Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Five/@comment-5102537-20140426100805/@comment-24785400-20140507050438

Quite right Ozymandia's v, I'll never understand why they jumped to the end of the story, feeling they had to end in the traditional way, with Arthurs death. He may have been made King, but he never became a truly great King (nor did they show any of his other major battles). Nobody ever bothered to tell Arthur that he had a destiny, just as nobody told him his sword had a name!

I also didn't (on purpose) mention what Merlin of legend is mainly known for - that of foretelling, then arranging Arthur's birth. In this Merlin, it is Nimue, a Priestess of the Old-Religion. I think here the writers were playing on our knowledge of the legends in that Arthur's birth is brought about for a reason. I could understand that the future is not always clear, and that Nimue had no idea of Uther's reaction to Igraine's death would be the Purge. But if the Purge had not have happened, then Merlin wouldn't have been born. Was his birth always intended, or was it a brought about by the old religion because of the purge? Is this the Old-Religion playing games again, or did it (and my head-cannon is that there are probably "factions" within the old-religion, some more extreme than others) give up when Merlin wasn't going to do anything about "uniting the old ways and the new" as he was told.