Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Four/@comment-5102537-20140111151000/@comment-5102537-20140113130756

I don't know if it still makes sense continuing the rewatching threads since the interest in them seem to have vanished. I'll probably talk to myself here when giving my review.

I was looking forward to Lancelot returning, yet this episode was a disappointment to me. Not as bad as a lot of fans feel but certainly once again a story that didn't do any good to all the characters involved.

When the five gateways that seperated the Spirit World from the world of the living was mentioned I had hoped that the show would refer to it later and give some insight into the whole afterlife thing. Shame it was forgotten immediately because I would have liked to know what happened to Lancelot when he entered the veil in "The Darkest Hour".

Did he die in the Spirit World, was he trapped, did his soul go to paradise or did it remain in some sort of purgatory? When he returned as a shade, he seemed to be some sort of a zombie. An empty shell without a soul, which is why Morgana had to feed him information about Lancelot's past. Obviously, a shade responses to the one who revives them, in this case Morgana. Generally, the soul is believed to be the power behind personality, actions, emotions and conscience. So when the body returned without the soul, Lancelot had no memory of his past and no motivation at all, except listening to his mistress like a robot that has to be programmed first.

So far so good. But where was his soul?

I think it was quite cruel for Morgana to play with such essential things and causing a soul to suffer, especially since Lancelot had never done anything to her. He closed the veil which Morgana surely disapproved of, yet he wasn't someone she had a personal beef with. And even if, tormenting a soul is the cruelest thing that anyone could ever do since it will last for eternity if nobody releases the soul.

When Morgana said that she should be sad about Lancelot (being a shade and not himself), it demonstrated that she was aware of what she was doing to him. It would have been a far better move to grant her some humane character traits and to let her think about a possibility to give Lancelot back his soul after his work is done. However, even this wouldn't have washed away the fact that Lancelot's soul would be restored (or whatever) with the knowledge that his shade had put Gwen into a death threatening situation and made two people extremely unhappy.

I will never understand why Merlin and Gaius didn't do anything to find out what made Gwen kissing Lancelot. If he hadn't been a shade and if they hadn't known about Morgana and Agravaine plotting against Arthur, I would understand that they might have thought that Gwen was still in love with Lancelot. However, Merlin and Gaius knew that Morgana had brought back Lancelot's shade and they knew that she hadn't done it just for fun but for good reasons (evil ones, for that matter). They knew that it was her plan to prevent the marriage and that Agravaine brought Arthur to the Counsil chambers in order to let him witness the kiss.

Yet they didn't question Gwen's reasons and never considered that she was enchanted, too? This doesn't make sense. Whereas they tried to find out what was wrong with Elyan when he was possessed by the spirit of the druid boy later. So Elyan must be innocent but Gwen is guilty and jeopardizes her marriage willingly although Morgana had planned this all along - to Merlin and Gaius' knowledge... ?

It was also quite indifferent and rude that Merlin didn't help Gwen with the cart when she was leaving and that Gaius didn't even say good-bye. Their closest friend is leaving Camelot but none of them bothers to help her, not even with a heavy cart.

Arthur behaved like a choleric child here when he first attacked Lancelot's shade in rage and later banished Gwen from Camelot. He seems to have inherited his short temper from Uther, yet it was totally out of character for him to first have Gwen on her knees in front of him and later even threatening her life should she ever return to Camelot. Alright, he is the king and thought that she had betrayed him (with a kiss)... but who in their right senses would ever threaten to kill their one and only love? Only narcissistic, sexist machos with too much testosterone and some sort of fanatical jelousy would ever think of killing their loved ones due to being unfaithful. Was Arthur like that? Not at all. I could never imagine Uther threatening Igraine.

Even only banishing her from Camelot was cruel. Arthur knew that he dismissed her out in the world alone with nobody to turn to, without a job, no home and at the risk of being ambushed or killed. Would anyone do that to the ones we love? Most wouldn't even do it to strangers or acquaintances, yet Arthur did it to his one and only true love, the woman he wanted to marry. He forced her to leave her home and an her friends and he didn't even took care of her well-being out there.

As for the law about adultery, I doubt that it was Uther's law and invention only. The show managed to present Uther as an almost almighty dictator who had the most ridiculous and cruelest laws whereas the kings before him and the kings of other kingdoms obviously were fluffy and friendly little people in whose kingdoms almost everything was allowed and liberal, regardless that we were proven otherwise in the previous episodes. The tradition of punishing adultery surely was as old as the line of kings were and it surely didn't apply to Camelot only.

Ironically, Agravaine, as mean as he was, was right about the problem of marrying a servant girl. This is another thing that Uther was blamed for even though it should have been logical and common law in the dark ages and beyond (even today it's still a problem). As ReganX had stated several times before, I too can't find any logic in the fact that only Uther forbid a marriage between nobles/royals and servants/commoners but that other kings had done and did as well, plus that other nobles agreed with that happily.

The Dochraid told Morgana that she was supposed to bring back the Old Ways. Merlin was supposed to bring about a new era and new kind of religion/new ways... So what now? What does the Old Religion want for goodness sake?

I liked the scene in which Merlin gave Lancelot back his soul. Though we still don't know where his soul was the whole time, Lancelot finally found peace when Merlin gave it back to him. Nevertheless, his soul had obviously suffered which was demonstrated when he thanked Merlin in the end. Let alone that Lancelot actually died three times (when closing the veil, when committing suicide in the cell and when dying in the end again after he got back his soul). He got two funerals (Uther didn't even get one to see for the audience) and his second funeral wasn't even attended by his fellow knights and friends. What a sad ending for Lancelot. He was being used like an old broom that can be taken out of the cubby and put back in again at any time.

I found it quite disturbing that his suicide was being seen as an heroic act by Arthur. Since when is suicide any kind of redemption or a noble thing to do? This was quite a questionable message.

Speaking of message: where did the letter go that Agravaine gave Lancelot? Did he eat it before killing himself? Surely, they would have found it when finding Lancelot's dead body in the cell.

And the bracelet that he gave Gwen? They never ever found it even though it fell down on the floor in the cell. Somebody must have found it later. Shame they never ever referred to it. And shame that Lancelot was thought to have been a traitor, that Gwen was thought to be an unfaithful woman and that Morgana  once again didn't realise that she had made way for Gwen by killing Uther.

Plot convenience all over, and it was particularly obvious when Lancelot's shade got Merlin's bed in Gaius chambers. He was a knight of Camelot, not to mention that the castle was a big one and had enough chambers to offer.