User blog comment:LadyAriana S./The end of the most noble, Lancelot/@comment-5102537-20130628102016

Lancelot was one of the characters that would have provided much more maturity and depth to the stories if he had stayed longer or until the end.

Actually, he died three times. As himself, as the shade and later when Merlin revived him for a few seconds in order to restore his soul. Personally, I didn't have a problem with everyone thinking that Lancelot was dishonourable at first because I thought that later, at some point of the show, someone will find out and restore his honour.

This is what bothers me a lot about "Merlin"; things just didn't come out and the characters didn't even know half of what happened. They didn't find out the truth about the shade and Gwen being enchanted, Arthur and others didn't find out about Morgana having killed Uther or about the necklace, Agravaine having placed the necklace, Gaius having known about it, Merlin having released Kilgharrah ...

It would have been easy to just include a scene in an episode that explaines the sitaution to Arthur, Gwen and the knights in order to release Lancelot from the allegations. I have no idea why they didn't do it.

I think that Lancelot was too mature and wise for the show. With him around, some things wouldn't have happened the way they did, like Arthur killing Carleaon in cold blood, for example. Lancelot surely wouldn't have agreed to this because he wasn't just a loyal member of the football team but a wise and grown up man who had a mind of his own and his heart where it belongs. He also wouldn't have joined the knights in bullying Merlin. He probably had tried to make a plan with Merlin to find and stop Morgana, since he knew about Merlin's powers.

To me it's obvious that they also didn't want anyone in Arthur's and Gwen's way. Since they distanced Arthur bit by bit from Gwen and focused on the bortherly love between Merlin and Arthur, Lancelot would have contributed even more conflict to the marriage, and every storyline that distracted from Merlin and Arthur going on trips and bantering would have been disturbing. With the exception of Gaius, every mature character was killed off - and Gaius was reduced to a side step.

Despite Santiago Cabrera's other projects, I think it would have been a better idea to not kill him off for good but to make him leave Camelot. That way the fans would have known that he was still out there and some characters could have mentioned him every now and then.