Board Thread:(Re)Writing "Merlin"/@comment-5674726-20141115233659/@comment-5674726-20150105134459

For my part, I generally don’t like destiny being a focus of a show or similar, at least not in the sense that the future is set in stone, some characters are destined to be forces for good, others are destined to be evil, etc. I don’t mind prophecy as much, as long as it’s not straight-forward. For example, in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, some characters believe that the young Anakin Skywalker is destined to bring balance to the Force and, while one could argue that he did this, nobody anticipated that he would do it by killing most of the Jedi (not to mention the Sith Master) so the order could have a fresh start.

In the case of Merlin, I think that I would have gone with the idea that Kilgharrah’s prophecy is either a lie or that, while it is a possible future, it is one of many others. It may be a future that Kilgharrah hopes to bring about by enlisting Merlin and seeing to it that he is on board by leading him to believe that it is a certainty rather than a remote chance. He may be using a pre-existing prophecy to manipulate Merlin into helping bring about a situation where the two Pendragon siblings end up destroying each other, and the kingdom Uther built, between them.

Even the very first lines of the series could be taken as foreshadowing that Merlin was not going to achieve his alleged destiny.

''Kilgharrah: No young man, no matter how great, can know his destiny. He cannot glimpse his part in the great story that is about to unfold. Like everyone, he must live and learn. And so it will be for the young warlock arriving at the gates of Camelot. A boy that will, in time, father the legend. His name: Merlin.''

Shortly afterwards, to paraphrase Kilgharrah: “Hey, young man, this is your destiny!”

The opening lines of the series tell us that Merlin will father a legend.

This is absolutely true.

Thanks to Merlin, Arthur will be remembered as a King who, among other things, drew the Sword of King Bruta from a stone, defeated a dragon, saved Camelot from an Afanc, defeated the Questing Beast, thwarted multiple attempts to conquer Camelot and led his army to victory against a Saxon force that vastly outnumbered them.

The opening lines do not tell us how much, if any, truth there will be to the legend Merlin is to father. Arthur may not have excelled as a monarch but the legend took on a life of its own.