Well, That Was Straightforward

Hey, it's Princess Mithian again! And Helios and Agravaine (who is Arthur's uncle, although apparently not Morgana's, and is a lord, not a knight). Boy, if nothing else, it sure is refreshing to see Morgana working with the same allies for multiple episodes in a row. In season five it seemed like she had a new second-in-command every week, which made it hard to care about any of them. Consistency is a plus, even for the bad guys.

Unfortunately, consistency also means that Morgana is consistently terrible at everything she tries to achieve. Oh, Guinevere is unconscious at my feet, and I want to kill her and/or prevent her from spilling my secrets? I guess I could magically snap her neck... but nah, I guess I'll just turn her into a deer for a few hours and assume that Arthur's hunting party will kill her before the spell wears off. Nice job there, Morgana.

Of course, the good guys aren't particularly good at what they do, either. Arthur refuses to listen to Merlin's claims about Agravaine, which makes some sense, since he says he's known his uncle since he was a child. But apparently his confidence extends to the point where he doesn't even post additional guards or anything on the access tunnels between this episode and the next. That's not just trust, that's idiocy. Arthur with all his resources (and Merlin, with his) can't seem to find Gwen, either... Even though she's apparently hanging out in the village where Merlin's mom lives, unbeknownst to either of them.

On the other hand, Merlin can at least tell when an animal is actually a shapeshifted friend of his, so that's something. But back on the main hand, Guinevere doesn't find anything unusual about that in the slightest, and so Merlin's secret magic is preserved another episode. I swear, some days all of these characters seem pretty useless.

Morgana even calls Agravaine out on his uselessness, accusing him of failing her in the past. Plus, he starts out this episode as a bad guy. These things together make me figure that his revelation as a traitor is still ahead for me. I wonder how long I'll go until that reveal, and how long he'll be around on the show acting shifty afterwards. Quite a while, I hope. Again, consistency in bad guys would be a nice change of pace for this show.

Other notes:

--Still no overt discussion of what Guinevere did wrong, but both she and Arthur view it as a betrayal on her part. Interesting. She's also in hiding from him, although I couldn't tell whether the village she's in at the start of this episode is supposed to be the same one she's in with Merlin's mom at the start of the next.

--Arthur ends this episode by refusing to marry Princess Mithian, because he's still in love with Guinevere. And yet he TOTALLY gives Gwen the cold shoulder two episodes from now, initially refusing to take her back and forgive her. Make up your mind, dude.

--Same advice goes to Merlin. At the end of this episode, he tells Arthur that the king should trust what his heart tells him, "Because...you're Arthur. You're noble. You're the once and future king." At the beginning of the next episode, he mind-controls Arthur because the king disagrees with him over how to react to Morgana's attack. Nice consistency there, pal.

The worst part about watching this show backwards is that I keep seeing these really climactic finales to events and assuming that they had equally epic build-ups, only to learn in most cases that that simply isn't true. Here, for example, I get to see Morgana take Camelot. It turns out she does it just by walking out of the woods with an army of Saxons, fighting her way past the castle guards pretty easily. I mean, maybe there was more build-up to this moment in the episode beforehand, but there was definitely no development here for a plot the show expects me to take seriously. Morgana comes out of the woods and takes the castle. What's next?

And then there's Tristan and Isolde, whom I had hoped would be a little more in touch with their traditional characterization in this episode (which turns out to be their first) than in the one after (which ended up being their last, whether planned that way or not). Traditionally, Isolde is a maiden and Tristan is her brave knight, and they defy her husband with their forbidden love, to a disastrous end. Here they're not even sellswords, as I had assumed, but simply smugglers who are pretty good at fighting. And despite this being their introductory episode, they're not really given any further characterization or background. Tristan hates Arthur because Arthur made smuggling illegal -- what a horrible king, right? -- but otherwise we aren't told anything about these characters besides the fact that they love each other. That is the single reason I can think of for why the writers would have named these characters the way they did, and I have to say, it's a pretty weak one. I'm disappointed, especially as this means the show is probably not going to do a version of the actual Tristan and Isolde story, which I rather like.

  Finally, rounding out this episode of mundane beginnings, we get to see Arthur and Guinevere's passionate reuniting. I don't know how long they've been apart or what the nature of their grievance is -- Arthur remembers why at the start of this episode, but he doesn't share that information with me -- but I do get to see these lovers reunite. And what epic journey of true love brought them together? Well, Guinevere just happened to be around, because everybody has to be somewhere.

  Now, there's at least a small chance that Merlin orchestrated this turn of affairs. After all, he led Arthur to that village (which happens to be his former home), and it's certainly possible that he knew Gwen was there beforehand. But if so, the show doesn't dwell on that point at all. It also doesn't make much of the fact that Merlin is seeing his mother again, for what will be the last time on this show. And, unfortunately, I didn't get a sense of whether his mother knew about his magic or not. That's a mystery for another day, I guess. The ghost of his father seemed pretty well-informed in The Diamond of the Day Part I, but that might just be a ghost thing.

  Other issues:

--I didn't realize this in the episode I watched right before, but Elyan was apparently made a knight before Guinevere was named queen. Good for him! I had assumed that she probably got him that position, but maybe it was the other way around.

--Speaking of Elyan, Morgana stops Agravaine from killing him because they "don't have time to play soldiers" right then. That's as stupid an excuse for sparing an important character as I've ever heard, especially when you remember that it's Morgana herself who kills Elyan in season 5. I guess she, uh, found time to play soldiers in the Dark Tower.

--I'm still clueless about how much of the Sword in the Stone story Merlin made up on the spot, but I'm even more baffled by why the writers would name this episode (which doesn't even feature any discussion of the thing) after it. Also, Arthur has a nice enough sword that even Tristan comments on it. It's apparently not Excalibur, though.

--Hey, it's the return of Morgana's torture snakes! Every time she uses them she explains what they do, which means every time she uses them I assume it's the first time they've been shown. This has been a bigger source of surprise for me than anything else on the show.

Now that was a great episode! Much better than the premiere of Season 5, despite the fact that I probably understood much less of what was going on. Hopefully this is a sign that the show is getting better and better as I go backwards through it.

Last episode, I complained that Merlin did barely any magic at all, and that his first spells were a signficant amount of time into the episode. Here almost as soon as the episode begins, our heroes are being chased through the woods, and Merlin volunteers to Arthur to lag behind and cover their tracks. It's some immediate action, and I'm content, expecting Merlin to magic up a rustling wind to blow through the leaves or something. NOPE! Instead he summons up his dragon friend, who proceeds to burn almost all of their pursuers alive. Utterly bad-ass.

Merlin also got what I'm assuming was a major character moment later on in this episode, when he stands up to Agravaine and his men in the caves and ultimately kills them. This is one of those moments that probably would have had more resonance if I knew more about the relationship between the characters involved, but it was still very powerful. I look forward to seeing more of Agravaine, who appears to be one of Arthur's knights who has betrayed him.

Here's where my prior knowledge of Arthuriana gets tricky. I know Agravaine is usually one of Arthur's nephews: son of Morgana, brother to Gwaine, and half-brother to Mordred. But this version of the story casts all of these characters as roughly the same age... So while I still don't know whether Arthur and Morgana have ever hooked up, I'm reasonably certain that she doesn't have any sons who are of an age to be knighted, barring some sort of aging spell. Arthur says later on in this episode that he's trusted all the wrong people, and he includes both Morgana and his uncle in that list. I suppose it's possible that Agravaine was the uncle in question, although that's a pretty major change for his character. But then, he was never really this evil, either. Arrogant and dishonorable, yes, and generally included in Mordred's plot to reveal Guinevere's adultery. But seeing him as an out-and-out traitor on his mother's/niece's(?) side was a bit of a surprise.

Even more surprising, though, was the inclusion in this episode of two people calling themselves Tristan and Isolde, who appear to bear absolutely no resemblance to the usual portrayal of those characters. Isolde is generally in love with Tristan but married to somebody else, while Tristan is a knight -- often of King Arthur's court -- who nevertheless pursues her, to his unfortunate end. I'm hoping some of that story was present in earlier episodes featuring these characters, because there was absolutely none of it here. Instead, Tristan and Isolde were a duo of fighters, possibly sellswords -- still in love with one another, but definitely not a knight and his lady. That made their presence in this episode more than a little confusing, and I'm hoping this gets cleared up as I move further back in the series.

Understand, I have nothing against adaptations making changes to the source material, and a lot of times, those changes can yield great results. I just get confused when a new character is named after an existing one but has no obvious similarities to the original at all.

That's probably part of why I didn't really care so much when Isolde died at the end of this episode, but honestly, that was mostly just because she had gotten zero characterization at all. Hopefully she was more fleshed out in earlier episodes, because before her death scene in this one, she really did very little. Tristan got a tiny bit of character growth, going from doubting Arthur to believing he wasn't like other kings. But Isolde was all but silent in these scenes, simply agreeing with whatever position Tristan held from moment to moment. I'm really interested in these two and in how their story here differs from its usual form. But I really hope Isolde is given more of a personality!

Mostly, of course, this was an episode about Arthur getting his groove back. Not having seen anything before this point, I couldn't tell how much of the Sword in the Stone business really was foretold and how much Merlin was making it up on the spot. But I really appreciated the fact that Merlin essentially cheats the system here. He tells Arthur that only the truest king can pull free the sword, but there's actually nothing in Arthur himself that gets the job done. Like he's told Merlin, it's simply not a possible thing for anyone to do. Yet Arthur does pull free the sword -- but only because Merlin secretly uses his magic so that Arthur succeeds. That's a really interesting take on the situation, which to the best of my recollection I've never seen before in a telling of this story.

It does raise some questions, of course -- Is that Excalibur in the stone? And if so, how did it get there and what was Arthur using before? Also is that the dragon-forged sword that Merlin eventually uses to kill Morgana, or was that something else?

Speaking of Morgana and weaponry... Despite her gloating in the series finale that no ordinary blade can slay her, she seems pretty worried about all the swords in Camelot here, and even gets cut by one which seems to do some pain as she's fleeing the throne room. She's also much more adept at using a sword than I would have guessed, managing to outduel two of Arthur's knights just before that third one cuts her. Good for her!

One thing that confuses me, as always, is exactly who knows what about Emrys. Morgana, for example, tells Arthur in the throne room that not even Emrys can save him now... which doesn't seem to confuse the guy. So is he aware that there's a sorcerer named Emrys working for him behind the scenes? There's certainly no indication of that after this point. Agravaine, too, greets Merlin as Emrys once he reveals his magic powers to him. Is it just the case that everyone in Albion knows Emrys is a magic-user close to the king? I'm surprised Arthur stands for that.

And finally, the last big surprise for me in this episode was that Guinevere hasn't been queen for very long. She gets crowned at the end of this episode, so that means she's only really queen for season 5 (a good chunk of which she spends under Morgana's control). That was a surprise to me, and while I of course didn't follow the relationship drama going on between her and Arthur, it's interesting that she'll be just a serving girl for the rest of the time I watch this show. On a side note, it is incredibly amusing to hear someone say, "I know why you can't forgive me, but I never once stopped loving you," when you have no earthly idea what they're talking about.

Other Thoughts:

--Merlin's dragon addresses him as "young warlock." What's a warlock, in this series? Is it a magic-user? Is it a Druid? Will this sort of thing ever make sense to me?

--Arthur asks, "What happeneded to you, Morgana? I thought we were friends!" To which Morgana replies, "As did I." I'm assuming what happened is she got thrown in a pit, although I'm not quite sure why she's blaming Arthur for that. But I'm really excited to get to see these guys be friends at some point.

--Arthur also tells Morgana she can't blame him for his father's sins. I have no idea what this refers to, but I'm adding it to the Uther-is-a-dick pile.

--At least Uther's children are aware he's a dick, though. Morgana tells Arthur he's not as different from Uther as he'd like to think, and Arthur retorts that neither is she. Neither child seems happy at this comparison.

--Obviously there's a time jump between this episode and the next one of at least 6 weeks, the time Gwaine has been gone on patrol for. Probably longer, since he spends most of this episode in a dungeon and doesn't exactly seem fit to go off patroling anything. So what does Morgana do in that time, besides take up residence in her Fortress of Solitude and begin digging? I couldn't tell if that was supposed to be her dragon that flew overhead at the end of the episode, but if so, it looks remarkably different... Almost as if it hadn't yet been kept in a pit for two years. So wait, is Morgana's imprisonment all between seasons 4 and 5? That would be a shame, but I don't know how else to explain the discrepency of her dragon.

--If Morgana's time in the pit does entirely take place between "The Sword in the Stone" and "Arthur's Bane," what set her against her brother this time?

--Toward the end of this episode, but before Arthur proposes to Guinevere, Morgana tries to kill her with a sword. Guinevere asks, "What did I do to make you hate me so much?", to which Morgana replies, "It's not what you've done; it's what you're destined to do. I'm sorry, Gwen, but I cannot let that happen." So... Wait. What? What exactly is Guinevere destined to do, and why doesn't Morgana try to prevent that in season 5 (when she has her trapped in a tower and could easily kill her)?

Well, that was a bit of a letdown.

Not really this episode in particular, although that had some issues too. More just the answers that I finally got concerning the prophecies surrounding Arthur's death. This whole season, I've watched Merlin fret about those prophecies, and be suspicious of Mordred. Just last episode, I saw him learn that Arthur's Bane is Arthur himself. Now I finally get some context for both of those things, and I have to say, it's pretty underwhelming.

Let's start with Mordred. Merlin mistrusts him, right? He's convinced that he's going to bring about the death of Arthur? Here we finally see the source of that mistrust: the vision of an old man in a cave that Merlin had never seen or heard of before this episode. That's it?? That's all it takes to get him to thoroughly mistrust a knight who (after betraying Morgana at the end of AB, Part II) has been completely loyal to Arthur? Despite knowing that Morgana could probably have planted that as a false vision and even after the Diamair tells him that Mordred *isn't* Arthur's Bane? I just don't get you, Merlin.

I mean, obviously, yes, Mordred does end up stabbing King Arthur at Camlann. But it's ridiculous for Merlin to be so convinced of this on the evidence he's been given, unless there are other reasons to mistrust Mordred that I haven't seen yet.

Also, Arthur's Bane. I mentioned before that Morgana would probably have been upset to learn that it's Arthur himself, and I can definitely confirm that now. Her good friend Davos/Ruadan tells her at the beginning of this episode, "Arthur's Bane is real. Once it is known to us, his end is nigh... [The time we've spent searching for it] is but a moment compared to the eternity of knowledge the key will bring." But when the Diamair reveals his secret to Merlin next episode it is literally just that Arthur's Bane is Arthur himself. Hardly an eternity of knowledge, and certainly not something that is helpful to know in any way. I don't know where Ruadan gets his facts from, but he should probably ask for his money back.

He's not the only one confused on this issue, of course. The old man in the cave also tells Merlin, "The prophets speak of Arthur's Bane. You would do well to fear it, for it stalks him like a ghost in the night." But once again, Arthur's Bane is just plain old Arthur. Clearly this guy's information isn't so hot either, which supports my earlier position that Merlin is a fool for taking him at his word.

The episode itself was a little weird simply in that it was all so anticlimactic. Are all Merlin season-openers like this? I figured the last season would have ended on some kind of cliffhanger (like seasons often do), but this episode is pretty laidback as it starts. Some of Arthur's knights have been missing for six weeks, but since we see them get captured that's probably not something that happened last season. And since we see them alive, we're not really that worried about what's happening to them. Meanwhile, for a show about magic, the episode doesn't really give Merlin much of a chance to use it. It's almost three-quarters of the way into the episode before he uses his powers for something other than juggling, which makes the stakes never really seem all that high.

Also, magic can help you juggle. Good to know. You know what it apparently can't do? Cut you out of a net. Seriously... Merlin and Arthur are trapped in that thing from before the sun has set one day until after it's rise the next, including a period of time when Arthur was asleep. And even when he was awake, he probably couldn't really see Merlin well enough to notice his eyes flashing gold or see what his hands were doing. But in all that time, Merlin couldn't do anything to fray the rope and let them escape? Are rabbits like his Kryptonite or something?

All in all, this was not the best place for me to end the season on, and I'm kind of surprised that it's how the writers chose to start this final stretch of stories. If someone had chosen the start of this season as a time to jump into the show and see what it's all about, I don't know that I would blame them for putting it back down again.

Other thoughts:

--Sefa starts out this episode as Guinevere's servant, and appears to have something of a mutual crush going on with Merlin. I'm happy that that probably means I'll be seeing more of her and hopefully her father, but disappointed that her last moments on the show were away from Merlin. He never even got to confront her about being a traitor, which feels like a weird plotting decision after seeing their adorably awkward flirtations in this episode.

--Sefa does say to Merlin that she keeps getting him into trouble, so it will be interesting to see what that's all about.

--Morgana's idea of a good time: enslave a group of muscular men, take off their shirts, and then make them dig in a cave underneath your castle. But don't, under any circumstances, tell them what exactly they're  looking for. Or set a proper guard on them, for that matter. Basically Morgana is like the people who run Camp Green Lake in Holes.

--Speaking of holes, Morgana tells Ruadan that for two long years, she saw nothing but darkness, another reference to that time in the Sarrum's pit. Once more I wonder whether I'll get to see that time, and if perhaps maybe she's freshly escaped. That would explain why the first shot of her this episode is just before its opening credits as though it's some big reveal, and also why Arthur announces at the episode's start that Camelot has been enjoying "peace and prosperity for three long years." I guess the next three seasons I watch are gonna be kind of boring, then.

--Shoutout to Morgana, though, for actually getting something right: when Gwaine tells her to kill him, she replies, "I will. But first..." Twelve episodes later, guess who's getting bitten to death by Morgana's snakes? She takes her time, but she gets there in the end. I guess I have to give her credit for that.

--I'm still not sure when/whether we'll see Mordred again, but he tells Arthur, "You saved my life once, many years ago" -- which suggests it won't be a moment that's actually featured on the show. On the other hand, Merlin recognized him straight away, and his knowledge that Merlin is Emrys clearly predates this episode. So at some point, I assume I'll be seeing a meeting between the two Druids, if nothing else.

--Okay, so here's where Mordred becomes a knight. Got it. All of a sudden his backstory became even more mysterious, though. He starts this episode as part of a band of bad guys who have taken Merlin and Arthur prisoner and are taking them to Morgana. But when he gets to her snowy fortress, she's amazed to see him again and it looks like they've been apart for quite some time. I'm not really sure what to make of that, honestly.

--Mordred is explicitly identified as a magic-user and a Druid, though, and he already knows Merlin as Emrys. And of course, he's trusted enough by Morgana that he was able to get close enough to her to literally stab her in the back, but he believes in Arthur enough to make such a betrayal. Hopefully all of this will become clearer in time.

--Everyone is back to insisting that Arthur is nothing like his father, even though Guinevere comments that Uther is long dead (which fits with my conclusions from the last episode I watched). Morgana also hisses that he wasn't her father, but it seems pretty clear that she means that figuratively.

--Merlin can speak Dragon, but apparently Morgana's dragon can't speak Human.

--At the beginning of the episode, Morgana awakens from a dream of being trapped in a well with her dragon. I've seen her discuss this with Guinevere, of course, and I've seen the death of the Sarrum, the guy who trapped her there. It remains to be seen whether I'll actually see the event itself.

--Mordred is not Arthur's bane; Arthur himself is. What? I don't know what exactly that means, but it's probably for the best that Morgana didn't get to the Diamair to ask it, because I imagine hearing such of a cop-out of an answer wouldn't do much for her temper.

--Granted, apparently there is some prophecy about Arthur being killed by a Druid, but it doesn't sound like that's connected to the Diamair. I'm surprised, though, that Merlin never stops to wonder whether the Druid is him.

--The Diamair sure took a liking to Gawain, huh?

--Also Gawain and Percival and maybe some other knights are Morgana's slaves at the start of this episode, so presumably I'll get to see them get captured next. Maybe someone will also explain why slaves aren't allowed to wear shirts.

--Morgana's friend Ruadan appeared for the first time this episode, which meant that it was fairly unsurprising when he died before the end. I hope we'll get to see him again, though! More Davos Seaworth is always a good thing.

--In response to Ruadan's military prayer, Guinevere expresses her surprise that Druidism isn't always a peaceful religion. Does this mean less conflict with the Druids in the future?

--In the "Why is Uther such a dick?" category, apparently he was responsible for the Great Purge which killed a lot of Druids / magic-users. (Almost a whole season in and I'm still not sure of the distinction there.) Arthur thinks that slaughter was unconscionable, but many of his subjects think he's no better than his father.

So that's Uther, huh? I have to say, if that's what he was like while he was alive, I'm not really looking forward to the episodes before his death. On the bright side, though, there was some indication in this episode that that's a while before now. That is, Elyan tells Mordred that Arthur is always moody at the anniversary of his coronation, because it's also the anniversary of his father's death. That means Elyan must have seen Arthur on at least one anniversary before, which means Uther's death must have been at least two years before this point.

Speaking of Elyan: he was in this episode! And so was Mordred, talking to him! But for no more than a minute or so, and I really don't think I learned anything else about either of them. I had assumed when Elyan died that he must have been someone audiences cared about, but so far in his earlier episodes he hasn't really been given much to do. Also Mordred was dressed as a knight here, which makes me confused as to why he seemed to be just starting out a few episodes from now. On the other hand, he was the one asking Elyan about Arthur's mood, so that suggests he's been at Camelot for under a year.

Figuring things out like this is so much fun.

The other major revelation of this episode was that Guinevere was apparently a serving-girl before Arthur married her, and that Uther hugely disapproves of their marriage, which happened after his death. He also doesn't think Arthur should have made knights out of any commoners. Really, this episode introduced a lot of class issues that were really interesting yet don't seem to have ever been mentioned again after this point. I'm guessing they'll come back up once Uther is alive again, though.

Other thoughts:

--Uther does have a point when he says it would have been beneficial to the kingdom if Arthur had married politically, rather than for love. Nevertheless, it all seems to have worked out in the end. (That is, that doesn't appear to be one of the mistakes that leads to Arthur's downfall.) And hey, Gwen gets to rule the kingdom after Arthur's death! That's even cooler now that I know she was commonborn.

--Who else are the commoners, though? Merlin, obviously, and Elyan, since he's Guinevere's brother. Probably Mordred too, and I'm going to assume even Percival, since Uther threw an axe at him. Maybe Leon, since he was the one talking when Uther disrupted the council meeting... I guess the better question might be who ISN'T a commoner!

--Having now had a taste of Uther, I think I can agree with Merlin and whoever else has been saying that Arthur makes a better, fairer king.

--On their way to the standing stones, Arthur says to Merlin, "If you were given the chance to see your father again, wouldn't you do the same?" And Merlin agrees that he would. One problem I have with this is that when Merlin does see his ghost father again, he doesn't seem to have nearly the daddy issues that Arthur does. But more importantly, Merlin DOES have the chance here in this episode. He could blow the horn just as easily as Arthur could! So really this was just a piece of writing that wasn't too well-thought-out given the episode's plot.

--Arthur seems entirely too cavalier about using magic to commune with his father, given his attitude toward sorcery the rest of the time. And Uther never once denounces the magic that his son has used to speak with him, which seems even weirder. I also find it bizarre that, having resorted to magic here, Arthur doesn't change his opinions on it (or the relevant laws in Camelot) after the fact. He may be a better king than Uther, but he's still kind of a hypocrite.

I feel like this was a great episode, at least as far as pieces of the series story falling into place for me. How did Arthur's father die? He was killed by Odin, a man whose son Arthur had killed sometime before. (It wasn't specified in this episode, by I assume those events are related.) Why is Morgana -- despite still not officially being at war with Camelot -- attacking Arthur all the time? She seeks his throne, which she feels is rightfully hers. And since it sounded like Odin killing Arthur's father wasn't all that long ago, I'm guessing that Arthur only recently became king and that Morgana was expecting the crown to pass to her instead. Of course, these guesses may end up being totally wrong, but I think they make sense with what I've heard so far!

I also learned that Gaius can in fact use magic, so that explains how he's able to counsel Merlin on such matters all the time. But after using his eye-glowy powers to heal Merlin in this episode, Gaius tells his young padawan that it was very difficult and that he doesn't think his heart could take something like that again. So, that explains why I haven't seen any magic out of him in the episodes after this one. Hopefully there's more to come as I watch him get younger, though!

What I still don't get is why Gaius shrugs off Merlin's suspicions time after time, when he turns out to have been right time after time. I realize I'm watching this course of events backwards, so clearly Gaius isn't going to get any smarter here, but Merlin rightly suspected Mordred, he rightly suspected the brainwashed Guinevere, and he rightly suspected the under-duress Princess Mithian. Every time, he took his (justified!) concerns to Gaius, who insisted he was imagining things. I'd really like to see the missing scenes in this process where Gaius admits that he was wrong and that Merlin actually has a pretty good judgment about these things.

Arthur continually downplays Merlin's worries too, of course. But I get the sense that that's supposed to be part of his brash warrior's nature, plus the fact that Merlin can't openly tell him what's wrong. Gaius knows all about the magic stuff, so he understands the scope of what Merlin is actually worried about, but he still shuts him down over and over again, no matter how many times it turns out he was right. It's ridiculous.

This episode was also nice in that it showed Morgana butting heads with Merlin again without knowing that he's a magic-user. I'm getting more of a sense of why she would have tried to have him killed in the episode The Hollow Queen, and how that was entirely unrelated to her efforts to dispatch Emrys. (Although I still don't know how she knows about Emrys or why it's so important to her that he be put out of the way. But I guess that's coming.)

Other thoughts:

--No Mordred in this episode, which is a shame. Like I said before, I sense that the beginning of his time on the show is coming up soon for me. Given that, it would have been nice to see him in this episode... but I guess he couldn't accompany Arthur on the mission, since he's not yet a full knight!

--Then again, Merlin and Morgana-disguised-as-an-old-lady were allowed to come, so I really don't know what Mordred's excuse was.

--Morgana has the power to become temporarily super-old, just like Merlin. It's apparently quite exhausting for both of them. On the other hand, no one recognizes their old forms, even one another.

--When Morgana sheds her disguise, she says to King Arthur, "Appearances can be deceiving, dear brother." Arthur then waits about five seconds before responding, "...Morgana." Does he have other siblings I don't know about? Brothers and sisters that he had to stop and consider before coming to the conclusion that Morgana was the one who just led him into a death trap?

--Guinevere's brother Elyan was around again, but was still given very little to do. He was the first one of the captured knights to recover and go on the offensive when Gawain killed his guards, though, so I guess that counts for something.

Today I learned that Mordred is only a recent recruit to Arthur's knights of the Round Table. This was surprising for someone watching the show backwards, because it has literally never been mentioned after this point. In none of the episodes I've seen before this one has there been any discussion that Mordred is a newcomer to Arthur's court. I'm rather put out by this discovery not because I think that's bad storytelling -- all such conventions are sort of out the window at this point, since I'm not really encountering the story in its intended manner -- but simply because I like the Druid boy. This episode made it seem like he won't be with us for much longer, and that's just a shame.

At the very least, I've now seen Mordred first mission as one of Arthur's knights, including some hazing from his peers. If he's around on the show for much longer, it won't be as a knight -- an idea which does have some potential, I'll admit. But I'm guessing he'll soon be exiting the story for me. Arthur asks Merlin at the beginning of this episode what he thinks of "young Mordred," which suggests that he's only been present in their lives for a very short period of time. Alas!

Still, I haven't seen him get introduced, so that's at least one episode more for the guy. And in this episode Merlin uttered the mysterious line, "I can't ignore what I saw," while discussing Mordred with Gaius, which suggests there's some sort of Mordred-centric shenanigans to come. (Also the dragon, whose existence/purpose/relevance I still don't understand, told Merlin he had the chance to kill the Druid boy once before.) I can't wait!

Other thoughts:

--Elyan was in this episode, but he didn't really do much. I guess I have to wait longer to actually get to know him as a character. So far, his death last episode still doesn't mean much to me.

--Arthur says something like while he's been king, the only magic he's encountered has been Morgana using it for evil. Does this mean I won't ever get to see a happy, good Morgana? Sadness!

--Speaking of magic, Arthur says that his father is the one who banned it... but then somewhere else in the episode he rather angrily declared, "I am not my father!" in the context of the fairness he's brought to Camelot. So Arthur's dad set the no-magic precedent, but was otherwise kind of a dick -- at least, that's what I'm getting from all of this.

--Merlin has some line in the woods with Arthur about there being a difference between fate and destiny. But he doesn't really go any further along those lines, and I'm frankly stumped by what he meant by it.

--Gaius talked a nice game in this episode about tolerance for other people's beliefs, and that got me to thinking more about magic and "the old religion." I know those two things go hand-in-hand, but Arthur's policy seems very clearly only against the former and not the latter. Is there some reason people can't practice the old religion without using magic? Or at least without, like, knocking swords out of people's hands and throwing them into trees? I feel like Arthur would actually support such a policy.

--The Disir see Merlin do magic at them, even if they don't recognize him as Emrys. Still, why wouldn't they pass along what they learned to Morgana? She is their high priestess, isn't she?

--The moment when Merlin tells Arthur that magic has no place in Camelot, thinking that will ensure Mordred's death and Arthur's survival, was very well done. The King Arthur story is of course a tragedy at its heart, but this part was probably the best I've seen this show tell that kind of story.

And so, Childe Arthur to the Dark Tower came.

All in all, this was a strange episode. Morgana kidnaps Guinevere, imprisons her in the tower, and subjects her to some sort of magical Stockholm Syndrome conditioning while Merlin and Arthur's knights try to get through the mystical briar patch that surrounds the place. The last scene with Guinevere in the room with all the horrors suggests that she's still resisting Morgana, but of course, by the end of the episode the audience knows what I do: like so many abductees out there, the queen came back changed.

Morgana's greater purpose remains fairly inscrutable here, although perhaps less so than usual. Assuming that she does have a single end-goal to which she's working, it seems as though that goal is the one she accomplishes by the end of the episode: the turning of Queen Guinevere into her secret agent within Arthur's inner circle, there to either spy on or assassinate him. (Apparently the latter, given the episodes I've seen that take place after this point.) With Arthur's death as the main goal, the tower's interior defenses make sense too -- if the booby traps succeed in killing Arthur as he attempts to rescue his queen, Morgana has won because the king is dead. And if the traps fail, then Arthur will have no suspicions at all about the queen he brings back  to within the walls of Camelot.

Of course, this still doesn't explain why the brainwashing is so effective (besides magic), or why the brainwashed Guinevere doesn't slide a dagger between his ribs while Arthur sleeps. (I mean, he's obviously a sound sleeper, given how often the queen is able to sneak away at night.) It also doesn't explain why any of this is necessary, since Morgana is apparently able to visit the woods just outside Arthur's castle anytime she wants. Why bother kidnapping his queen, if you can just hide behind a tree and wait to magically snap his neck as he rides past?

The business with the magical briar patch outside the tower seems pretty unnecessary, too. I get that as part of the tower's natural defenses, that wasn't exactly Morgana's doing. But still -- she was able to get through the brambles on a horse and dragging a prisoner behind her, so why not leave the way open for Arthur and his knights? They would have been unable to get through to the tower at all were it not for the fact that a fairy randomly took a liking to Emrys and showed him the way. That seems like a pretty big gamble on Morgana's part, if her goal really is to get Arthur to come to the tower.

This episode was also notable for the death of Guinevere's brother Elyan, a character I only learned the existence of one episode ago. (Bewitched or not, Guinevere seems to have gotten over his death rather quickly.) Like the xkcd comic says, final goodbyes don't really mean much to someone experiencing events in the reverse, and this is the first clear example of that I've had since the very first episode I watched. And it's true, as I simply didn't know Elyan enough to mourn him when he died. That being said, I really like the idea of Queen Guinevere having a close relative with her at Camelot, which is a striking departure from the way her story usually goes. I hope, given that Elyan is a knight, that I'll be seeing a lot more of him. Lord knows it would be nice for Guinevere to have a confidante besides her husband at court, since my hopes for a friendship between her and Merlin seem to have been dashed.

  Random observations:

--Once again, Morgana's idea of the easiest way to kill King Arthur: have magic snakes poison two of his knights so that they will have nightmares about the place you've hidden his queen so that he will come after her through the impassible fairy briar patch so that he can rescue her so that he bring her back to the castle so that she can be ideally placed to sabotage his saddle so that the next time he goes riding his horse will throw him.

--One really has to wonder what Morgana would have done if the contingent of knights Arthur took with him didn't include the two who were poisoned with visions of the Dark Tower.

--Or if Emrys hadn't been there to get him through the brambles.

--Since I haven't seen Merlin acquire another sword, I have to assume the one he's using here is the same one he has in the series finale -- forged in the fires of a dragon's breath or something -- that proves to be the only way of killing Morgana. If so, he's awfully cavalier with that chance, loaning out his sword willy-nilly to Arthur's knights whenever they break their own.

--This episode makes another reference to Morgana's imprisonment in a dark pit, although the Sarrum isn't mentioned by name. Guinevere is surprised to learn of the incident, which raises the question of whether Arthur is likewise ignorant at this point. Once more I have to wonder if we'll see this imprisonment during the course of the show, and whether Morgana was perhaps a little less evil before it.

The mystery titles are back! By which I mean, I really don't understand what this one is referring to at all. Somebody is getting back at somebody, I take it? I guess that would either have to be Guinevere and/or Morganna getting back at Arthur and/or Merlin, but it really isn't clear to me at all.

What is clear is that this episode killed off Samwell Tarly from Game of Thrones, and that's just sad.

So Guinevere is still evil, but Merlin and Gaius haven't quite figured it out yet -- although Merlin has his suspicions, which seem to be confirmed by the episode's end. I still haven't seen the queen actually fall under Morgana's spell, but Merlin indicates that she's been acting strangely ever since getting back from the Dark Tower (whatever that is), where Morgana may have done something to her. This is all very mysterious to me, but it seems to have happened in the not-too-distant past. Which makes sense, as the episode just before this one is apparently titled The Dark Tower.

If I heard correctly in this episode, Guinevere also had a brother who died there at the tower. I'm looking forward to meeting him! If he's a regular, it'll be interesting to see how he fits into the dynamic of the core cast of characters.

Once again in this episode, Morgana and Guinevere are unbelievably incompetent. Oh sure, Guinevere is able to stab Tyr Seward to death in his jail cell, but she can't do the same to Arthur. Instead she gets him alone, drugs his wine, and then pours poison in his ear once he passes out. This is certainly a much better plan than getting him alone, drugging his wine, and then stabbing him to death. It's really a wonder that it doesn't work out for her. Meanwhile Morgana can't even brew her own poison, but has to buy it from a guy who rats her out to the king. Boy, I tell you, she just has the worst luck. She also tries at the very beginning of this episode to kill Arthur with an armed bandit attack, which is beaten only through the use of Merlin's magics. I would count this as closer to a success for Morgana were it not for the fact that she knows a powerful Druid is helping the king -- so there's really no excuse for not factoring that into her various plans.

Merlin's aid in that incident is unrelated to his incarceration this episode, though. As far as I can tell, Guinevere puts the blame onto him for the poisoning for no reason other than that he was a convenient fallguy. Which is a pleasant change from Morgana's repeated attempts to kill Merlin and/or Emrys, but it still doesn't speak much to the competence of these villains.

That being said, Morgana is again matched fairly evenly by Arthur's knights, who simply accept that the stranger forcing his way out of the dungeons is in fact a visitor they've forgotten about. They don't even bother to check the cells before letting him go, or again throughout the night while they're chasing a mysterious intruder around the castle grounds. And while Merlin isn't shown returning to his cell, it's pretty easy to imagine at this point that he simply put back on his aging spell and pushed his way past the guards. They were fine with not knowing where the old man came from in the first place, so presumably they won't mind not knowing where he goes again.

Random Observations:

--Merlin apparently has an ongoing grudge (never shown again after this point) with one of the cooks in Arthur's kitchens.

--Sir Leon, at least, wants Guinevere to rule in Camelot after Arthur is dead. This sounds like it's the first anyone's talked about the order of succession, but I guess Leon spends the episodes between now and Arthur's death convincing everybody it's a good plan.

--Mordred is in this episode, but doesn't interact directly with Merlin. In other words, he's known about Merlin's magic for quite some time before he goes over to Morgana's side.

Bond villain Morgana strikes again! In this episode, having lured Merlin out into the middle of the woods and knocked him out, she proceeds to feed him some poison and roll him into a ditch. Not, you know, stab him. Or magically break his neck, like I've seen her do to Alator. No, she adopts the age-old bad guy strategy of just assuming that the hero will die without any personal oversight.

She also uses the bewitched Queen Guinevere to arrange Arthur's death. This is actually a good plan! Obviously Morgana wouldn't be allowed close access to the king herself, but Guinevere can easily get Arthur alone and stab or poison him. Or, as Morgana elects to have her do, she can contract the Sarrum to subcontract his personal assassin to shoot a crossbow at Arthur from a balcony. Morgana, seriously: this is pretty much the worst plan ever. Merlin and Daegal get back from the woods just in time to stop it, but I feel like it was such an intricate plot that it's a miracle it came as close as it did to actually working out.

Interestingly, Morgana was actually trying to kill Merlin in this episode, rather than Emrys. Something about him getting in her way and knowing too much, which presumably refers to Guinevere's ensorcellment... except it sort of seemed like Gaius and Merlin were just figuring out the truth at the very end of the episode, so maybe not. Either way, it's pretty hilarious that Morgana is trying (ineffectually) to kill both Merlin and Emrys, without realizing that they're one and the same.

Random observations:

--Daegal says his mother (whom Arthur's father Uther had put to death) was a magic-user, but not a Druid. Which finally confirms for me that those two qualities are separate. It remains to be established whether all Druids are magic-users, though.

--Apparently all Druids share telepathic powers, of the sort I've seen Mordred and Kara use before. Non-Druids like Daegal can't pick up this frequency, however.

--Speaking of Mordred, I definitely missed him this episode. Come back, Druid boy! Come back!

--I really don't understand the terms of the spell that Guinevere's under. Her true love for Arthur is strong enough that she can break Morgana's control to follow him into the lake next episode, but she has no problem whatsoever helping to arrange his assassination here. I just don't get it.

--Since this episode didn't feature the queen actually falling under the spell, I imagine that's yet to come. It will be interesting if we get episodes where she's bewitched and Merlin doesn't yet know about it.

--I'm still not sure what exactly Albion refers to, but there was some mention in this episode of the five kingdoms, of which two are Camelot and Amata, where the Sarrum rules. I imagine that a third is where Morgana lives, but that still leaves two as a mystery to me. I hope one of them is the realm of King Mark, who was always my favorite Arthurian villain.

--Morgana's dragon is weak because the Sarrum kept it in a small pit with her. I think this lowers the chances I'll get to see a dragon-on-dragon fight, unfortunately.

--I can't tell whether the Sarrum was supposed to be a returning character or not, but I imagine that his imprisonment of Morgana was sometime after the happy fun times that Mordred remembers.

And true love prevails! Which I guess means that the Merlin/Guinevere vibe I was picking up (plus the fact that canonically, Guinevere is usually not the most faithful of queens) was all in my head. But that aside, this was a cute episode. I guess next I get to see the queen fall under Morgana's spell, which hopefully won't be too much of a downer.

I think the most interesting part of this whole watching-Merlin-backwards experiment is the character of Mordred. It's clear by now that Merlin distrusts him -- has distrusted him for some time now -- and maybe audience members watching this show in its proper order would share that mistrust. But from this perspective, it's very clear that Mordred was just a good kid who got into an impossible situation at the very end of the show. So it's fun to root for him in episodes like this one, when he does so much to ensure the success of Merlin's current mission, for so little thanks. A bromance between these two undercover magic-users would be nice -- I get the feeling Mordred thinks so too -- but this current dynamic works really well too. Merlin is incredibly suspicious of the good-natured Mordred, who cheerfully shrugs his shoulders and proceeds to save the day. It's great.

This episode offered no new insights into Morgana's character, other than to note that, yes, she's still pretty evil and murderous even when she's not technically at war. And now I've seen her penultimate meeting with Mordred, and learned that they have some sort of similar background. And, according to him, she actually used to be full of love herself! How interesting. I wonder what happened there to sour her.

Random observations:

--So Morgana and Merlin each just have their own dragon, huh? I wonder if we'll ever get to see them fight. Does every magic-user get a dragon, or is Mordred left out of their little club?

--Speaking of dragons, what exactly is the deal with dragon-fire blades? Merlin uses one to kill Morgana in the finale, which seems to surprise her, and here again he surprises/threatens to kill the Dochraid with it. Given how close those two sorceresses seem to be, it's a little surprising that the Dochraid didn't give Morgana a heads-up about that.

--The mystery of Merlin's old-man self revealed: it's an aging spell that takes a lot out of him. He casts it when he wants to be disguised. But that's not what he's done in the very last scene of the show, right? There he's just supposed to be old?

--Arthur offered "the Dolma" any reward that she could name. I feel like Merlin should really have just flat-out requested a lift on the magic ban, rather than merely Arthur's promise that he would remember magic helped him this one time.

--And hey, speaking of magic -- am I imagining the gun control parallels here? It seems like a lot of the rhetoric (on both sides of the issue) has been echoed in this show, with magic substituted for guns. Arthur wants to flat-out ban the stuff due to the damage it can cause, while Merlin and other characters caution him that only magic can effectively fight the magic of evil-doers. Just like in the gun control debates, though, it really doesn't seem like either side is listening to the other or willing to reconsider their position. Arthur goes to his death never really accepting magic or trusting it, and Merlin never seems to question his conviction that it's the appropriate tool with which to resist Morgana.

--Gaius remains an infinite source of wisdom.

--King Arthur's knights, save Mordred, remain pillars of incompetence.

I'm almost ready to give up trying to understand the episode titles on this show. I guess this one got its name because Merlin had not previously met Finna or most of the other Catha, but it still seems like a really weird choice to me.

Other things that seem weird: prophecies! Man, this show is just rolling in them, huh? Today we had Alator tell Morganna that Emrys will be her destiny and her doom, or something along those lines. In this context, it wasn't really clear if he was telling her something for the first time or not, but I'm going to imagine not, based on how furiously she was hunting for Emrys even before hearing it. This puts Morganna's motivations in an interesting new light for me. Maybe she doesn't have a grudge against Arthur at all; maybe she's just trying to hunt down the person prophesied to be her doom. Greek mythology and/or the Terminator franchise should really have warned her about that.

There's also a prophecy that Finna alludes to, about Arthur ushering in a new age of civilization or something. But having seen all the episodes after this point, I really feel like I'm missing something here. Obviously prophecies can be wrong, but in fantasy they usually aren't. (Misinterpreted, yes. But flat-out wrong? Not so much.) But I really don't see how the end of this series lives up to this particular prophecy, unless we're supposed to assume that Arthur will get around to that when the Once King finally becomes Future. Either that, or Guinevere's reign is supposed to be that prophesied golden age -- but so far, I haven't seen much indication that that's what viewers are supposed to assume.

Or maybe the prophecy just refers to Arthur's defeat of Morganna, who is clearly pretty freaking evil. Maybe the light of civilization -- leading eventually to our present-day lives, as shown in the final shot of the series -- is preserved just by Arthur helping to break Morganna's hold upon the land. I guess that makes some sense, although it doesn't really fit with my earlier assumption that she's just trying to kill John Connor/Emrys.

Speaking of Morganna, what's up with her declaring war at the end of this episode? Does this really mean that all her earlier murders were when she was at peace with Arthur? Okay, Alator is technically the only one of her pre-war murders that I've seen so far, but she kinda gives the impression that she's been at this for a while.

Mordred continues to confuse me with how much he knows and what his motives are. So at this point he knows that Merlin is Emrys (even though that never overtly came up in this particular episode). And, perhaps because of that, he agrees to let Merlin go off into the woods without needing to know where he's going. That's either friendship, a belief in Emrys, or the sheer incompetence I'm coming to expect from Arthur's knights. Could go either way, really. Mordred was also interesting this episode because Finna warned Merlin not to trust him. Is that the first time someone's told him that? Are Merlin and Mordred gonna be bffls before this point? Man, I hope so.

Lingering questions:

--Is Alator gonna show up again? It certainly seemed like he was supposed to be a returning character.

--If/when he does show up, is he supposed to be a good guy? Because clearly our sympathies were supposed to be with him in this episode, but Morganna said a lot of stuff about his talents as a torturer that make me think he's not really who we should be rooting for.

--What's with the snake thing that Morganna used on Alator? I didn't think much when she used it on Gawain, but now here it is again. Am I going to see it one more time, when she can give it more of an explanation than that it hurts people's souls? Because really, what the heck is that even supposed to mean?

--As ever, what does Morganna want?

--Ditto for Mordred.

--How come Gaius knows so much? (Specifically with regards to this episode, how come he knew how to read whatever language that was? But more generally, why does he seem to know everything that Merlin needs to hear?)

--How does Merlin heal from a wound like that? I assume it was magic, either his own or the dragon's. But I'm still not really clear on how the whole dragon thing works, so...

--Oh hey, how does the whole dragon thing work?

The biggest mystery to me about this show so far was Mordred's motivation, so it was great to get an episode almost entirely devoted to answering that question. I now know that he's a Druid (which may or may not be the same thing as a magic-user), and that it was Arthur's refusal to pardon his Druid friend Cara that drove Mordred to Morganna's side. I thought this part was plotted very well, by the way -- Morganna still strikes me as a largely generic villain, but I think the writer(s) did a great job of showing Mordred's path in this episode, while also justifying all of Arthur's actions too. I thought they were both being sensible and loyal, and I wanted (impossibly) for them both to end up happy. I felt as torn as Merlin seemed to, and I've only been watching this show for a few episodes. Good job, show!

  So... Mordred can use magic, for sure. And Cara can at least make her voice be heard in other people's heads, which seems pretty magical too. And Mordred knows that Merlin is Emrys, which I think entails that he knows Merlin can use magic. Mordred used to be friends with Morganna, but last/next time he saw her, he tried to kill her. She knows Emrys is stopping her from killing Arthur, but didn't know until the end of this episode that Emrys was Merlin. Phew!

  I have to say, it's a shame Mordred didn't get much screen time in the first two episodes I watched. He's mostly just standing awkwardly next to Morganna or killing/getting killed by Arthur, which means his character arc basically ended with this episode I just watched. I hope, as I go backward through this series, that he stays interesting like he was here! It'll be interesting to see that encounter with Morganna she mentioned, and what came before it for the two of them. Merlin's constant distrust is apparently going to be a thing, however, and I can see how that might get old.

  This episode also cleared up some other plot issues for me, in that I learned the Saxons view Arthur's kingdom as an occupying enemy force that they need to throw out of their homeland. And that his father was apparently a big jerk, and they assume Arthur will be no better. Which clears up everything except why they're completely okay taking orders from his sister Morganna, who is still a Pendragon. Come on, Saxons. What are you thinking?

  The trial in this episode seemed to suggest that doing magic is against the law under King Arthur, to ensure that nobody misuses magic... But maybe that it's okay to be able to use magic, so long as you refrain from doing so? I had been assuming that the Camelot policy was simply to put  all magic-users to death, and that that's why Merlin kept his powers a secret. Now it sounds more like he just keeps his magic a secret so that he can go on using it to save Arthur's life and cheat against him at dice. But I still don't really understand why magic is such a big deal that Arthur would feel so betrayed to find out about it.

  Finally: maybe this will make more sense once I get more of the backstory, but right now it seems really weird that the Saxon forces are totally defeated and Guinevere reigns securely in Camelot after Arthur's death. The King Arthur story is almost always a tragedy, about how this bastion of civilization existed "for one brief shining moment" but then failed. Prophecies about Arthur's return make the ending more hopeful, but it's still usually a story about the impossibility of idealism: Arthur builds Camelot, and it falls with him. Changing that dynamic is a really interesting thematic choice, and I'm curious to see whether it resonates with the earlier part of the series.

  On the other hand, in this episode it seemed like the show was really trying to emphasize that the Saxons might be somewhat justified in resisting Arthur -- which is also a neat direction to take the story, but it makes it weirder that they're defeated so thoroughly two episodes later. I'm still turning all this over in my head, but right now, it doesn't seem particularly coherent.

  Lingering questions:

--Do we get to see Cara again, or was that aspect of Mordred's backstory just sort of dropped on him this episode?

 --Mordred asks Merlin if he would disobey Arthur to save the woman that he loved. Was that just generically speaking, or is there a lady friend in Merlin's life?

 --Why doesn't Merlin trust Mordred before this incident? There was a prophecy or something, is that right?

 --Is Gaius ever helpful?

 --Is Morganna ever even the slightest bit successful in her plots?

 --What's Morganna's motivation for all this?

 --What's the exact nature of Morganna and Mordred's relationship?

Well, I still don't know what this episode title means, although there was a scene that took place in the Crystal Cave, and crystals are sort of like diamonds. That scene also showed me my first glimpse of Merlin's dad. I gather that he's dead, and I imagine that I'll probably see him later on in a non-dead form. Looking forward to it! I also have concluded that this is not one of the versions of the King Arthur story where Merlin's father is Satan. (Or else there was some subtext there that I was *really* not picking up on.)

Dead Dad told Merlin/Emrys to go into the cave to find his true destiny, or something like that. He came out looking old, but that was after getting his magic back, so I'm still pretty confused about how looking old relates to the sorcery. Does it make his magic more powerful, or just help disguise him?

I'm still pretty clueless about magic in this show. At the beginning of this episode, Merlin uses his powers to cheat at dice against Arthur. (That makes his eyes glow, but somehow Arthur, standing right across the table, doesn't notice anything amiss.) Among other things, that scene left me wondering if Merlin can magic just about anything, and if he ever needs to conserve and recharge his mana. 

Merlin's magic is back to being a secret to everyone except Gaius, Morgana, and Mordred, although it sounds like Mordred only recently found out about it and told Morganna. (I'm still not clear on what their relationship is, or what either of them are hoping to get out of this war except Arthur's defeat.) Merlin straight-up refuses to tell Gawain what he's really doing at the Crystal Cave, and Gaius tells Guinevere something like, "I wish that I could tell you the truth but I can't, for reasons that affect us all." So... there are reasons behind the secret, at least. And they affect us all. But I guess they've stopped affecting us all by the next episode, when Arthur and Guinevere both get to find out about it.

Merlin and Arthur had more of a camaraderie in this episode, which I understand is one of the things this show is particularly known for. But Gaius and Guinevere have had scenes together in both these episodes too, and I like their dynamic... even though I don't really know anything about the guy. He's some sort of physician, and maaaaybe he has magic too. I didn't think so in the last episode I watched, but he said something in this one about restoring Merlin being beyond his power, which suggests he has some kind of power, I would think. Who knows?

I liked seeing the Round Table, even though I'm really confused about why Merlin gets to stand awkwardly in the background at those meetings. What exactly is his role in Camelot? Gaius's assistant healer and Arthur's... manservant? Or something? I'm sure these matters will be cleared up in time, but it was super weird to have him just lurking behind Arthur's knights. I know he's the title character, but does he actually have a reason to be there?

Lingering questions:

-- Why does Merlin have two names?

-- What's the difference between Camelot and Albion?

-- Where has Merlin heard about Camelan before?

-- I notice that Queen Guinevere is still highly thought of by her king and his people right up until Arthur's death. So is there no Lancelot in this version, or just no hanky-pank between them?

-- Why does Morganna have her own dragon? And where was Merlin's dragon this time around?

-- How come Mordred was able to help her cast that spell? Does he have magic too?

-- Arthur mentions the values that Camelot was built on. Did he build it, or did somebody else?

-- Again, what is up with Morganna and Mordred? Arthur describes the conflict as a war as old as the land itself; is that hyperbole or an actual description? I get that they don't like King Arthur or Merlin, and she at least seems generally evil in her methods, but some clear motivation would be nice.

-- Is Morganna always this incompetent? She had Merlin alone in a cave without any magic, and she made one of the walls collapse instead of just killing him off directly. Did she really think that would do the trick?