Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Five/@comment-5102537-20140517082836/@comment-24629321-20140523130859

I agree that this ending did not suit the beginning of the show at all. If it was supposed to be a growing-up, coming-of-age tale, then why didn't it end when Arthur became king? Or at least a little way into his rule when he had built the glorious kingdom he was supposed to? This would have been suited the show-runners intentions perfectly, since they said they wanted to make the magic reveal their endgame. From that standpoint, it didn't make any sense to end it with Arthur's death (especially when he had not fulfilled his destiny—although to be fair, I've seen others point out that the dragon said from season 1 that if Mordred lived, Merlin & Arthur's destiny wouldn't be achieved, and they certainly stuck to that!) It's almost like they just decided somewhere in the last few years—'oh hey, let's kill Arthur too!' (I've wondered if they made that decision when the actors didn't want to sign on for a sixth season. Sort of a 'ha! well, if your careers tank after this, you can't come crying back to us for more work.')

Fimber has another excellent point about bringing it into the modern world. When I first saw the finale, I didn't get the point of that last scene at all—and I'm still not sure that I do, unless it's only to make sure we know how much poor Merlin must be suffering. (Although it does open the door to a lot more interpretations of what could have happened in the years in between and what would happen next.) But an amusing side effect of including that scene was that bringing it into the modern world sure kicked the show-runners' long-standing argument that historical inaccuracies didn't matter, because they were working in a fantasy world! I never thought of that before!

But on the whole, I can't say that I was too disappointed in the finale. Having watched it more than a year after it actually aired, I knew its reputation, and expecting the worst let me be able to enjoy the things about it that were done right (in my opinion). I was happy to see Gwen take over as queen, and her catching on to Merlin's magic made it seem that Camelot may actually be in more competent hands now than under Arthur's reign (though he certainly was plenty competent at other things like leading his men into battle—not that a king should actually be on the battlefield himself anyway). I also liked the way they handled Arthur's gradual exposure to and acceptance of Merlin's power—I really was expecting that Arthur would have known all along, and that Merlin would tell him and then he'd die. So basically everything after they left the battlefield was like bonus material to what I was expecting.

As for the plot holes and things that didn't make sense, I know that these things really get in the way of enjoying the show for a lot of people, which I can respect, so personally I try to ignore them so that I can still enjoy the show. The most glaring being, as Issy5209 pointed out, why on earth would they think the Sidhe would help them? You know who Arthur really needed to help him? Tony Stark. Unfortunately, wrong universe, but that was all I could think of thanks to the nature of Arthur's injury. Why couldn't they just be like, 'the blade was magic so normal healing won't work' or something that wouldn't remind me of Iron Man the whole time?