Merlin
“The Diamond of the Day, Part 2”, Season 5 Episode 13
Requested By
What do I know about this series going into it?
I’m familiar with several versions of the King Arthur mythos, and I knew of this show’s existence when it aired. I never watched it, though I seem to remember something vague about a central character that needed to be written out because their actor left the show.
Previously On
The last battle of the war is going to be fought in Camlann, but if Arthur goes there he will die. Merlin’s destiny awaits.
Recap
Two armies are going at each other with swords.
One of them, clearly Arthur, prepares to face a line of enemies at once. But then a dark-haired woman’s eyes glow gold and they all fall. He nods to her in gratitude.
More fighting. And a dragon appears! It flies low over the battlefield and everyone ducks, so that when it lets loose a burst of flame nobody is hurt1.
More fighting. And yet again, a dozen people charge Arthur, but he is rescued by magic – this time from an elderly Merlin, who zaps them from a nearby mountaintop. The dark-haired woman shouts “Emrys!”, whatever that is, and Merlin zaps her as well. So I don’t understand - are they on Arthur’s side or not?
More fighting. And the dragon dips down for another pass. But Merlin speaks to it in dragon-language2 and forces it to flee.
Gwen3, not in the thick of the battle, asks an old man standing next to her who the magician on the mountaintop is. “Someone truly remarkable,” the old man replies.
With the dragon gone, the battle suddenly peters out. Arthur is taking care of stragglers (on both sides: killing straggling opponents and helping straggling allies) when he is approached from behind by sinister music. He turns around and sword hits sword – but then Arthur halts. He recognizes his attacker, who is clearly a former friend. Arthur hesitates, but Former Friend has no such compunctions: a stab to the gut and Arthur falls.
“You gave me no choice,” says Former Friend. Arthur rises again to strike back. He shifts his arm forward in a stabbing motion, twice – but there’s no follow-through. I think there’s some sort of magic spell stopping him.
But then the friend does fall, dead. So I guess Arthur was able to stab him; it was the fight choreographer and the Foley artist who couldn’t.
Back in the hospital tent, a soldier brings Gwen a report: The battle is won, the Saxons are in full retreat!
“And Arthur?” she asks.
“I’ll keep looking,” says the soldier. Gwen goes back to her work, choking back tears.
Old Merlin picks up Arthur’s dying body and carries him off the battlefield and into the forest. After some time, Arthur wakes up and sees the now-much-younger Merlin tending to him. “Where have you been?” he asks Merlin, not recognizing him as the guy who was on the hilltop4. “I defeated the Saxons,” says Merlin, “but the person I really needed to defeat was Mordred” – this being I assume the dark-haired, golden-eyed woman.
Arthur insists, however: “The person who defeated them was the sorcerer”. Merlin breaks down crying: “It was me!”
“I’m a sorcerer,” Merlin admits. “I have magic.” Arthur gives him a look that says, how could you betray me like this? So clearly sorcery is considered illegal and/or immoral and/or evil. Yet Arthur is sure that this can’t be true, so Merlin proves it to him with an incantation, manipulating the flames of the campfire into a 3D dragon. In shock, Arthur demands that Merlin leave him.
So in five seasons Merlin never revealed to Arthur that he could do magic?
Back at the palace, the next morning, a guard reports to Gwen that they can’t find Arthur anywhere. She insists that he is alive, and he must be somewhere – keep looking! As the guard leaves, he reports that “Gaius” is also missing.
Cut to the old man that Gwen had spoken to during the battle; I assume this is Gaius. He has arrived at Merlin and Arthur’s encampment, and Arthur grabs Maybe-Gaius and tells him, desperately: “He’s a sorcerer”.
But then Arthur’s face falls. Maybe-Gaius already knew. In fact, says Maybe-Gaius, Merlin might be the greatest sorcerer to ever walk the Earth!
Gaius5 has bad news, though: the blade that stabbed Arthur is called “Athusa” and was forged in dragon’s breath. A sliver of it remains inside him, and its magic is so powerful that even Merlin can’t overcome it.
Meanwhile, Mordred stabs a sword into the ground next to a burial cairn. “The battle is not over, Mordred,” she says, so I guess this isn’t Mordred.
Back in the forest, Merlin tries to get Arthur moving. But he feels betrayed and isn’t in the mood. Gaius advises Merlin to let Arthur sleep, and reassures Merlin that he was right to reveal the secret.
Bad guys approach NotMordred’s throne and inform her that they can’t find Arthur anywhere. “I want him dead!” she shouts, and telekinetically chokes one of them to death. She sends the others out to keep looking.
Arthur gives Gaius his royal seal, commanding him to bring it to Guinevere and saying he can’t think of anyone better to succeed him (I think he means Guinevere, but I’m not sure; he might mean Gaius). Before he leaves, Gaius tells Merlin that “Eira” cannot be trusted; I think he is referring to NotMordred.
Merlin puts Arthur on a horse and begins leading them in the direction of the Sidhe.
Gaius arrives at the palace, and delivers to Gwen both the royal seal and the news: Arthur is alive but wounded, and Merlin is taking him somewhere that can save him. Gwen instantly wants to send knights to escort him, but Gaius advises against it: Right now, Morgana has no idea where Arthur is, so let’s not attract attention towards him6.
That night, Eira7 approaches Gwain and, rather unsubtly, pumps him for information on where Arthur is. I wonder if this is NotMordred in disguise?
Improbably, Merlin and Arthur run smack into the two guards belonging to NotMordredMaybeEira. Merlin tries to bluff them, but the fact that Arthur is still wearing his armor gives the game away. Merlin waves an arm and sends the two of them flying8. This freaks Arthur out anew, and he reacts as though he didn’t see Merlin do magic just the night before.
That night, Eira sends a messenger crow to Morgana (I finally have that straight). But it turns out to be a setup: Gwain actually gave Eira fake information, and he and Gwen catch her in the act of sending it to the enemy. Gwen gloats: “The king will be travelling in the opposite direction.”9 Eira is taken away to be executed.
Gwen calls Gaius in and thanks him for unmasking Eira. But she is suspicious: You knew who the sorcerer was, didn’t you? She’s figured out: it’s Merlin. But interestingly she’s a lot more open-minded and quick to accept him as a good guy than Arthur was.
The crow reaches Morgana, and she sets out in the direction that Arthur isn’t going.
Back at the castle, Eira is brought out to the execution platform10. Watching the execution, Gwain and another knight decide, hey, since we know Morgana is headed in this particular direction, maybe we can ambush her there and kill her!
Meanwhile, Arthur asks Merlin: “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” “You’d have chopped my head off,” says Merlin. They have yet another heartfelt conversation on how Merlin was born to serve him, their third this episode.
On the other side of the country, Gwain and Other Knight are perched in a tree above Morgana and her soldiers. Rather than sniping her with an arrow, they ambush her soldiers one by one. And the soldiers, for their part, don’t bother shouting or raising an alarm as they fight and die one by one.
Finally, they ambush Morgana and stab her, but she uses magic to throw them to the ground. “Did you really think you could outwit me?” she asks. Maybe she knew they were there all along…
Sometime later, Other Knight wakes up to find himself tied up, Morgana seated before him with a small box. She opens it and releases a CGI snake upon him.
Even later than that, Gwain wakes up. He too is tied up, and hears Other Knight’s cries of pain somewhere off in the distance. In desperation he tears himself free of the ropes.
Meanwhile, Merlin uses his powers multiple times as he leads Arthur through the countryside: to see ahead; to cover their tracks; to hypnotize Saxon soldiers into going in the wrong direction. Arthur realizes that he’s seen Merlin use all these powers before, but hadn’t recognized them for what they were.
Back in Morgana’s forest, I discover I had the knights backwards. The freed knight reaches the bound one and calls him Gwain11. But Morgana is long gone – because Gwain failed to resist. He told Morgana where Arthur is really going.
Merlin and Arthur are within sight of the lake, but suddenly the horses bolt: Morgana has arrived. She tosses Merlin aside and approaches Arthur, taunting. “You’re going to die by Mordred’s hand.” So is she Mordred or Morgana?
Merlin, who is the only person to be tossed magically in the air this episode and not lose consciousness, grabs a sword and attacks. But Morgana isn’t fazed: “I’m a high priestess, and no mortal blade can kill me.” That explains why she just ignored the stabbing that Gwain and Other Knight gave her – but Merlin’s is no mortal blade. It, too, was forged in dragon’s breath. Almost anticlimactically, Merlin stabs and kills her.
Without the horses, Merlin tries to bring Arthur to the lake, but he is too weak; he can’t go on12.
Arthur thanks Merlin one last time, and dies in his arms.
Merlin cries out in “dragon language”, and a dragon named Kilgharrah arrives. At Merlin’s command, the dragon carries them both to the lake’s edge13. But Kilgharrah warns him that it is no use: Arthur’s fate is foretold. He can’t be saved. But when Albion’s need is greatest, Arthur will rise again!
In despair, Merlin tosses his sword into the lake, and a hand reaches up from within and catches it, pulling it into the water14. He then loads Arthur onto a boat that just happened to be in the area, and lets his body drift off to sea.
Back at the palace, Gwen is crowned.
Centuries later, a truck drives past the lake, and we see Old Merlin walk past, pausing only briefly.
Unresolved questions
When will Arthur come back?
What has Merlin been up to all these centuries?
Ratings
These ratings evaluate the finale-of-the-week from an angle that its writers never intended: how well it works as an individual episode watched in isolation. The analysis accompanying each rating is written from that point of view as well.
The ratings do not necessarily apply to the episode if it is watched in the proper context. And it should go without saying that none of them apply to the series as a whole, which I have not watched.
Story: 6/10. A pretty straightforward story, but I’m giving it a bonus point because it was well executed. You don’t really notice that 70% of the runtime is just Merlin dragging a wounded Arthur through the forest – a plot that on its merits would deserve a 3 at most.
I can’t give it any higher, though, because the characters make many idiotic decisions across the episode.
Writing: 5/10. Fairly typical for television, with very little that stood out for good or for ill. There were a few moments of silliness, such as Merlin and Arthur happening to come across Morgana’s guards in a staggering coincidence that wasn’t even necessary and contributed little to the plot. (In fact, it introduced a minor continuity error, with Arthur declaring that Merlin lied to him all along – something he already knew.)
With the exception of that hiccup, the episode did a good job on the storyline: Arthur at first rejecting his loyal friend, then slowly reaccepting him over the course of days travelling through the wilds. In fact, the best scene in the episode was the in which Merlin uses his powers multiple times in quick succession, and Arthur suddenly realizes he’s seen this happen many times before without recognizing it for what it was.
Production: 5/10. The average scores I gave for Story and Writing were the result of average work. But this average score is the result of terrible balancing out sublime:
Sublime: Most of the actors did excellent work. Merlin and Morgana in particular sold their roles very well.
Terrible: The old-age makeup on Merlin.
Sublime: The location scouting.
Terrible: The soundtrack.
Sublime: The directorial decision to kill Morgana in such an anticlimactic fashion.
Terrible: The directorial decision to have a mortally wounded man wear armor on a cross-country trip in which time is of the essence.
Sublime: The editing in Eira’s execution scene, particularly the cutaway and the sound effect.
Terrible: The scene in which Arthur kills the man who stabbed him, in which the actor did such a bad job miming the blows that they forgot to put in the stabbing sound effect.
The CGI was bad, but probably fair for its day.
Characterization: 7/10. The writers put in a lot of effort to make sure you understood the depths of Merlin and Arthur’s relationship. 6 of these points are theirs; 1 more for Morgana. I didn’t get to know anybody else in depth at all.
Accessibility: 9/10. Other than the Morgana/Mordred confusion, which is probably my own fault, I grasped the plot very quickly.
Closure: 10/10. Arthur is dead, what more do you want?
Do I want to watch the series now?
Truthfully, it’s not bad. Not quite good enough for the time investment, but I can see the reasons it was popular among some of my friends when it first aired.
Are you telling me that, in all this swordfighting, literally every single person devoted some of their valuable attention to constantly looking up?
So claim the captions.
Name given in captions. This might be Guinevere, but if so it’s a bit odd that she’s black.
I wish I could mock this. Old Merlin looks exactly like his younger self - so much so that even though I barely glimpsed him during the Previously he was instantly recognizable. But I have to be fair: he is high above the battlefield, and it’s nighttime.
Merlin finally addresses him by name.
If Gwen were smart, she’d make an ostentatious show of sending the knights in some random other direction.
Name given in captions
Are they dead? Unconscious? In the Kabin Buri railway station in Thailand? The episode shows them go up but kind of glosses over where they land.
If Gwen were smart, she wouldn’t give this information away, just in case Eira later escapes. Also, I hope it’s not the exact opposite direction, because that would be too obvious.
If Gwen were smart, she’d keep Eira hidden until after she was certain Arthur was safe, just in case Morgana has another spy.
Though the captions this time spell it Gwaine. Maybe their names are Gwain and Gwaine?
Why can’t Merlin toss him telekinetically, the way they’ve been doing all episode?
Shouldn’t Merlin have done this days ago?
Kind of a waste. You’d want to keep it around in case one day you need to kill another high priestess.