Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Five/@comment-5102537-20140329115401/@comment-203.206.100.225-20140401111105

I don't think that the Disir had any involvement in Arthur's birth, just that the writers found the name and used it for another purpose (and personally, I really, really dislike the use of the Triple Goddess here - she is a deity that people still worship around the world and its disrespectful)

This episode should have been the catalyst to push the series forward. It was all lead up, but with no pay-off. From what I understand, at this point they were still trying to negotiate a 6th series with the actors, it was only then it came to writing and filming the final block - episodes 10-13) that they had to wrap up the series.  Which is why you got the next 4 episodes of treading water with enchanted Gwen.  This episode had no bearing on the final as well, except make us see that now Merlin was just obsessed about Arthur, and making the show about the dude-bro romance and not at all how they'd started out.

But it didn't act as a catalyst at all, it just raised more questions. Why was Merlin's future written since the dawn of time - that he would be protecting the Once and Future King, AND bring magic back to the land, if A. He's going to ignore it and B. it was all set up by the Triple Goddess for some purpose or rather, that we never found out about.

'' If anything, this scene indicated to me that Merlin's destiny was no longer "bring magic back to Camelot," but rather simply "save Arthur's life," with no promise of the former. ''

I don't buy this, why then does he keep telling everybody that one day things will be different. Why does the dragon keep reminding him that only Arthur and he together can reunite Albion, and only then can magic be brought back to the lands? It might be want the writers want us to believe, but they chop and change so much of the show's premise and history that it just doesn't make sense. They don't even both retconning the story - just present it as fact. Writers talk about the importance of World Building - its a pity they didn't even try to do this, particularly in this series. If, as Fimber has done above, you start asking logical questions about the motives in this episode, the story just unravels. Again they set themselves up for a complicated story, but then tried to wrangle into a simple answer. To make Merlin the good guy (who kills anybody who looks side-ways at Arthur and betrays his kind) All other magic users have to be worse! You just can't do this as a writer, its the worst kind of dodgy morality. (its bad vs less-bad)