Mournful Christmas

What is it with Christmas show writers – Doctor Who, Downton Abbey and, on Christmas Eve, Merlin – all killing off characters, the latter two hitherto important ones.  It is as if the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge, alive and unchanged from miserliness, was abroad in the minds of these writers.  Some of the reaction to the death in Downton Abbey was ridiculous (although also illustrating the poverty of Julian Fellowes’ imagination that he couldn’t engineer another exit for Dan Stevens’ character or was it some grudge against the actor?) but I can't be too harsh as Merlin left me very sad as well.

Part of me was mournful because there would be no more episodes of Merlin – the naff modern scene (because it was supposed to be a “land of myth and a time of magic” therefore has no counterpoint to the 21^st century, especially with the epic scenery in Merlin), reminiscent of the (literal) cop-out at the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, emphasising that.  King Arthur dies, Sir Gawaines dies, Morgana dies, Mordred dies; technically Merlin could continue – after all, the series is named after him – but without Arthur it would be rather hollow.  Part of the tragic conclusion is that Arthur was only in his early 20s, while his father Uther lived until his 50s and while Arthur had built a strong kingdom of sorts, he had precious little time to administer beyond Camelot’s borders.  There was also no chance for Arthur to allow good magic to flourish at his court, which we had been built up to expect since the very first episode, not to mention the interesting new dynamic between Merlin and Arthur that would exist.  Morgana constantly surviving to intrigue again was becoming very tiresome, but Mordred could have survived to become a new arch-foe of Arthur.

Interestingly, like Henry VIII, Uther Pendragon’s dynastic play was all in vain – though not fully understanding that he was sacrificing his wife so Arthur could be born, Uther sought to be pragmatic but failed.  Guinevere might be pregnant but the implication is this is the end.  Merlin – as evinced from the first series – has the power to take one life to save another (the magic involved in Arthur’s birth) and there are still enemies of Camelot after the climatic battle.  Further, he could have summoned the dragon sooner to transport them to the mystical lake.  But the scriptwriters wanted this to be the definitive end, setting the historical scene to re-emerge with the Heptarchy and then, in consecutive order, the pre-eminence of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex.  Bow out on a high, yes and the tale of King Arthur is tragic, but this was a still an especially sad note to go out on.