Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Four/@comment-5102537-20131207132547/@comment-5102537-20140125115120

The way you see it makes total sense, Lurker. However, to me, the way it was actually done made it all superflouse.

When Elyan ws introduced I thought that he would add an interesting plot, but later it turned out to be just somewhat empty. They could have demonstrated what Elyan was feeling and thinking when those things that should have had an impact on him were happening. In "Lancelot du Lac" I was waiting the whole time for Elyan to say or at least to show something, just anything. There was nothing.

One would expect from the brother of the one who is accused/caught and then banished to say something and to show some feelings, whether towards Gwen and/or others like the knights and/or Arthur or maybe even Merlin or whomever. If Elyan had reasons for not speaking up for her, which personally, I find inappropriate because he was her brother, the episode could have included a scene with him explaining his doubts/hesitation. Instead we saw nothing of him except a short a glance for a second.

That's the point, the fans are always "forced" to explain things themselves and to speculate about things, characters and stories that actually should have been told (otherwise, what's a story for if not to be told?). Had Elyan had doubts about Gwen or hesitated to speak up for her for whatever reasons, this could have contributed to some conflict in whatever way. Due to the fact that they didn't show his thoughts and feelings, there simply was no story about or around him, and that's the reason why some fans forgot that he was even Gwen's brother.

Aside from that, risking his harmonic relationship with Arthur would have been a small price for helping his sister who was chased away and had to try to survive alone without a home and friends, not to mention that she was threatened by Arthur. Even if he disapproved of her "adultery", he could have told her and by that shown us what was going on in his mind.

Like we never really knew what Leon was thinking about just anything, we didn't really know what Elyan was thinking until "A Herald of the New Age" when his opinion was mentioned by another knight as a sideline.

To me, the entire way his character was treated made him merely a convenient tool that could be used whenever necessary for the plot. nd did Gwen show some grief about his death? Not that Im aware of.