Over Agravaine's objections, Arthur declares that he is going to marry Gwen. Naturally it doesn't take long for this news to get back to Morgana who immediately hits on a scheme to prevent a serving girl from sitting on "her throne".
Morgana discovers how to bring back Lancelot from the Land Of The Dead, only it isn't truly the noble knight, but a shade of his former self - which Morgana is able to "program" to take advantage of Gwen's fondness for Lancelot and seduce her away from her future husband... on the eve of her wedding day.
When I first heard that Lancelot (Santiago Cabrera) was coming back, I was so hoping for a budget-busting expedition by Arthur, Merlin and the knights of Camelot to retrieve their fallen comrade from the Land Of The Dead.
However, it is of course wrong to criticise a story for what it isn't - when clearly this was the plan all along. It's just a shame that the bulk of the Lancelot-Gwen-Arthur love-triangle (a core element of Arthurian legends, like Excalibur, the Round Table and The Holy Grail) was compressed into this single episode. The romance has been hinted at before and suggested, but Gwen was never with Arthur in those earlier stories.
It was also a pity that this hurried re-igniting of their passions was driven by a magical enchantment, rather than a development of Gwen's true feelings (obviously that would have taken too long - it managed to fill the entire, single season run of Camelot earlier in the year), which rather undermined the true gravity and betrayal in the original story.
That said, although Lancelot appears to have been written out of the series (although, I guess, there's nothing to stop him coming back again... perhaps as himself this time!), Lancelot Du Lac remains an open-ended episode with several plot threads left dangling, such as the magical bracelet and Gwen's ultimate fate (not to mention Merlin's clear knowledge of Agravaine's duplicity that he seems to be doing very little to expose).
But despite my disappointment with the hurried structure of the story, it still elicited some incredible performances from Angel Coulby (Gwen) - who I was not particularly impressed by in the early years of the show - and Bradley James (Arthur). The grief and conflicting emotions were clear for all to see when Gwen and Lancelot were caught smooching.
Of course, Arthur never questioned the fact that his uncle burst into his room declaring "there's something you've got to see" - it was a rather obvious set-up!
A key episode in the season, and an important turning point for all the characters, but it just felt as though writer Lucy Watkins had been tasked with too many plot points to squeeze into a 50-minute episode.
I wonder though if the BBC were also having their doubts over the strength of this episode as the official Merlin website - instead of featuring a key image from the episode on its front page - just has a generic cast shot (still including Uther!), there was no preview clip released this week and while the site did include some promotional wallpaper/stills quality control was clearly a bit off as this one got through:
The red lasso was my handiwork to highlight the authentic shirt and sunglasses being worn by a member of the crew, clearly visible in the background!
I do wish the BBC would put as much enthusiasm and attention into promoting Merlin online as they do Doctor Who.
No comments:
Post a Comment