And if ye leave off now this wicked day of destiny is past...
by someone at arthurian_icons
First order of business, Queen Mab came out of the shop the very day she went in, better than ever. Although now she may be leaking oil again. We'll see. I'm not as freaked out about it anymore, now that that is behind me.
Now, I have many things of a wizarding nature to post about-- Half-Blood Prince and two episodes of Merlin. Let's get on with it, shall we?
First, my much-belated two cents on Half Blood Prince. I thought the movie was really good, mostly based on the strength of the various performances. Among the kids I was particularly impressed with, of course, Harry’s Happy Felix Felicis Fun Time, Draco’s Totally Manly Sobbing Over Cabinetry, and Luna in general. It took me a while to get used to Luna’s complete not-of-this-world-ness in OTP, but this time she grounded it just a little more and I was immediately like, “Okay, perfect.”
But this movie more than any of the others so far, at least as my memory serves me, was made by the performances of the adult actors. Crazy Helena Bonham Carter continues to be crazy and awesome. I loved the scene of her trashing Hogwarts because, while superfluous, you could so see that Bellatrix had been dying to do that for years. I think my favorite in this movie was Jim Broadbent as Slughorn; he was perfect. Alan Rickman and Michael Gambon were excellent. I know it’s been said many times elsewhere, but it bears saying again that Michael Gambon finally played Dumbledore this time. Not Groovy New Shouty Dumbledore. Book Dumbledore. (And maybe a little bit of Gandalf.) The final tower scene between them and Draco was pretty much perfect. And afterward, when Dame Maggie Smith led them all in dispelling the Dark Mark with light, all I could think was, “Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars.”
Now, last week’s Merlin episode, “The Gates of Avalon.” I watched this episode with Bethany. Hi, Bethany!
I was kind of captivated by the opening images of this episode-Arthur drowning in the very dirty water while the sidh looked down at him. It kind of reminded me of a Waterhouse-esque painting, for some reason. A very dirty one.
The sidh were pretty cool, although you would think people might wonder why they were so unnaturally attached to their big sticks. The girl, whose name I forget now, had a nice character angle in her fear of mortality. And then they blew up into many, many pixels and I laughed and laughed at the BBC special effects. Bonus: I now know how to pronounce sidh.
This episode was notable for its courtly hoyay, manifesting itself in Merlin’s sudden, intense desire to be Arthur’s new BFF. (I have a feeling that if they had MTV in Camelot-and they might, who knows, you couldn’t call anything anachronistic in this world-that would be a show on it. Arthur Pendragon’s My New BFF.)
But most of all this episode was about Morgana and how she is awesome. I really like how her nightmares have been kind of a background element throughout the series and now we are finally seeing what they are and why they torment her so much. Morgana is a seeress. She has been since she was little, but she doesn’t know, because everyone is afraid to admit it, including Morgana herself, because Uther is a lameface who ruins everything. Including, apparently, his ward. Because from this episode it is easy to see that his foolhardy actions will have Consequences, at the very least in the form of one Morgan le Fay. Morgana is forming ideas of her own about magic, and as she does so Uther is alienating her more and more. Even though Morgana in this episode is partially like a child screaming while no one listens to her-especially given that she ends the episode thinking that her vision was wrong, and that maybe her ideas about being Different were all nonsense-it is beginning to be very easy to see how exactly she is going to become so powerful and intimidating later. I see in Morgana now the first stirrings of the Morgan le Fay who listens to no one, who takes action, who can try to kill Arthur forty bajillion times and still get him to forgive her every time. I can see this Morgan le Fay being cold and terrifying even in her very vulnerability. I like it.
Finally, this episode also introduced Avalon into the series, and I’m curious about what we learn about Avalon from this episode. How does Arthur get there eventually? I mean, it makes sense that he does exit the world that way into Once And Future Kingship, because it is a gateway to immortality. But… Arthur is not a sidh. Nor is Morgana, actually, who is supposed to be the one who takes him there. I almost wonder if Morgana is going to use Arthur as her sacrifice to get into Avalon and gain her own immortality, in which case: whoa. But given this show’s universe, that doesn’t seem very likely. Maybe Merlin will finagle something, somehow. Or maybe Morgana gets involved in some kind of loophole magic. So many questions and possibilities, this show raises! Say what you like about what it does differently from the stock legend, it at least keeps us guessing. Which brings me to…
This week’s episode, “The Beginning of the End.”
HOLY FUCKING SHIT! You may have gathered by now that my favorite things this show does have to do with The Foreshadowing, and that may be why this is my FAVORITE EPISODE SO FAR.
It probably would have been even more awesome if I hadn’t known that the little boy was Mordred (due to seeing him iconned on the internets) beforehand. But knowing, I was able to appreciate the significance of how they used him better. How the three most powerful sorcerers in Camelot were all huddled together in Morgana’s room, a great image. There was a moment when someone-either Merlin or Morgana, probably the latter-said, “Please don’t turn your back on him,” and knowing who he was I was able to think, Oh, if only people didn’t. Maybe that would have made a difference. Although given how this episode panned out, probably not.
And there is the first meeting of Arthur and Mordred-Morgana turns around with this boy wrapped in her arms, and says, “He’s just a child,” and that’s the first time Arthur sees his murderer. He barely glances at him. I wondered if the whole hunt for Mordred with the purpose of killing this innocent little boy, and especially Arthur doing it under some coercion but not really enough to make him justified, was this show’s version of the massacre of the children born on May Day. It’s the same sort of purposeless slaughter, with Mordred as the target, and it certainly sets Arthur up as the guilty party, even if only for going along with it. Especially in Mordred’s eyes. Except that then, in a twist of irony, Arthur saves Mordred’s life. And I could have been imagining it, but I thought I saw a little, “Oh shit, how am I going to go through with this now?” in Mordred after that.
I freaked out a little when Mordred started calling Merlin “Emrys.” Okay, a lot. There was squeeing. And also maybe some exclaiming, “LISTEN TO THE DRAGON, MERLIN!” Merlin’s reaction to Mordred was interesting. Of course he’s been spending the whole series looking for someone who is Like Him, and in the end he couldn’t resist that pull, even for Arthur, especially when Mordred telepathed him the very words. And in light of this, the Dragon’s words to Merlin are especially sort of chilling: “You and he could not be more different.” …Because you’re younger than you’re supposed to be and he’s older than he’s supposed to be? But in all seriousness, he’s saying this about a supposedly “innocent” little boy. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Mordred to see how, exactly, he is “different.”
I like the way that we’re seeing Merlin, at least for now, struggling against destiny rather than following it blindly. In this episode he took the sort of Anakin Skywalker-esque path of, “I WILL FIND A WAY TO MAKE IT NOT BE SO.”
The other character we see attach to Mordred with the desperate hope that he is Like Me is Morgana. I loved, loved, loved the weird, intense bond the two of them formed, the two “bad guys” of the legend. And Mordred’s telepathic contact with her may be the first manifestation of her power she can’t explain away. The theme of Morgana’s awesomeness and vulnerability was continued into this episode. She really, desperately, needs someone like herself to tell her that she is not fundamentally wrong somehow. She’s becoming increasingly isolated in her own home, and I have to wonder how all of the people who know what she is and keep it from her, and STUPID UTHER don’t realize that all they’re doing is driving her further away. Down a dark path. She’s going to start lashing out more and more, and that started with this episode.
What started out as not really love, but a sort of dutiful caring, a sense of obligation and gratitude toward Uther, is starting to turn towards bitter hatred. I mean, he’s always been an asshole, but damn, the way he practically throttled her and told her the only reason he was keeping her alive was because of her father and that free pass stops here and he didn’t believe she wasn’t involved in the springing of Mordred… Whoa. Granted, she did trick him pretty blatantly, and it was a phenomenal thing to see, for she is a wily witch-and that’s just your first taste of Morgan le Fay, Uther, I’m sure there is more to come. It was at about this point that I came to realize that Uther was Dark Gaius. Gaius protects Merlin no matter what, especially because of his magic, and even though it started out as a favor to his mother, it’s more than that now. Uther is… the opposite of that.
As things stand, the only people in all of Camelot that Morgana can feel really close to are Gwen and Merlin. Yeah, there’s Gaius, but he’s treating her kind of like a dangerous child. Arthur is frustrating, as brother-boyfriends tend to be. But Gwen is always there and always loyal, and so, Morgana is beginning to discover, is Merlin. Because, although she’s not entirely aware of it, he is Like Her. I think she realized that she and Merlin made a good team in this episode, and they’re for some reason working toward similar ends-her interests are his and vice versa-and he’s so good-hearted, and I want them to get it on. Perhaps, yea verily, nigh unto the break of dawn. On a related note, how much would I have loved Arthur to find Merlin hiding in Morgana’s chamber? Lots.
I had thought that I would be bothered by the fact that Mordred is already like eight years old and not, as far as we know, related to any of the characters thus far introduced. It could be that I had some time to get used to the idea, or it could be because of the way the story played out, but I am not so much bothered as intrigued. And I’ve come up with another theory, along the same lines as my “Guenevere the Saracen Princess” theory. I call it “Druid Boy FROM THE FUTURE.”
Now, I know that the case probably is that Mordred is being raised by the druids to kill Uther’s heir so that the druids can regain their power in the kingdom, and that he’s been assigned to this task from his childhood, etc. But. I still maintain: if you have a TV show, and you have the opportunity to use the Incest Bastard plotline, why wouldn’t you?
And then there was the fact that Morgana was so strongly bonded to Mordred. It could be because he was Like Her, as previously mentioned. But why didn’t she immediately attach herself to Merlin that way? Why didn’t Merlin attach to Mordred that strongly when he’s in the same boat? Or it could even be that Mordred’s an evil demon child who’s exploiting her with his powers. But I kept thinking, “She’s treating him like he’s her child anyway. Even though he’s apparently not.” But what if he is? If some sort of magical druid time-traveling has happened, and Mordred really is her son, that would explain it all, wouldn’t it? And, oh man, wouldn’t it add extra cool layers to the scene where Arthur catches Morgana spiriting Mordred away, the boy between his two parents while his mother begs his father not to kill him, he’s only a child? I THINK SO.
So, I’m going to at least pretend that’s a possibility for now.