Talk:The Diamond of the Day/@comment-217.43.35.53-20170701102510

It's interesting reading back some of these comments after re-watching the series. I agree that the ending was a complete hash that made little sense and meant Merlin completely failed to do anything he meant to do.

I knew someone who worked on the show and they told me everything that happened in series 5 during filming so I was well prepared for the mess the ending was. Part of this was because the producers were DESPERATE to get a series 6 but none of the young actors would sign on for it. They had 5 year contracts and whilst they enjoyed working on the show they were all aware the writing wasn't that great, it wasn't challenging them and they could do better things. Several (like Eoin and Tom) told the producers at the start that s5 would be their last as they had other jobs lined up. Eoin originally wasn't going to be in s5 either because he really wasn't impressed with his character basically becoming comic relief, and a lot of the crew put Gwaine's ending down to the fact that Eoin and the producers weren't on the best of terms!

Instead of accepting the show was over after s5 though, the producers kept trying to push for the s6 until they literally had no choice but to wrap the show up in the 3 episodes remaining to them. The scripts for the last 3 episodes were finished VERY late because they planned to do something else had the actors re-signed. Then they rushed to 'finish the legend' which was a surprise to everyone working on the show who expected a more 'here is Albion but we all know if the future it will end with Mordred killing him' storyline.

So, yes, it was kind of a rushed hash unfortunately which they never seemed to realise made their hero a complete failure.