Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Four/@comment-5102537-20131116154357/@comment-5102537-20140129113432

Guinevere01 wrote:

In addition to this, I thought that it was strange that Merlin, having experienced what it was like to lose a father in the past (no matter how fleetingly the meeting took place - Merlin's an emotional young man!), would allow Arthur to have the same experiences. However, he must care some, otherwise he wouldn't 'pretend' to be Dragoon; he would have made up some silly excuse about him being out, or dead or something.

For some weird reason, Merlin seemed to feel some sort of satisfaction when knowing that it was now Arthur's turn to lose his father. It was like he wanted to make Arthur feel what Merlin himself felt. I think that this was completely out of character for him, not to mention that Balinors death wasn't Arthur's fault at all.

Ironically, it wasn't even Uther's fault but Merlin's. Had he not released Kilgharrah, Balinor's help wouldn't have been necessary and he wouldn't have died in the ambush in the woods. It was clearly Uther's fault that Merlin grew up without his father and that Balinor had led a life in fear, but his death was Merlin and the attackers' fault.

Yes, you're right, Merlin cared deeply for Arthur, even too much especially in season five when he lost sight of important things but only wanted to please his King. Here, in "The Wicked Day", Merlin only cared about his goal and not about Arthur, let alone Uther. Even when he waited in front of the throne hall until Arthur came out, he seemed to be one who didn't want to be alone. Arthur didn't know that Merlin was waiting outside, so his presence couldn't help Arthur at all whereas Merlin knew that Arthur was inside, therefore he didn't feel so alone with his failure. He demonstrated a great deal of selfishness in this and some following epiodes - but then, he wasn't the only one.