As I touched on in my blog post about Freya, as much as I like Gaius, I have a beef with his character's actions in two episodes. One in season 2, and one in season 3: The Lady of the Lake and Love in Time of Dragons. My problem with him in those episodes is how DIFFERENT he acts in both of them.
Allow me to explain (expand on this a bit).
In The Lady of the Lake, Gaius is wary from the start when Merlin notices Freya. And, given, it's understandable; here he is, trying to protect this young
warlock who just can't seem to stay out of trouble even on the best of days, and finally things are going semi-smoothly when suddenly his charge happens to notice a girl in a cage and wants to break her out. And, of all cages, it has to be one that belongs to a bounty hunter who apparently prefers hunting magical people to hunting normal animals, as it obviously gets him more money from Uther. So Gaius does the natural thing, tells Merlin to leave the cage alone and not mess with the bounty hunter. Okay, I can buy that; he wants to protect Merlin, makes sense. He probably feels sorry for Freya, but he doesn't know her, and Merlin's like a son to him. Perfectly acceptable, right?
Well, of course, Merlin goes and breaks Freya out anyway and lies to Gaius about it. And as soon as Gaius realizes Freya is a Bastet and killing innocent people, he calls Merlin out on it saying he used to think twice before he lied to him. When Merlin doesn't give in and tell Gaius where she's hidden, Gaius, saying he can't let more people die, goes and rats out Freya being the Bastet to Uther.
Okay. Sad, but well he's just protecting Merlin... Right? He would expect Merlin to do the same for him, wouldn't he? If he was in love with a "monster" and couldn't look at her and the situation objectively?
Skip some time to Love in Time of Dragons... Gaius is reunited with his beloved lost love Alice. How sweet. How can you NOT be happy for an old man and woman who love each other back together after twenty years? It's so sweet!
Alice, though, is being forced to poison the king and Merlin figures it out.
Looks like the tables have turned. Gaius refuses to listen to Merlin's warnings; Alice, unwillingly, goes through with it and poisons the king. To save Gaius from being blamed for what Alice did, Merlin tells Arthur he knows what happened.
And how does Gaius react?
I believe his words were, "It wasn't your choice to make"?
Well, what about when it WAS Merlin's choice? What about when it was Freya and Gaius didn't even want to give him time to get her out of the city? Gaius didn't keep back from telling Uther then... Because he was protecting the people of Camelot. How is what Merlin did any different? Camelot needed their king, Arthur evidently wasn't ready to take over the throne at that point, and Alice tried to kill Uther. Surely the king dying would be more cause for panic among the people than a few of their fellowmen picked off by a magical animal in the middle of the night? Sad, but it's true, impact-wise.
But Gaius' reaction didn't seem to know this. I get that it's different for him when HIS emotions are involved, but I think what really bothered me about it was that it reminded me, just a little bit, of Uther's willingness for Gaius to use magic to save Morgana but not being willing to spare Gwen when he believed she'd used magic to cure her dying father, who (while her brother was off galavanting somewhere) was all the family she had...
I'm not saying Gaius is AS BAD as Uther sometimes was, BUT I AM saying maybe it's not so weird that they were good friends... Maybe they're a tad more alike than one would think, it's just not as noticable, since Gaius usually appears to have a much better head on his shoulder than Uther did.
Now, I'm not a Gaius hater. I like him a lot, and unlike a lot of fans I've discovered (much to my shock) on this site, I'm not working out the most dramatic death-scene possible for the poor old man on the show in my head (I GET that he's old, and for some reason some fans feel he's holding Merlin back, though I don't completely agree, but geeze people...); but this part of his personality irks me.
So I guess here's the question I'm posting for the comments:
Is the reason he was so against Freya/Merlin because he didn't like Freya, thinking she was a monster who was misleading Merlin (remember, Merlin was the one who had to tell him that "no matter what she's done, she doesn't deserve to die"), or was he strictly acting in Camelot's best interest, his sudden change in additude nothing but his emotions making him selfish in season 3?
What do you think?