Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season One/@comment-5102537-20130406100756/@comment-5102537-20130411122013

The main problem on "Merlin" was that no-one told anyone about anything and everyone lied and kept secrets. The saddest part of this is the fact that the concept of lying, manipulating and deceiving was being sold to the audience as the right thing and the only option.

As for Merlin telling Morgana, despite the problems that came up with Merlin bringing her to the druid camp, at least Gaius could have tried to guide her. Uther knew very well that Gaius once practiced magic, so no secret here. Had Gaius tried to guide Morgana the way he guided Merlin, he wouldn't have risked Merlin's life. Unless he believed the prophecy that said that Morgana will turn to evil, which is unlikely since Gaius always dismissed Merlin's visions of the future and said that the future is yet to be written and not set in stone (and wrong he was).

As for Morgana not telling anyone... given that Morgause had the ability to vanish into thing air, she either could have taught Morgana how to do that or she and Morgana could have planned on telling Uther in order to find out how he reacts. In case he had threatened Morgana, they both simply could have vanished. But Morgana didn't even want to know how Uther would react. All she wanted was to destroy Camelot from the inside. So she kept her secret, blamed Uther for it and went on with her plans of taking the throne.

Arthur didn't know about Merlin until the very end, he didn't know about Agravaine until Aggy attacked Camelot, he never learnt that Morgana killed Uther.... Uther had no idea about Morgana until she revealed herself, he had no idea about Merlin until he revealed himself after Uther's death, he didn't know about Gaius, Arthur, Morgana and Merlin constantly lying to him and he had no idea about all the help he got from Merlin and Gaius. He also had no idea about Arthur's and Gwen's ongoing romance. Gaius lied to Arthur, Uther and Morgana all the time, Merlin lied to everyone all the time, Morgana lied to everyone, Uther lied about Arthur's birth (or at least kept it a secret until Arthur suddenly knew in season four) and he lied about Morgana's parentage, Arthur lied to Uther multiple times when going behind his back, the dragon lied to Merlin in the beginning in order to be released by him...

I wonder how things would have been if some of them had at least sometimes told the truth.