Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Five/@comment-5102537-20140426100805/@comment-93.75.117.63-20140428062042

Issy5209 wrote: You could argue however, that ALL their characters, including Merlin and Arthur were assassinated in the end. I really worded that badly didn't I? There really is no argument that all the characters were ill-served by the writing. Its interesting to note that Morgana and Gwen did get some sort of character development, even though it happened off-screen. It just wasn't a place the writers wanted to go. They had an idea of where they wanted these two characters to end up (one the villain, the other the queen) but the getting there was left out. ( I don't think its what did they do to the BBC, but what did the writers have against their own characters!)

Merlin and Arthur didn't get any sort of character development at all,  (Arthur becoming King was always a given anyway) Its a common story (either on screen or paper) to have a character face all sorts of adversities, to lose people that they love, to be ignored, or mocked in someway, to face trials and go on a journey of self-discovery,  we watch and cheer  those characters  on, we see them learning from defeats,  but I've never seen a character put forth like Merlin who is continually put through all sorts of hell and still loses in the end (for eternity too). His ambitions and goals are so ill-defined, that we don't know what his motivations are, that we don't see him achieve his goals, we don't see him doing things (such as killing people) for the "greater good". In this season we see him literally battered and bruised, getting abused,  close to dying, but not pushing Arthur towards their shared destiny. He's so obsessed with protecting Arthur, that he seems to have forgotten the bigger picture, but he does pause to give it lip-service every so often to other people of magic. As for Arthur, he's always trusting the wrong people, getting betrayed but he never learns. He doesn't become this great King we all expect to see, too many things happen while he's unconscious, he's protected from knowing his destiny because it goes hand in hand with "keeping the magic a secret" he can't do anything unless he learns the truth. Yes Arthurian Legends are a tragedy, but its because they built this ideal place, (of which Merlin is seen as the architect)  that shone brightly for a while, but was brought undone by human ego. But it was there so people in dark times could look back and see that something once was created. The tragedy is in the losing it, not ever having achieved it. It's what I was trying to say by "Merlin and Arthur suffered much more". Gwen and Morgana were still Arthur's queen and evil witch(they just didn't want to act in a new Morgana-trend). Arthur didn't become the high king of legends - wasn't even close. Merlin was cut in the S1 - side-effect of making him younger(and he lost his ability to see future) before losing all that remained in S5