Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season One/@comment-5102537-20130302204954/@comment-5102537-20130303115222

Another great epsiode in my opinion. It demonstrated for the second time the danger of magic and its power, and this time Gaius even mentions it. While we don't know yet what Nimueh's motivation is, we see that she would stop at nothing in order to reach her goal which seems to be to simply kill and hurt people, most of all Uther.

Even though I've always wondered why such powerful people like Nimueh always choose the complicated and sneaky way instead of directly going to Uther and to kill him, Nimueh's actions demonstrated that she enjoyed the misery she caused among the people in Camelot, even among the innocent ones.

When Gaius tells Merlin that magic itself is just a tool and that only those who misuse it turn it into something evil, it wasn't clear yet that actually the source of magic, the Triple Goddess/the Old Religion was ruthless and obviously evil herself, as was shown later in season five when the Triple Goddess showed her true face. With happenings like this, first Valiant and then Nimueh, Uther had no reason to believe that magic wouldn't corrupt and could be used for good, given that even the birth of an innocent baby (Arthur) caused the death of the innocent mother (Iraine).

I liked that Arthur spoke up for Gwen. However, I also understand why Uther didn't listen to him. All evidence was against Gwen, and moreover, in his opinion, she directly violated Camelot's first law by supposedly using magic. What strikes me is the fact that after Gwen denied to having used magic and after Uther demanded her to lift the curse, he said "then I have no choice..." This almost seemed as if he only sentenced her to death because she was unwilling to end the plague.

Merlin's attempt to convince the court that he was the sorcerer and Arthur's and Uther's reaction when they thought that Merlin only did it because they thought he was in love with Gwen, was amusing. It also showed Arthur and Uther's great trust in Merlin, while they actually were deceived by him great deal. Magic, as usual, distracted people's mind from the truth and essential things and misled them by showing the obvious. For the first time the audience was introduced to the real power of corrupted magic that was uncontrollable and undefeatable for normal humans but only defeatable by another sorcerer/powerful magical being (Merlin).

Then, of course, we were introduced to a background story of Uther that would be dealt with later on the show. The concept of revenge continued in the show.