Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Five/@comment-5102537-20140322115119/@comment-24456706-20140330022044

I don't think that Morgana's overly complicated plans were a true flaw of the writing, so much as a necessity of the format. When heroes prove themselves capable of overcoming overly complicated evil plots in forty-five minutes of showtime, there's a greater pay-off for the viewer. Overly complicated plans are ALWAYS going to be logistical failures, and they'll rarely make any bit of sense when you stack them up with other, simpler routes. The problem is that this last series of Merlin possessed very few other redeemable qualities that would lead viewers to overlook the logic, as we're meant to. I don't know, perhaps I'm being too generous in giving the writers a pass for this. I will relent that some of her plots were truly ridiculously awful, even by "overly complicated" standards.

I agree that Odin's quick forgiveness of Arthur made absolutely no sense. Odin was one of the few long-lasting "villains" on this show. We'd been hearing about him, and his hatred of Arthur, since the second series. That they resolved things so easily was deeply unsatisfying. I wish he could have made more appearances before this. The "one mention per series" just didn't work for me. This alliance with Odin was clearly supposed to serve as evidence that Arthur was making an honest effort to unite Albion. The simple fact of the matter is that all of Arthur's easy resolutions can't compete with Uther's more prominent efforts in the first, second, and third series.

As an enormous fan of Mithian, I agree, Areanna123, that I did not like her character as much in this episode. I also understand that the situations were incredibly different, but it irked me that the strong princess we were shown in series four would be so quick to crumble in the face of a challenge such as this.