User blog:Adelina Le Morte March/Why Freya deserves more credit (and needs to come back)

First off, I just want to say that Freya is my favorite human character on the show, hands down. She would be my favorite character period, end of story, but that spot is already taken by Kilgharrah, the great dragon who I have adored and been completely enthralled by since episode one. So if I seem a little bias in this post, that would be why.

I will flat-out admit that sometimes it's hard to look at your favorite characters objectively. After all, why do you tink we have so many Morgana defenders? Or even Arthur defenders, who are willing to take his side even when he does something wrong or mean or just plain ignorant? It's because we love those characters, we've been watching them all this time, maybe even reading legends about them in-between waiting for episode premires, and we don't like people talking smack about them, even when they're in the wrong; we can see their good side, as we've been watching their characters actions, we feel we get a clear idea of their motives and are sometimes baffled when others don't see it the same way.

So let me get something clear here: Freya is like that to me. She was never just "the character of the week" in my eyes. She was, in my opinon, every bit as important as Arthur, Merlin, Morgana, Gwen and the rest. The Lady of the Lake is a very important character in Arthurian legend, and I was really moved and touched by BBC Merlin's beautiful potrayal of her and her background. Why does it matter that she's only in two episodes? I want her back more, yes, but that doesn't mean I want to cut her character short just because the writers haven't been able to squeeze her in as much as I'd like!

I love the original spin on the story, her being a cursed Druid and becoming the Lady of the Lake after death. It compliments the show's spin on Excalibur itself, actually. If the sword, instead of coming from the lake for no reason, was made by Gwen's father, forged in the dragon's breath, and then thrown into the lake of Avalon for safe-keeping, why not a new backstory for the one who gives the sword back? It was just a plain (albeit, well made) sword turned magical and legendary, why not a down-on-her luck Druid turned into a famous water-spirit?

I know that there were fans who wanted Nimueh to be the one to give him the sword, but really the way it worked out, with Freya giving it to him, was for the best. Do you really think Merlin would have trusted a revived Nimueh to help him save Camelot? Heck, in a weird way, I LIKED Nimueh's character, and I wouldn't even trust a supposedly repentant verison of her not to try to drown Merlin in revenge for killing her or something when giving him the sword! Also, I have a soft spot for stories in which the Lady of the Lake is a nice character. It's a theory that (like Morgana, Morgause, and Elaine; the three Le Fay sisters, if you will) many of the women-folk who are negatively protrayed in the legends were originally good or purely ambigous characters that men in the middle-ages who were a mite too intent on blotting out anything they considered 'too pagan' and making Arthurian legend more about Holy Grails and what-not (think of them as a group of Uthers, but with less power, so they couldn't do as many hangings, head-choppings, or burnings at the stake; mostly they just changed stories, LOL), changed into villians. How do we know that the lady of the lake wasn't more benovolent in the older stories? It would seem to make sense. After all, she does a lot of nice things, even in less-than-pretty protrayals of her. In the Howard Pyle verison, our lady of the lake isn't even the one who traps or kills Merlin. It is, in fact, a young woman named Vivien, coached by a jealous Morgana. In some stories, it is Morgana herself, and not always with entirely bad motives, who traps Merlin in an oak tree. There are sources, even, of the lady of the lake trapping Merlin, not out of vengence, but because he is growing old and confused and needs a place to rest. In these stories, it is an act of kindness.

A gentle Lady of the Lake is a role Freya seems to fit into seamlessly. Which is why I think Julian Jones wrote her character (notice, both episodes she appeared in were written by Julian Jones...) that way.

Now for Freya herself....

When speaking to fans who've said they "don't really like" Freya or think she's "Over-rated", "Boring", too "Timid", "Weak" etc... one of the most comon things I hear is, "Well, I like her ROLE, I just don't like HER."

I disagree entirely. Her role in the story and her personality go hand-in-hand. She isn't "weak". If she was, one has to assume she would have been dead long before she could have met Merlin and her episode could have taken place. A weak person can't be thrust out of their home, fend off an attacker, become magically cursed, betrayed on more than one occastion (the Druids casted her out; and it seems to be implied that somebody was responsible for handing her over to Halig, as her reply to Merlin's question about that is, "You can't always trust people"), and keep sane. A weak person in her place would have killed themselves or gone so insane that they'd act like a wild animal even when they WEREN'T in Bastet form.

Does she seem a little down and mopey when Merlin rescues her? Sure. And why not? She's had it rough, she finally meets someone she cares about (Merlin), and she's scared to tell him she's cursed, not so much for herself, it would appear, but because she doesn't want to ruin Merlin's life (which would be why she tried to leave Camelot without him). Oh, and to top it off, she's got no place to go; her family's dead, and some jerkface is trying to put her in a cage so he can hand her over to Uther for money. Yeah, I think anyone would cry and need comforting at that point.

I know that, as women, a lot of us fangirls want to claim that in those kinds of situations, we'd be more like Morgana than Freya, not moping or being sad, just out-right taking what is ours. At least trying to stand up for ourselves. But, come on, would we really? And maybe some of us would. But I think (at least for me, personally) Freya's reaction to being slighted and treated like a monster is more realistic. At the very least, it's realstic for her station, if you think about it. Morgana had her position in Camelot to fall back on, she was Uther's ward; then she was actually his daughter. She had more chances to practice standing up for herself. Freya was very different. She was most likely very poor, taken away from home when her family died (though we don't know in detail how this occured), some son of a witch (literally, LOL) decided to be a total loser and attack her, evidently for no reason, to the point where she thought he was going to kill her. She manages to defend herself, and accidentally kills him. As if that wasn't bad enough, his mother (rather unwilling, it appears, to admit her son was a slimeball who probably deserved it) curses her to turn into a monster every night and kill people, over and over again. Talk about your unfair punishment! She learned her lessons the hard way.

By the time the viewer is introduced to her character, the poor thing is locked in a cage, left out in the rain like an animal, her captor not even bothering to bring her inside the tavern with him. I think any crying or moping or being down-hearted by this point is fairly justified on her behalf.

Now we get to the point where I feel viewers are unnessarily harsh on Freya's character: Merlin falling in love with her.

I do not mean to attack or point out any one person in particular, only to generalize that a LOT of people who have objected to the Merlin/Freya pairing, often rather rudely, saying mean things about Freya's character, are hardcore Morgana/Merlin fans. And that's great, that they like that pairing. I just don't think it's fair to hate on a character on those grounds. If she was a love interest for one of the knights, how much less hate do you think she would have gotten? I'm just saying... Interestingly, the majority of fellow Merlin/Freya fans I've spoken to, heard from, or read comments placed by or about (though, given, at this point we appear to equal only a small fraction when compared to the Morgana/Merlin, Arthur/Gwen, and even Merlin/Gwen and Arthur/Morgana fanbases) don't hate Morgana. In fact, most of us, though it's not our favorite (us being Merlin/Freya shippers, obviously), LIKE Merlin/Morgana. We don't hate on her character, as a general rule.

Not to mention, sometimes fans can just be impossible to please. Freya/Merlin is a perfect example of this in that I've heard complaints from people who wanted Gwen/Lancelot to win out over Arthur/Gwen, basing their reasoning (understandably) on Guinevere's love affair with Lancelot in the legends. We want more legend-based pairings, they said. Okay, but by then Arthur/Gwen was already growing into a thing. So, what did the writers give us? A very legend-like pairing, Merlin/Lady of the Lake, and people still weren't happy? Geez...

Furthermore, Freya was a great love-interest for Merlin in that they had similar backgrounds: happy, simple childhoods that were (in different circumances, Freya's family dying and Merlin's mother sending him away, likely following learning that Will knew her son had magic) brought to a bittersweet end. They both know what it's like to be kicked around, to be treated like nothing. Both are the sort of people who don't need a lot of things to be happy. They don't need fancy castles or titles or thrones; look at what Merlin said when he was going to run away with her: "Horses, blankets, food..." That's all they needed to be together. And, at the same time, it's not like there was no conflict in their relationship; it just was an external problem, in that she was cursed and that she was a Druid being hunted down and he was a warlock who had to keep his magic a secret. I honestly believe that, had their cirucmances been different, had Merlin actually had a choice to live his life with Freya or somebody else (such as Morgana, Mithian, or anyone else you might think to match him up with), he would have choosen Freya. The reason being is that her simple common sense and gentleness is what he needs more than someone to challenge or argue with him. He gets enough of that from Arthur. In a love-interest, he would need someone who supported him and refrained from calling him an idiot or even simply looking at him like he was nuts (even Gwen was guilty of the latter...) half the time.

Now that Freya's dead, I don't think that means the pairing has to be. She's still around as the lady of the lake. I was sorely disappointed, as I think even non-Merlin/Freya fans were, simply because of how it was set up, that we didn't get to see them reunite properly when she gave him the sword. Their one-minute conversation via water-puddle was ADORABLE, don't get me wrong; I LOVED that scene, Merlin's reaction to her face appearing was so sweet... But all that "It's giving me the chance to see you again" blah blah blah, sort of left us fans hanging. I do like how they just showed her arm, because it goes with the legend, and I think, yes, they did the right thing by cutting away right after her arm emerges. But they messed up on one count. THEY SHOULD HAVE GONE BACK! We should at least have had one little scene of them meeting face to face. Couldn't Merlin have grabbed her hand and pulled her into the boat with him? I don't think wanting one little Merlin/Freya reunition HUG was too much to ask for! Even if it would have been an even shorter scene than the puddle bit, I would have accepted it. And I would have found it more conclusive, to tell you the truth.

As it stands, this is why I always feel a bit shall we say "baffled" by people who claim Freya's character is over and has no more potenical for the show.

Um, are we talking about the same character? She has TONS of ways she could return. She's not like Nimueh, who appeared in more than two episodes, had a death that was conclusive in that it allowed another character we cared about (Namely, Gaius; though I do have a beef with him ratting out Freya to Uther but then telling Merlin off for ratting out Alice to Arthur when she poisoned the king, but maybe I'll just save that for another blog post) to live. And even she COULD, if they really pushed for a way to go about it, come back.

Freya is a very different sort of Lady of the Lake than Nimueh would have been. And as such she has almost over-whelming amounts of ways she could come back. I just wish the producers and writers could see it! Or at least give us more of a hint as to if they honestly plan on bringing her back (notice that they've kept their answers fairly ambigious when it comes to her). I get that they want it to be a surprise for whatever, but COME ON! At last tell us if she's NOT coming back season 5 or whatever, we Merlin/Freya fans will still watch anyway, we just won't get our hopes up for our favorite couple to be reunited then have it come smashing down like it did in season 4, when there wasn't even so much as a mention of Freya, is all.

Here are a list of ways I think she could come back

1) First off, my personal favorite, and the way I think I most wish would happen, though I doubt it will. Something happens to Merlin that he is once again at Morgana's mercy (we could have some cool fight scenes with them in this!), the end result being that he is trapped by her in an oak tree or perhaps the crystal cave. (If it is the crystal cave, we could even have a sub-plot of Merlin going a bit crazy because he sees visions everywhere he looks, making it all the more dramatic). Somehow Freya is able to communicate with him but unable to bust him out of there. So, like she does in the legends, she offers to take his place at court and watch over Arthur for a while. (I doubt Arthur will remember her after only one meeting all those years ago, espeically if she shows up in a nice dress, looking older and more confident, and not like the scared Druid girl who said, "Please let me go" then turned into a Bastet.) It could cut back and forth between her doing something to help Arthur or thrwart an enemy of Camelot, and Merlin, still trapped, trying to find his way out or at least keep sane, and Morgana, gloating or planning her next move or whatever. Somehow, by the end of the episode, Merlin is able to get out and he and Freya, after a tearful meeting, part ways and switch places. He goes back to Camelot where he belongs and she returns to her lake.

I would LOVE an episode like that. I think it would make everyone happy. Merlin/Morgana fans, because it has interation between them like A Servant of Two Masters did, sort of, and Freya/Merlin fans because, duh, we get to see Freya again, and more than just her ARM!

2) Freya is able to leave the lake for a short time and join Merlin in Camelot, maybe as a sercet magical apprentice. She would even disguse herself as a boy (which would fit with the legends!), and they'd only have to change her name a little in that case, for her diguse to work (they could just call her "Freyr"... Hmm, okay, I seriously need to STOP reading Here Lies Arthur so much... I just do... It's giving me too many ideas...). For it to fit with the main multi-stranded storytelling, maybe there could be some way Mordred is a threat to her. Maybe Merlin fears he'll tell Arthur who she really is or something, or it could run deeper than that. Maybe Freya is privy to some more information on how Mordred will kill Arthur (as the lady of the lake, which I hope they finally get around to EXPLAINING, she must be privy to some information the rest of the characters aren't; Morgana's not a lake-lady, just a high priestess, like Nimueh was, and even she has dreams about Emrys and stuff, so yeah...).

3) She could help one of the knights on a quest, possibly Percivial or another knight she had a connection to in the legends (can't be Lancelot, cuz he's dead, but maybe... Gwaine?) thus meeting up with Merlin at the same time. Not the best, but we still get a Merlin/Freya reunition and the writers have more time to focuse on other characters whilest still giving us Freylin fans what we've been begging for.

4) She could appear, as some have suggested, at the end to take Arthur to Avalon. My one beef with this is that, since Arthur doesn't even KNOW her, it would be weird. I think the writers would be more likely, if they have a lick of sense, to use MORGANA in that scene. Why? Because a repentant sister, taking her injured brother to a magical place where he can heal, is much more moving than a complete stranger doing a favor for Merlin by taking Arthur home to Avalon. We've already had the knights say things like "Arthur isn't the one who sent for me" or "I'm helping a friend... not Arthur..." Implying they do what they do for MERLIN. Do we really need a repeat of that with Freya? I thinkth NOT. If they do want to have her come back like that, I think they should have Morgana take Arthur, Merlin be wary, then realize she's truly changed and is going to help him, tearfully letting Arthur go with her, maybe even saying something like a sad goodbye to Arthur AND Morgana. Gwen being there, too, weeping, would be extremely moving. Then maybe Arthur leaves his sword with Merlin, telling him to cast it into the waters (it would kind of have to be Merlin, or Gwaine or somebody, since I think they already killed off Bedivere in season 1, if I'm not wrong... No wait, maybe that was Pellinore... I dunno...); then after the boat is going out of sight with Morgana and Arthur in it, he does so, sees Freya's hand come up and grab it, expecting no more. Then she comes out completely and tells him to come with her, that he's weary, he's done all he needed to do for Arthur, his task is complete, and that he needs to rest now. Smiling, he goes with her. They link hands and disappear. The end.

I think it would be cool, because maybe Merlin can even (as old man Emrys) be resonsible for Morgana's change of heart, tying into that dream she had when he says, "Is this really what you wanted Morgana?"

5) We could see her and Lancelot in a breif glimpse of Avalon. Yawn. Bo-ring! And too short. But better than nothing. I'd take even that, if it meant another Freya cameo.

6) She could somehow cure an injured Merlin in front of a baffled, surprised Arthur, after a battle, provided he puts injured-Merlin down next to a lake or something so this would be more probable.

Well that's six ways she could return, and I can probably think of more if I have more time, so character doesn't need to come back?

So, so, so, not true.

Also I think the producers/writers owe her character one last appearance. Not just because last time we only saw her arm. Also because what they should have done, to give her character more room to grow and what-not, in the first place was make The Lady of the Lake the two parter of season 2, not the episode about the farting troll.



Thoughts anyone?