Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-68.229.162.187-20140609172055/@comment-24629321-20140610032136

I agree with your assessment that she is the spirit of the lake and bound to it, taking form only when needed to handle Excalibur. As for the Merlin and Freya romance, the first time I saw the Lady of the Lake episode, I was taken aback because the whole beast transformation thing struck me as such a deviation from legend, but the second time I watched it I was able to appreciate the sweetness of their romance more. It's unfortunate that the few times Freya reappears as the Lady of the Lake are so brief (and in the final episode the producers couldn't even be bothered to hire a female stuntwoman to catch the sword—seems like they didn't put much care into the role of the Lady of the Lake at all). If you haven't watched the episode with her first appearance yet you should skip the rest of my reply if you don't want to see major spoilers for it...

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What really bothers me about that episode is that Merlin is ready to ditch his destiny and run away with Freya... it's not even like he's arguing this to himself or trying to decide whether he owes it to destiny to stay in Camelot, he's definitely planning to go. And what's more, he nearly brings a statue down on Arthur's head when he's defending Freya in her beast form. I get it that he's had it with destiny and everybody wants to get away sometimes, but using his magic to nearly kill Arthur still seems too out of character for me to take seriously. Following that debacle, it just seems strange to me that she takes the place of such an integral character to Arthurian legend.