Episode II.VIII – The Sins of The Father
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#DestinyAndChicken
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21st April 2020 @ 11:06 pm
I liked how your analysis made me rethink the scene between Uther and Arthur and Merlin’s betrayal of Arthur’s meeting with his mum. It made it so much more tragic to think of it that way.
As for whether Ygraine was really there or just Morgause’s deception, back in the day, I actually wrote to the script editor for Merlin to get the ‘accurate’ spell she cast to bring Ygraine back from the dead. This is the translation:
Use my great might to arise from death to help your son. Hurry back again to this earth to seek your son.
That means that it really was Ygraine. Which gives a whole new meaning to what Uther actually did and that Ygraine must have truly blamed him for it.
28th April 2020 @ 12:35 pm
that is so interesting!! thank you for letting us know.
26th March 2020 @ 10:22 pm
also in this episode, Arthur learns not to underestimate powerful women, in other words, he learned not to assume that his skill and ability to fight is always the best he can always do better and there will always be someone better than him even if he thinks he is the best.
26th March 2020 @ 10:19 pm
I loved this episode, definitely one of the key episodes like the beginning of the end as another important character is introduced, cant wait for the Morgana and Morgause relationship to start properly I really enjoy seeing Katie McGrath and Emelia Fox work together they have such great chemistry on screen
24th March 2020 @ 1:31 am
Whew!! My favorite Merlin episode!! I’m glad you guys are all doing okay and keeping positive attitudes! I missed commenting on last week’s episode, but I pretty much agree exactly about the Witchfinder: fantastic potential and general plot, poor/mushed together execution. With this week’s episode, I have a question I started to think about during Witchfinder: Is there a law or something that prevents anyone from talking about times before the Purge? Obviously, 20 years is not that long of a time, and there are quite clearly tons of people in both the castle and lower town who were alive and old enough to remember times before Arthur’s birth. Did no one put 2 and 2 together about Arthur’s birth and Ygraine’s death and magic being outlawed immediately after that?? More specifically to this episode, why couldn’t Arthur have asked an older person in the castle (Gaius, Geoffrey, some of the servants, etc.) about his mother instead of waiting 20-odd years for a random strange lady to kick his butt and then send him on a mini-quest?
That being said, I really love Morgause and think she is a really cool character. Seeing the way she interacted with Arthur with the horse, and the way she seemed to actually like him made me wonder what would have happened had Uther actually have died. She could have been a great ally to Camelot. Also, kudos to her for holding Merlin at swordpoint when he just busted into her room!! Wish that was enough to teach him about barging into chambers randomly!
The council room scene never fails to make me teary, and everyone was just heartbreaking in it. I always just want to punch Uther, but it also sometimes seemed to me like he was less afraid of dying and more afraid of losing Arthur’s loyalty. This could possibly have been because the whole confrontation was about his mother, and Uther was also realizing that Arthur was his last connection to Ygraine, and therefore didn’t want to lose Arthur’s love/trust/loyalty because of that. Merlin’s/Colin’s little inflections and hesitations break my heart when he has to lie to Arthur ugh )’:
Anyways! Lessons: I think my main one for this episode is for Merlin. He confronts Gaius about keeping the circumstances of Arthur’s birth from them, but then has to lie to Arthur about the same thing. It feels to me a little like he is experiencing the same kind of sacrificial servitude for Arthur that Gaius has for Uther. I know we kinda don’t like Gaius, but this episode helps for me at least to put his decisions into perspective a little as we see Merlin’s actions reflect some of the same choices Gaius made. Merlin learns about sacrificing one’s self for the good of the other, and I wonder if he is realizing that the consequences aren’t always all they’re cracked up to be (i.e. Arthur declaring all magic is evil).
Apart from learning about the evils of magic, I think his losing to Morgause also strengthened his conviction that knights shouldn’t just nobles. Apart from Lancelot, Morgause is one of the only other characters who has been able to beat Arthur in combat, and not only was she not a knight, but also a woman. All of this is kind of erased by her being an “evil sorcerer,” but hopefully it stays somewhere in the back of his mind.
23rd March 2020 @ 10:52 pm
Firstly, let me just say that listening to your commentary of this episode actually made me cry (especially during the climactic council chamber scene) and I felt utterly exhausted afterwards. Then I ended up sitting down and scribbling furiously for an hour to get down all my many thoughts. It might not sound like a compliment, but I really mean it as one!
Secondly, please feel free to edit and read out as much or as little as you like. This is far too long – but I had a lot of thoughts. 😊 I’m really sorry!
Right, starting with lessons first; saving my rants for later.
Merlin has finally – hopefully – learned that going into someone’s room, especially a woman’s without knocking might just earn him a sword to his throat! (i.e. Morgause’s) Finally someone has taken it upon themselves to teach him some manners.
Merlin should also have learned that sometimes he really ought to listen to Arthur when the prince tells him to shut up. Merlin even says it himself in the conversation with Arthur after the battle with Morgause, “I’ll stop talking now!” Why doesn’t he, sometimes, just keep quiet? Who says he needs to get involved at every toss and turn, especially given his verbal power over the prince and yet his simultaneous lack of foresight/ judgement? Okay, thinking of that council chamber scene again.
Arthur has learned not to underestimate women or to regard the realm of knightly prowess and skill as male territory only. I LOVE how that is made clear in the change his diction undergoes in this episode: ‘Swordsman – woman. Swordswoman.’ To Uther ‘I don’t believe she was using magic.’ He literally changes his expression and vocabulary to accommodate for his newly learned appreciation of women. Makes me happy!
The viewers have learned how shamelessly and indifferently the producers will reuse filler scenes from other Merlin episodes. It is so noticeable when Merlin runs towards the council chamber to stop the fight between Arthur and Uther (37.20 min on Netflix). The first filler running scene is from Season 1, Ep 3 (Merlin running to the council room to confess to healing Gwen’s father); the second from Season 1, Ep 2 (Merlin running away from Valiant’s chambers). And what bugs me most of all is that Merlin isn’t even wearing the same: He arrives back in Camelot with Arthur after seeing Morgause: blue shirt & red neckerchief; 1st running scene: red shirt & blue neckerchief; second running scene: red shirt & no neckerchief.
Viewers have also learned that Arthur has basically been a lazy idiot these past 22ish years. If all he craved was a memory of his mother, how did it take Morgause’s appearance to get the prince off his backside to find out more about his mother? Surely, in the castle, he is surrounded by people having known Ygraine, that he could talk to, even if his father refuses to chat about her. We definitely know Gaius knew Ygraine and though he cannot talk about Arthur’s birth, he surely isn’t forbidden from sharing other stories about her? Or has Uther forbidden everyone to talk about Ygraine? Then that’s a huge deal that should have been textualised and which would make Arthur’s trip to Morgause treason!
Okay, now for the ‘rants’:
This episode feels like a direct companion episode of ‘Excalibur’ in so many ways, as if the producers weren’t quite finished telling the story and this is part 2. I actually really like how both episodes have a more weighty Arthurian legend feel, both ostentatiously drawing upon plot elements of ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ (a medieval Arthurian romance). Also, there are similar themes in both: the past coming to haunt Uther, Arthur’s birth, the involvement of a high priestess; even the one-on-one scene between Uther and Merlin is a direct parallel to Merlin getting Uther ready to face the Black Knight ‘Excalibur’. I believe these are the only Uther-Merlin scenes we’ve had in the series so far and that’s significant. (Also, those two are among the best scenes in all of Merlin!)
I’ve hinted at this before, but how was betraying Arthur, lying to him about the true circumstances of his birth, the better choice for Merlin? Why did he think there were only two choices anyway – patricide or betrayal of his friend/enabling Uther’s survival and continued reign & all that entails? Merlin could have advised Arthur to imprison Uther and question him, to hear his side of the truth, even to give him a trial. He could have appealed to Arthur’s sense of justice and honour, which he knows the prince truly lives by. Or even if Uther had died, would it really have destroyed Arthur, knowing that he avenged his mother and all the people unjustly and brutally murdered during the Purge? You can’t present Arthur as the ideal of knightly virtue, someone who consistently puts the knightly code and interests of his people above his own feelings and desires and then make us believe that he would forgo all that in his anger and passion against his father which are literally fuelled by those same knightly virtues and ideals. You can’t have it both ways and still make us believe that Merlin chose the better option when he lied to Arthur!
As to Gaius’ confession about Morgause and her survival that confused you: this is how I understood the story. When Uther and Gorlois were both young and yet unmarried, the latter had an affair with a woman (possibly an enchantress/ high priestess) and that woman gave birth to Morgause. To spare Gorlois and his king the embarrassment of an illegitimate child, Gaius told the men that the girl died when he actually brought her back to her mother’s people on the Isle of the Blessed to be raised and educated by them. Later, Gorlois married Vivienne, Morgana’s mother. This interpretation would explain why Uther did not react with outrage at Gaius’ betrayal since, in concealing the child’s survival, he had acted in Uther’s and Gorlois’ best interests. Perhaps the fact that Morgause’s mother has magic or that Morgause was raised by magic users had nothing to do with it at all since the Purge, at that point, hadn’t been started. The one thing my theory doesn’t explain is why Gaius had to swear to keep Morgause’s survival a secret. Unless Gorlois had knowledge of it and made Gaius swear?
Okay, this is my biggest problem with this episode: it is very confused in its portrayal of Morgause. There are a few scenes that seem to attempt to cast Morgause in traditional villain mode: her killing of the guards when she first enters Camelot, her unexplained outrage at the very end when she sees Arthur and Uther sitting so outrageously staged in the council chamber. I am saying unexplained because until that moment, I am not sure that Morgause really is a villain, that she really had the intention to overthrow Camelot, have Arthur kill Uther etc. That is only what Merlin says to Arthur in the final confrontation and we know that’s a lie anyway. The intriguing thing about Morgause is that we are never told what her actual aims are or whether she has a plan or vested self-interest at all. All she says in the very beginning is that the battle for Arthur’s soul is about to begin. But that’s not necessarily something villainous. In fact, it could simply refer to the internal struggle introduced into any child’s life when they realise that their parents aren’t as perfect as they thought or the world not as black and white as they once perceived. Revealing the truth about Arthur’s birth to the prince might actually be said to introduce him to a much-needed mature perspective on life and his father, a maturity that would test Arthur’s qualities and character and make him more ready to be king. Conversely, that would actually further the destiny Merlin seeks to fulfil (He should have shut up!) and not make Morgause a villain at all!
Perhaps, as the new high priestess after Nimueh, she decided that it was time for Arthur to confront the truth, first testing his honour, word and bravery to see whether he is ready and worthy of the truth. She never focuses her efforts on bringing down Uther, even bowing to him respectfully after the battle. And although her expression makes it clear that there is no love lost between them, she makes no direct attempt to dethrone or kill Uther.
I cannot believe that she has an actual villainous plan: she gives Arthur way too many choices and leaves too many things to chance. Arthur could have chosen not to pick up the gauntlet, could have chosen to withdraw. Arthur could not have appeared to see her off so there would have been no chance for her to mention that she knew his mother; Arthur could have chosen not to seek her out and he could have chosen to wish for anything else after he passed the test with the axe. Sure, Morgause led him a certain way with her words and what she revealed about his mother but it was never forced. Also, we could probably have guessed, knowing Arthur’s character, that he would have made these choices, but how would Morgause know him so well to accurately predict this and make it the basis of any plan of hers?
If we want to see Morgause as a villain with a plan to destroy Uther and Camelot, we must assume that she had either concocted the most stupid, risky plan in the history of stupid plans and things, somehow, actually worked out. Or she enchanted Arthur and the entire castle with him – but then why such a convoluted plan?
Or, perhaps, she doesn’t have an evil plan at all and was simply offering him a chance to find out the truth but leaving much to chance, seeing whether fortune was in her favour and the prince would pass the tests and make the decisions that would mark him worthy of that knowledge and mature perspective.
The truth is, I really like Morgause and the way she defies the episode’s feeble attempts to press her into villain mould. It’s like the writers haven’t learned Arthur’s lesson not to underestimate women and their own creation showed them up. Also, Morgause’s delightful defiance to be reduced to a clear-cut villain brings out the fact that the real villain of the plot is and always was Uther!
Unfortunately, this subtlety of character is lost in later episodes when Morgause is reduced to a mere female villain, seductive and deceptive. It’s very disappointing – she was the least definable and hence most interesting Merlin character in the entire series so far!
20th March 2020 @ 4:40 pm
First off, I’m glad you’re both ok. I was already very isolated (gap year between undergrad and masters, all my friends still studying or working far away), so anticipating my already slightly cabin-feverish brain getting worse is a bit scary. So I’m very grateful for your podcast and for the escapism and community it brings <3
I definitely agree with Mary's comment from last week about the feeling of being cheated by the Witchfinder preview, and have opinions regarding the constant 'will he reveal his magic now?!' back-and-forth but they get spoilery so I'll refrain. Ruth, your reading of Merlin as narrator rather than protagonist does help that though, and it reminds me of something I read somewhere about Merlin being a tragic hero (again, though, spoilers) and my own 2am ideas about Merlin and Hamlet having parallels.
I'm rereading The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart at the moment and a comparison struck me regarding Merlin's magic. When Myrddin (Stewart calls him Merlinus and Merlin too but I'll use the Welsh name to avoid confusion) speaks prophecy as a teenager he feels "as if I were an empty shell with something working through me" – he learns to control it later, if I remember correctly, but his power comes distinctly from outside of him. In the Vita Merlini, Monmouth's Merlin (a mixture of the Welsh Myrddin and some other prophetic dude called Ambrosius) Merlin's magic is a prophecy he gains via going mad after seeing a really awful battle. In contrast, (BBC) Merlin's magic comes from inside of him, and the gold-eyes/instense-stare Merlin is just another side of his cheerful everyday self. It makes his lack of agency more complicated to me, and the way that others (stinky lizard, Gaius, etc) talk about his magic in a manipulative way more insidious, even when unintentional.
ANYWAY, on to the actual episode… sorry. So, there were multiple occasions when I thought "is everyone in Camelot deaf?!" – yelling in Arthur's room, Merlin whispering spells right next to Gaius, etc.
Colin's choices in the big confrontation scene were phenomenal and in the moment they convinced me of the necessity of Merlin's decision, the sheer desperation, and allowed me to forgive Merlin because he was clearly so pained and conflicted… but upon thinking about it afterwards, like you I think the writing should have done more to show us that that choice was /actually/ necessary. I think it's one of the few times when Merlin makes a really awful choice to betray a friend (and Ruth your analysis of how heavy his betrayal really was was heartbreaking, so thanks for that) that doesn't come directly from following someone elses' advice – when he lies to Morgana it's because Gaius outright convinced him to. I mean, the stinky lizard would have absolutely told him to let Arthur kill Uther. That said, it has Gaius' influence all over it, and that is really sad. Gaius (plus the general paranoia of being in Camelot, to be fair) has turned Merlin into a much less honest person, a more secretive person, and maybe a more manipulative person.
I /love/ that a good portion of Arthur's anger is related to all the needless deaths that followed his mother. If Uther said "I didn't know Ygraine would die, it was a mistake," that wouldn't fix things. He would still have blood on his hands, and I don't think Arthur could have forgiven him for that part even if he accepted that his father didn't intentionally sacrifice his mother. I wonder if that is part of Merlin's choice too: that he knows it will take a much bigger lie to save Uther from Arther, and Arthur from himself.
Something that bothers me, and has often bothered me in the show so far, is how often we're told that Arthur isn't ready to be king, when we've had so much evidence to the contrary, especially compared with Uther.
23rd March 2020 @ 11:00 pm
Cheers, Esmé. I’m glad someone shared my distaste for Merlin preview sensationalism!
Also, I’m super impressed with your research – and it’s so true that if the BBC Merlin’s magic comes from within him, giving him control and choice, the fact that he is passive is even less credible and more frustrating. But then, like I said in a previous week’s comment, maybe he feels hampered by the choices he is allowed to make that would help along Arthur’s and his destiny, because using his magic for anything else but said destiny seems to backfire.
As I have said before, destiny is being a real jerk because it gives Merlin all that power and all that control and then says, “Ah, ah, but you can’t use it the way you chose, only the way I chose or you and others will suffer! I entrust you with the power, but I don’t trust you to chose when and how to use it. (Also, using it how I want it will still cause you and people you care about immeasurable suffering.)’ Destiny is such a….(instert really bad expletive!)
20th March 2020 @ 11:34 am
That confrontation scene was something else! You almost can’t watch it when Arthur tips over. Took the series to the next level for me. And felt really bad for Merlin sacrificing his wishes too.
Lesson:
I think that Arthur (and the viewers) learn that the hurt is greatest when it comes from someone you love. The reason why Arthur reaches a breaking point with Uther is because that’s the person he has loved the most or for the longest at this point, and he turns out to be so disappointing. Tied to it is that a part of Arthur believes Uther didn’t just rob him of his mother but also took away a part of himself. It is to please Uther that Arthur suppresses his kind or just intentions sometimes. Perhaps with a mother who supported his gentler side he wouldn’t have to feel insecure about it. He has sacrificed a part of himself for someone who turned out to be a liar and a hypocrite.
22nd March 2020 @ 6:07 am
Hello! Okay so I have nothing to contribute to the episode but I do have compliments! I want to say how happy I am that I found this podcast. I started watching with the podcast and then maybe accidentally finished the series? Whoops. Anyways you guys always cheer me up. Plus you have rad accents so that’s always a plus. Okay I’m done rambling sorry thank you!