Board Thread:Series 5 Discussion/@comment-209.196.232.2-20121230195253/@comment-174.217.29.188-20180118155726

I think the presence of Uthur was really what made Morgana evil. The fact that she was forced to face the possibility of execution while having to pretend like she liked him really wasn't good for her. But for some reason Merlin is a lot more forgiving to Uthur when Uthur kills people despite the beheading in the first episode. Uthur makes enemies of both Morgause and Morgana because they were born with magic.

This is probably part of the reason why the dragon told Merlin to let Uthur die. Gaius was also really not helping Morgana when he was better placed then Merlin to do so. Gaius could have revealed that he had magic(Uthur already knew he had dabbled in magic and therefore he wasn't in danger of being executed.) and helped Morgana get her magic under control. Drugging her didn't even work and didn't really address any of her problems. Merlin wouldn't have needed to interfere if Gaius had done a better job of taking care of her.

Towards the end Merlin starts accepting that maybe he should have listened a little more to the dragon... and promply makes a mess by applying the advice in all the wrong ways. He accepts that he shouldn't trust people and his actions make people less trustworthy. My impression was that Merlin wasn't really mature enough yet to handle making those choices. Mordred turning evil and killing Arthur really was Merlin's fault and wouldn't have even been that hard to stop.

I also think part of the problem was the shows writers being too fixated on the premise. Not to say the premise wasn't good it just got to the point where they needed to move on. Instead it started to feel like everything was sacrificed just to keep the exact same premise from Season 1 going until the very end. Personally I would have loved it if the premise had moved on during seasons 4 or 5.