Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5102537-20140217120328/@comment-124.149.82.98-20140306033013

oh, I don't know what happened to my reply there!

The Disir is a very strange episode. It certainly feels as though scenes were missing. Normally when something happens, Merlin goes investigating, he would sneak off in the middle of the night, he would talk to the Dragon, or (being in the woods) the Druids. (series 5 Merlin lost all of his curiosity and investigative skills). This didn't happen, so the story the showrunners seem to be feeding us is that Merlin (the self-sacrificing, martyr that he is) tells Arthur he can't let magic back in the kingdom, so Mordred would die. Its manipulating us into believing that Merlin is so selfless and devoted to Arthur that he would rather forgo his and his kind's desire to live freely than to ever broach the subject. But it all comes back to HE NEVER DID ANYTHING ABOUT IT. Merlin believes that Arthur will become a great and powerful King... one day, but never pushes Arthur into becoming that King. But all we see is a King who can't even dress himself! When was this supposed to happen?

Whatever that episode (and rest of series 5) was supposed to be about, its just not there on screen, and fans trying to make sense of it all (well, fanwanking is what it is I suppose) is not substitution for actual on-screen development and explanations. You can't have everything happen off-screen and expect viewers to hand-wave it, time and time again.

It is a great pity that Arthur was rarely shown interacting with peaceful magic users. I believe he had 2 scenes with the Druids, one where he held a child at knife point to retrieve the cup, and another where he returns Mordred to them. All Arthur was ever shown, time and time again was that magic was evil, it killed his mother and father, and destroyed the person he once knew as his sister (well, you know, his half-sister that he never knew was his sister, but you get the picture!)

I don't think the show-runners ever looked at the bigger picture of the world they had created, and what the implications to the people been oppressed were.

That episode should have been an absolute game-changer for the show,  that it went on the following weeks as if nothing had happened, is a great shame.

Personally I think all the show-runners wanted was Merlin saying Magic cannot return to Camelot so they could have their fun in teasing us (yes, I am that bitter about s5, it should have been so much better), and they didn't care how it came about.