Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season One/@comment-5102537-20130323143713/@comment-5674726-20130401003331

''To me it seems that the showrunners didn't know what they actually wanted after the first two seasons. First they do anything to show us that there isn't only black & white and that magic was a dangerous thing that gave Uther very good reasons for fighting it, then they changed it all into the sacred and divine thing that Merlin has to restore at all costs, making Uther the monster and responsible for everything, and then they made magic and the freedom of sorcerers unimportant, told us again how cruel and uncontrollable magic is but still made Uther the monster by turning him into an evil pschopath and by continuing making him responsible for really everything, even when they showed us at the same time (again) that he freed the land from the destructive and oppressing power and rebuilt Camelot to the place we have seen, the place that Arthur ran to protect his people and that Gwen took over after Arthur's death.''

That's something that really annoyed me about the show.

It would have made sense had it been a case of Uther viewing magic as something that can be used to cause harm, and being wary of magic users because he thought that their power made them prone to temptation to misuse it before Ygraine's death, and then coming to view it as an evil. At one point, he had enough faith in magic to believe that it could give him the son he needed, although I'd say that it's a safe bet that it was a last resort because he didn't want to have to end his marriage to Ygraine in order to find a wife who could bear him children. There was also inconsistency in terms of Nimueh's culpability in Ygraine's death; in Excalibur, she claims that she didn't know that Ygraine would die and that, had she known, she would never have used magic to help her bear a son - interestingly, her choice of words "granted your wish" suggests that Uther might have been the one to approach her, not vice versa. In Le Morte d'Arthur, the indication is that she knowingly condemned Ygraine to death when it lay in her power to choose somebody else.

The Excalibur angle makes more sense to me; I could see a younger, generally well-meaning Nimueh toying with forces that she wasn't equipped to handle, perhaps hoping that her help would give Uther a more favourable opinion of magic, and then having it blow up in her face because, while she knew that there would be a price, it didn't occur to her that this would mean that the life taken would be one that it would pain Uther to lose. The Purge happens and Nimueh goes on to avenge herself by targetting Uther's kingdom. The fact that the Questing Beast targetted Arthur could have been the Old Religion's way of righting Nimueh's wrong by ending a life that was not meant to begin. However, having Nimueh deliberately responsible for Ygraine, Hunith and Gaius' lives being offered up as the price for Arthur's gave Merlin a handy excuse to sacrifice an unwilling victim so he could have his own way.

I think that Season Three was a wasted opportunity because, had they not had Morgana turn evil, they could have had her genuinely rebuild her relationship with Uther and both of them would have had to struggle with their bond as father and daughter versus the bad blood over magic. They could have had a lot to explore. Had Uther been able to accept Morgana's magic out of love for his daughter, would it have been a line in the sand or the thin edge of a wedge? How would Morgana have dealt with the idea of being the only person with magic who was completely safe from persecution? It's a fanfic I'd like to read.