Board Thread:Series 5 Discussion/@comment-209.196.232.2-20121230195253/@comment-174.217.14.158-20180117181249

In my opinion the 'evil Gwen' arc should have been scrapped and replaced with something else. Then they would have had more time to end things properly. As for saving the ending with minimum effort the only thing they would have had to do would be to show Merlin getting apointed court sorcerer by Gwen and removeing the modern bit.

That would have implied that Gwen rules over the golden age and avoided making the ending(and everything before it) totally pointless without having to change it to much. Gwen seemed like a better ruler then Arthur anyway(at least to me) because she wasn't trying to follow in Uthurs footsteps and she was more compassionate towards people. She seems less likely to slaughter everyone who has magic and more likely to consider whether they have been using it for evil.

The scene where Merlin tells Arthur to reject magic in order to kill Mordred was a really bad choice on his part. I think the show became to fixated on saving the lives of Uthur and Arthur and making that Merlin's real job. It became more important to him then what his real destiny was supposed to be. Ironically this caused him to fail at both, he failed in his intended destiny and he failed to protect both Uthur and Arthur.