User blog comment:Fimber/Things that went wrong in "The Death Song of Uther Pendragon"/@comment-7285162-20130415005522/@comment-5102537-20130425084727

You're not the only one, Ambrosius. A lot of fans liked this epsiode while a lot of other fans disliked it. Especially fans or viewers who don't recall the first seasons very well believe that it was all according tothe show's narrative and and that all was consistent.

I'd like to respond to what you said about Arthur first. Additionally to what ReganX wrote, it was said in "The Disir" by the Disir themselves that Arthur persecuted sorcerers. Admittedly, I was a little suprised since I actually didn't regard Arthur as being someone who also persecuted sorceres due to the the things you already mentioned. I was sure that Arthur outlawed magic but indeed left sorcrers alone. However, that's what Uther did after the Great Purge too. The only occasions he persecuted those with magic was when he thought that Morgana was abducted by the druids, when Tauren plotted against Camelot or when Camelot was under a severe threat caused by magic-users/sorcerers. He also left the druids alone even though he knew that they were out there (except when Morgana disappered, of course). The Great Purge was the time when all those magic-users were persecuted but later, after the purge ended, they were being punished when they invaded and/or threatened Camelot and violated the law. Even when Morgana returned after the year she went missing, he didn't hunt down Morgause. One would assume that a king like Uther would do anything to capture/kill the one he thought abducted his daughter, especially when it is a dangerous sorcerers. But he didn't (and I actually wonder why....)

Yes, Arthur was much more relaxter and had a more open mind on the whole thing, yet he (surprisingly) persecuted them and he also denied them a proper burial, which shows that in his eyes they were inferior, if not despicable beings/people - and given that an afterlife is as real on "Merlin" as the electric light is for us, I wonder if a burial might even be important for the immortal soul in order to enter some kind of paradise or whatever. The funny thing is that Arthur even continued that way after he met his father's spirit and after this farce of an epsiode was supposed to show that Arthur was distancing himself from Uther. Ridiculous. He did not.

Now, as for Uther - and thanks in advance for reading it through in case you do :-D

The fact that a lot of fans tried to explain Uther's strange behaviour by similar thoughts that you had or by other ideas proves clearly that his behaviour was totally unlike him. Otherwise, people wouldn't bother and believe that he has always been that way. Aside from a few fans who defend everything of this show until death, most fans were surprised and I've read multiple ideas that were supposed to explain why Uther suddenly went nuts and ran amok. There was also the idea that he actually wasn't the real Uther but merely a manifestation of what the characters thought he would be or do, which then could explain why he wanted to burn Gwen (she once was sentenced to death by him) and why he attacked Arthur (Arthur, for some weird reason!, always thought that his father wasn't proud of him and put Camelot first).

Yet this wasn't the case in the epsiode's canon. This epsiode was supposed to show us that this was the Uther we have always known.

See, you did that too when you thought that Uther's spirit changed when he entered the world of the living which might be an unhealthy thing for a ghost, so to speak. Yet when you read about the producer's comments you believe them and agree that Uther was always that way. He either changed, which is why you think he did because of the world of the living or he was always like this - but both things at the same time is impossible.

This is all pure manipulation by the showrunners. Not only this epsiode but season four and five at all. No matter how much they changed characters and how inconsistent the show became, a lot of fans accept everything they said or did.

They can't show us a desperate and multidimensional character for years and then suddenly reduce him to a one-dimensional evil psycho and expect us to believe that more than three years of "Merlin" were only a lie. Uther never tortured sorcerers, yet he tormented Gwen and then tried to burn her alive even though she wasnt a sorceress and hadn't used magic. Even when Gwen was suspected of having usded magic earlier, he didn't torture/torment her but simply locked her away for her to await her death penalty. He had no reason whatsoever to treat Gwen like this in this epsiode, whether he disapproved of Arthur's marriage or not. If he really wanted her dead even though she didn't even violate the law - and Uther always only punished those who violated the law - he could have killed her immediately instead of playing those sacry games with her and giving her a violent and slow death. We've never seen Uther doing this with anyone.

It was also totally unlike him and most of all ridiculous that he attacked his own son and maybe even wanted to kill him (if so. He said that Camelot comes before all, even before him, so his intention surely wasn't a good one). Uther had always put his children first which was evident when he told Arthur that he was more important to him than his kingdom and his own life, when he wanted to sacrifice himself for Arthur, when he almost sacrificed his entire kingdom on the search for Morgana and when he went broken and gave up everything and his own life after Morgana's betrayal. If he really was the Uther we saw in "The death Song..." he wouldn't have gone broken but would have tried to capture and kill Morgana. He wouldn't have tried to sacrifice himself for Arthur and wouldn't have died for him in the end. And if Camelot was more important to him than his children, he wouldn't have almost sacrificed it when Morgana went missing for a year.

The showrunners intentionally showed us Uther as a desperate man who thought he had to protect himself, his children and his kingdom from the evil outside. They intentionally showed us Uther as a multidimensional character who did very, very questionable and also bad things but who wasn't evil and who loved his children (and his wife) more than anything. Except, of course, when Howard Overman wrote a script... He was the one who constantly changed characters and who overlooked consistency but delivered his own stories that didn't fit the previous storylines.

What you wrote about Uther being the antagonist. Personally, I saw him being an opponent to the Old Religion rather than a true antagonist. He also was an opponent to Merlin in his capacity as a sorcerer, the one who abanonded and sacrificed his own kind for the incomprehensible love for Arthur and who became more and more selfish and ruthless. Neither the Old Religion nor Merlin were saints. No-one was on Merlin. But they all had one thing in common, all main characters - Merlin, Uther, Gaius, Arthur, Gwen, Kilgharrah, the knights: they loved and wanted to protect Arthur and Camelot. When it came to Arthur and Camelot, they were all on the same side, only their opinions and ways to reach that goal were different. And Arthur was the one who was supposed to unite the lands of Albion, which, with all due respect, was what Uther had tried in his lifetime too. He had started it, just not with magic being allowed.

The only true antagonist of the main characters was Morgana (later, not in the beginning) since she did everything in her powers to cross Camelot's plans and always fought against their accomplishments.

As a matter of fact, spirit-evil-psycho Uther acted exactly like Morgana and not like himself. He had nothing in common with his former self anymore, not even when he talked to Arthur in the Spirit World because instead of being happy to see him again he told him what a failure Arthur was and hurt him deeply. It all totally contradicted his entire character in really everything.