MERLIN “The Coming of Arthur, Part One” Review

MERLIN The Coming Of Arthur, Part 1

MERLIN “The Coming of Arthur, Part One” Season 3 Episode 12 – Morgana and Morgause are back to their usual schemes, which means more of Morgana’s glares and more of Emilia Fox, the former I could certainly do without. Merlin and Arthur are sent out of Camelot to find the Cup of Life from druids. Unfortunately they ar waylaid by slave traders who inform Morgause of their whereabouts. Morgause’s men captures the Cup of Life and use it to raise an army of immortals to remove Uther and instate Morgana as Queen.

There is a lot of fighting and chase sequences in this episode. Merlin and Arthur’s rapport was as amusing as ever and Gwaine’s return to the screen is always welcome. They’re capture by slave traders was, unfortunately, an unimaginative plot device to unite them with Gwaine. It was quite forced, and even the fight between Arthur and Gwaine, amusing as the dialogue should have been, felt forced.

The major issue I had with this episode was the totally out of character scene where Arthur holds a sword to a young boy’s throat, threatening to harm the boy if he is not given the Cup of Life. The scene is difficult to interrpret, because I have never seen Arthur ever show any sign that he would cause harm to an innocent. He even replaced Merlin in the duel to the death match set up by the slave trader. To see him holding a young boy at swordpoint was interesting: on the one hand it was completely unbelievable. On the other, that character, the ignoble and ruthless Arthur, is quite close to Uther.

This episode definately felt like a build up to the climax, which is what it was. It was quite average until the last fifteen minutes, until Morgause showed that she knew how to make a threat. Emilia Fox delivered those lines excellently.

It was an episode which promised more than it delivered, but those promises her worth it. Finding Gaius in a broom cupbord seemed ridiculous.

Still, the biggest payback for not only this episode, but the entire series of Merlin, was when Morgause took the crown from Uther, and Morgana was crowned Queen of Camelot. Freaking. Awesome.

What did you make of the episode? Particularly the final few minutes? Sound off in the comments below! And for more information on this latest episode of Merlin, go to the Merlin Official Site http://www.bbc.co.uk/merlin/ .

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By Ciara | November 28, 2010 | 7 Comments

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Hannah

I thought this episode was fantastic! I loved Morgana’s entrance when morgause said there was a heir, it was brilliant! I found this episode definately the best so far! However I found that when Arthur went to get the cup of life that he was out of character, it wasn’t the sort of thing he would do. The last 15 minutes were so gripping. The whole gwen and morgana scene where Morgana said those who didn’t fight wouldn’t be killed confused me a little, did this mean that gwen has now gwen has now Auden with Morgana? Or is she just saying that to save her life? To be honest I quite liked the idea of Morgana as queen and I cannot wait to see next weeks episode as it will be very interesting to see which way this series turns out.

arty

Dead simple. I guess it will be a dallas thing with merlin breaking the sands of time. Would put money on it !!!

Hannah

*did this mean that gwen has now sided with Morgana
amelia

Gaius wasn’t hiding in a broom cupboard. Watch it again and you’ll see.
Tanya

Regarding Arthur holding the sword to the boy’s throat, I actually thought it made a lot of sense in that Arthur tends to not think clearly when Uther acts like a loving and proud father and sends him off on a mission – there’s no doubt in my mind he would never have actually hurt the kid, he just kind of had an emotional panic attack.
On a different note, I agree that they’ll probably pull a ‘sands of time’, but I have to say, I’ll be really disappointed if at the end of all this Arthur doesn’t remember that Morgana is evil.
Katherine

I felt that Arthur holding a sword to the boy’s throat was a little unexpected, but not out of character. It’s obvious that he has a negative attitude towards those with magic, rubbed off from his father. I think this scene demonstrates just how hostile he really is. The sword was an empty threat, I don’t think that anyone (except maybe the druids) believed that he would really kill an innocent boy.
gaara

i think that author holding the sword to the boys throet made sense whil it was not someting he wouold normaly do but he was despret and why do you find guias hideing in the broom closet rediculas? i wonder where you would hide if there were a bunch of imortal solders wondering about i think this episode was amazing and maybe even better then i thought it would be