Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Two/@comment-5102537-20130804102604/@comment-5674726-20130811173513

Edrea wrote:

But this will raise another question though, if Kilgharrah didn't really care about killing Arthur, why was he so persistent reminding Merlin of his destiny? And if it was not because of his so-called-destiny, Merlin wouldn't being so persistent protecting Arthur. And since Arthur was so persistent protecting Camelot to his death (not hiding or running away), Merlin had no choice but to defeat Kilgharrah.

Kilgharrah's role in the series would have made a lot more sense if his ultimate goal was revenge against the Pendragons. Uther wiped out his race and kept him imprisoned under the castle as an example - shame on Uther for that, by the way; a dragon skeleton is at least as impressive a display of your power, and much less dangerous than a live one - and, by the end of the series, Kilgharrah had helped bring about a situation where Uther was dead, his two children were dead - and, as neither Arthur nor Morgana had children, Uther's line is extinct - and the kingdom he built was a shadow of its former self. As revenge goes, it'd be thorough.

In the beginning of the series, Kilgharrah sensed Merlin within the castle. We know from the way other characters go on about it that Merlin is uniquely powerful, so it stands to reason that Kilgharrah would have known that this was likely to be his only shot at freedom, as nobody else would have the power to set him free. He wins the trust of the young, naïve Merlin by feeding him a prophecy about the wonderful things that he and Arthur will do, a masterful appeal to his ego that ensures that Merlin wants to believe in his prophecies. Maybe there's an existing prophecy that he is tweaking for his purposes, maybe not. Either way, he manipulates Merlin into a position where he relies on his advice and, once he has achieved that, he starts to make his freedom the price for information. He also makes sure to plant seeds of distrust against Morgana, to isolate her.

Once he is free, he is content to attack Camelot and Arthur but he wasn't counting on Merlin gaining the power of a Dragonlord; even if he could sense that he was Balinor's son, he wouldn't have expected him to gain that power any time soon, or to know what it was once Balinor died and he inherited it. That changed things, as it lay within Merlin's power to force him to stand still and be killed, if he thought that he would remain a threat.

If somebody had the power to rob me of my free will, I'd want them to think that I was on their side.

By the end of the series, with the Pendragons destroyed, Kilgharrah would then have the added bonus of making Merlin - the son of the man who got him imprisoned, and the man who forced him to stop when he was avenging himself on Camelot - waste eternity hanging around waiting for Arthur to return by telling him that he would be back.

Had Kilgharrah been presented as a villain all along, he'd have a spot in my Top Five Characters for being such an effective villain who played Merlin like a fiddle.