.

In order for the show to grow and expand it's narrative, it needed things to improve for magic and for it's characters to learn and grow with it. It was tiring watching Merlin hide his magic every ep for five years, and really annoying that he would not reveal the truth to Arthur.

They would have an ep where Arthur deals with magic and Arthur's heart would begin to change and then the next ep, it was like it never happened. And the next time the same kind of situation with magic would appear, he would never acknowledge what he learnt, and had to kind of learn it all over again.

Merlin was an idiot really. I couldn't root for him. The really annoying one is when Arthur was considering changing things for magic, and Merlin told him that magic was evil. He kind of thought too much about what he alone wanted (Arthur's future), and he kept trying to keep things the same when they needed to improve.

He never saw what he was actually doing - hurting other people, not truly helping them. He stopped things improving for magic (which would have shocked Morgana if Arthur had changed the game and said magic is actually fine), and he actually created Arthur's death in many ways even if he thought he was doing good.

The show never really thought through it's own plots. Like, when Mordred returned to Camelot and became a Knight. Arthur knows Mordred is a Druid. He knew he had magic. And yet neither of them ever mention it. Not once. And how is Arthur that stupid, he actually thought he was fairer to people with magic? How the hell were they meant to know that? Magic led to Arthur's death, when through Merlin it probably could have saved him if he truly accepted it.

And then Arthur died anyway. Everything was pointless. The payoff of everything fell incredibly flat. The battle between Arthur and Mordred, Morgana and Merlin. The magic reveal everyone waited years for, put together in a hurry for the final twenty minutes. And then a lorry went pass the screen and that was it. Not good for a once great show with incredible potential.