More thoughts on Merlin
I had been thinking a lot today anyway about why this episode didn't sit well with me and then maplshy told me she had loved it and...
I guess it made me want to figure this out properly.
I think my dislike boiled down to how Gwen was treated. The fact that because of the bracelet not only was any personal responsibility taken away from her but was also she was stripped of her free will. And taking free will away from a women in any kind of romantic entanglement is a dangerous thing to do.
I've seen a lot of arguments both for and against the fact that Gwen would not have willingly gone to Lancelot in the way she did in this episode and the reality is I kind of agree with both sides on this. Yes, personal responsibility and free will have been taken away from people before on the show, even Merlin himself was taken over, but it felt like using this as the reasoning behind the breakup of Arthur and Gwen felt wrong to me.
I want Arthur and Gwen to be madly in love, more than I ever thought I would when the show started, but I also want that love to be real and fallible because people are fallible. Magic is not the only reasons people make bad decisions. People make bad decisions and do the wrong thing ALL THE TIME. Arthur and Merlin themselves have made bad decisions when not under a spell.
And why couldn't Gwen have still had some feelings for Lancelot? I'm going to paraphrase here but when she was telling Arthur that she thought Lancelot was dead, that she would never see him again and suddenly he was there alive and breathing and she felt all these feeling coming back to her. Why couldn't that have been real? It would have been a more interesting story from my point of view.
So yeah... in a show with hardly any female characters anyway the one real hope (granted for most of this season she's just been a wife in waiting) is now gone. I have no doubt she will be back I just hope that while she's gone she manages to brush up on those sword skills we saw in season one, maybe come to the realization that she is equal to Arthur - and not just because he tells her she is - and basically kicks Elyan's arse for not being the brother to her that he should have been.
Going to bed now before I collaspe.Zzzzzz
I guess it made me want to figure this out properly.
I think my dislike boiled down to how Gwen was treated. The fact that because of the bracelet not only was any personal responsibility taken away from her but was also she was stripped of her free will. And taking free will away from a women in any kind of romantic entanglement is a dangerous thing to do.
I've seen a lot of arguments both for and against the fact that Gwen would not have willingly gone to Lancelot in the way she did in this episode and the reality is I kind of agree with both sides on this. Yes, personal responsibility and free will have been taken away from people before on the show, even Merlin himself was taken over, but it felt like using this as the reasoning behind the breakup of Arthur and Gwen felt wrong to me.
I want Arthur and Gwen to be madly in love, more than I ever thought I would when the show started, but I also want that love to be real and fallible because people are fallible. Magic is not the only reasons people make bad decisions. People make bad decisions and do the wrong thing ALL THE TIME. Arthur and Merlin themselves have made bad decisions when not under a spell.
And why couldn't Gwen have still had some feelings for Lancelot? I'm going to paraphrase here but when she was telling Arthur that she thought Lancelot was dead, that she would never see him again and suddenly he was there alive and breathing and she felt all these feeling coming back to her. Why couldn't that have been real? It would have been a more interesting story from my point of view.
So yeah... in a show with hardly any female characters anyway the one real hope (granted for most of this season she's just been a wife in waiting) is now gone. I have no doubt she will be back I just hope that while she's gone she manages to brush up on those sword skills we saw in season one, maybe come to the realization that she is equal to Arthur - and not just because he tells her she is - and basically kicks Elyan's arse for not being the brother to her that he should have been.
Going to bed now before I collaspe.Zzzzzz