Merlin 5.13

[corilannam]

Well. There it is. Everything I wanted and everything I didn't want for this series all jammed into one episode.

I am truly happy for those of you who are taking so much joy in this episode. There were moments that I liked. I wish I could say I was satisfied.

But I can't. I just can't.

I have loved Arthur Pendragon since the instant I first saw Bradley James's stupid, stupid face in episode 1.01. My favorite episodes in every season are the ones where Arthur got to grow and shine and choose his path and show what a glorious king he would someday be. How worthy he was to claim the destiny of the greatest sorcerer of all time to be his servant for nothing more than love.

I could have loved this episode, if Arthur had gotten to live at the end. If he had gotten to rule over his golden kingdom like he was meant to. If Merlin had defied destiny one last time to save him. If he'd gotten to thank and forgive Merlin when it wasn't already a moot point. If he'd gotten to actually give Merlin those days off instead of condemning him to centuries of loneliness and waiting.

So no. Fuck you, Johnny Capps. Fuck you, Julian Murphy. Fuck you for making me care so much about Arthur and Merlin's glorious destiny and then leaving it in ruins. Throwing me a few lines of conversation I read in fanfic back in 2009 doesn't fucking cut it, you assholes.

Comments

[rane-ab.livejournal.com]

I've just finished watching the ep, and I was completely spoiled for it, plus there were spoilers before that heavily suggested Arthur would meet his end, so I was able to just focus on the good bits and I'm remarkably dry-eyed and smiley?

But one of the reasons for that is that I've been angry and sad about Arthur's likely death for weeks, now (I lost a ridiculous number of hours of sleep over it, considering it's a TV show *g*), and yeah, pretty much for all the reasons mentioned in this post/the comments. We're supposed to believe the golden age was already there, but we never even saw it. Wasn't it all supposed to be about Arthur lifting the ban on magic? I mean, like, from the very first episode? Seriously, wtf. The writers have always been terrible at writing arcs, but this takes the cake. Merlin didn't really achieve everything he set out to, no matter what the dragon said, and I'm not quite sure how this Arthur is supposed to be the king of legend considering he didn't get a damned chance to do what he was supposed to. My favourite part was always imagining a future where Arthur and Merlin would work side by side to unite Albion and deal with the fall-out of lifting the ban on magic - with Arthur fully in the know about Merlin, and both of them more powerful for it.

The reveal in itself was more than I could ever have hoped for, given they only had one ep to pull if off, and also OMG all the touching and holding and, gaaah, but dammit, why couldn't they have twisted this part of the legend, as they have so many others, and Arthur miraculously survive at the end of it?

I'm hoping for loads of fic where somehow Arthur gets resurrected in canon time after all and he gets to be the great king with Merlin and Gwen at his side. (Also possibly a fic where he decides after waking up that he doesn't want to be king anymore, and runs away to live on a farm with Merlin, but that's another story altogether...)