The Physicist and I finished watching Merlin this evening, and I have to say, I wasn’t a fan of the series finale.
My biggest gripe is that so many people spent the finale holding the Idiot Ball. Why was Gwaine stupid enough to spill state secrets to some cheap doxy he’d just met? Why the hell didn’t Merlin ask the Dragon for help earlier? Why did Percival and Gwaine think that they had any hope of bringing down a powerful sorceress on their own? The answer, of course, is that they had to set up Arthur’s death, but they still made the characters seem woefully stupid.
I think it also sucks that we never got to see the promised golden age of Albion. Throughout the entire series, we’ve been told that Merlin is destined to help Arthur unite the kingdoms and bring about an age of wonder, but it never happens. All we get are some passing references to a few years of prosperity occur in between seasons 4 and 5, and the show ends with Merlin being consigned to a rather lonely existence as he waits for his boyfriend to come back from the dead. This makes the whole series seem futile.
It also doesn’t help that season 5 as a whole was rather lackluster. While it was nice that they finally moved away from the rigidly episodic format of the earlier seasons, they frittered away too much time on inane side plots like Evil!Gwen. I also missed the lighthearted tone of the earlier seasons. What is it with campy, fluffy shows going all dark and gritty as they go on? Xena and Buffy did the same thing, and I think it usually hurts the show.
I did appreciate the fact that Arthur’s character finally got to develop in season 5. In the early seasons, they had a nasty habit of hitting the Reset Button every time he learned a lesson, but towards the end he finally got to grow and mature. Sadly, the same can’t be said for Merlin. I suppose one could argue that he’s a bit harsher in season 5, but I would’ve liked to have seen more pronounced development. It was particularly annoying that, even at the very end, he was still blurbling about how his destiny was to serve Arthur. I think it would have been much cooler if Merlin had outed himself as a sorcerer before the final episode. It would have been neat to see Arthur come to grips with that in normal circumstances instead of the deathbed acceptance we got.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of season 5, I thought the way they handled Mordred’s betrayal sucked. Having him ragequit Camelot over some chick who’s never been seen or mentioned before was just stupid. In the episode, he kept claiming that they were besties from way back, but it would have been nice if they’d done a better job of working that particular relationship into the plot.
Despite my complaints about the end, I have to say that I enjoyed Merlin overall. It’s not going to go down as one of my all-time favorite shows, but it was fun to watch. Colin Morgan and Bradley James are both fine actors (Morgan did a particularly nice job in the finale—those were some heavy scenes, yet he never seemed overwrought or melodramatic) and they had great chemistry together. With any luck, they’ll collaborate again at some point.
Codex Lochianus 