Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24762954-20140731125438/@comment-24762954-20140801180646

Fimber wrote:

In "Le morte d'Arthur", Merlin told Nimueh that he doesn't want to have anything to do with her and her kind. This demonstrated the beginning of a new way of thinking and acting in regard to magic, represented by Merlin who refused to fight against the ban of magic with brutality and ruthlessness. He was supposed to be some kind of a mediator, and he didn't ignore the guilt and violence of the Old Religion.

I think that this was a brilliant start of the show and it's so disappointing that it was ignored in seasons four and five.

The good magic users were definitely the minority throughout the show. Moreover, most of the sorcerers and magic users didn't even seek revenge on Uther but had various other reasons for their plots and malicious plans which also absolved Uther from his wrongdoings a bit. Plus the fact that magic almost ruined the entire land long before Uther came to Camelot (or was even born).

Another reason was that ever since Uther's death, Arthur needed a good reason to hate magic. Otherwise he could have lifted the ban and Merlin wouldn't have had to hide his secret anymore. I agree that magic definitely wasn't that nice and it seems it was intentional. But to what extent it's darker sides were planned? Maybe there was evil order of High Priestesses, passive druids and people who abused their power or maybe some parts appeared later?

There is other interesting thing. Dragonlords were the only group described as noble kind and they were hunted because Uther considered their talent CLOSE to magic. Does it mean that only few of them had magic? Or, perhaps, only darker spells were truly considered magic and dragonlords, as noble kind didn't use such(you know, S2E13 clearly shows what would happen if dragonlord decided to abuse his power)? Maybe they had no much contact with other sorcerers(remember Balinor lived on his own in a cave, instead of joining some druid camp or something)?