Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Five/@comment-5102537-20140308144416/@comment-58.6.230.84-20140309212400

I wonder if they wrote it, not knowing for sure if they could get Anthony Head, so they left it so it could be any old ghost who had a grudge, and then added  the Uthery bits in later! But because it is Uther and he does  try to kill Arthur, it is jarring, because we know what's gone on before, even if the show-runners disregard it. For an episode that should have closed the door on Uther and Arthur with his daddy issues, it didn't. Also, this is where what was happening bts starts to affect what happening on screen. From what I understand, TPTB decided that they wanted a 6th series early on, and started to negotiate with the actors whose contracts had run out. From what I understand the actors were pretty adamant that this was to be the last year, and so we have this episode, and pretty much all the episodes until the final, treading water, while they pushed and pushed the actors to change their minds. Perhaps they also wanted another Uther episode at some point? It wasn't a BAD episode, and there were some light scenes. But it was just out of step with what had gone on before (not unusual for this show) but seemingly even more so. It was one of the last episodes my kids watched, and they spent the whole time asking "why does he? why did he? what??? it was just all round WTF for me as well!!!!  The decisions made here by the show-runners just don't make any sort of sense at all.

Oh and that last bit "Merlin has maaaaaa" was another tease that was snatched away, of course, Arthur didn't take any notice of it at all, in much the same way the name Emrys is mentioned as saving his life, but he has no interest in following it up.