Merlin: Review: Series 5 Episode 13: The Diamond of the Day Part 2 (Spoiler-filled!)

Merlin knows there is one last chance to save Arthur’s life…

And so that’s it for the BBC version of the story of Merlin. The King is dead. Merlin is still wandering the highways and byways of Britain in the 21st Century. And audiences everywhere will be wondering if we missed something…

To me, it feels as if we missed a season out between the end of last season and the start of this one. The three-year jump seemed like a good idea at the time – and certainly when we were on set earlier this year, it did seem as if it was allowing for some growth in the characters and the situation. But we didn’t really get that: three years on, Merlin was still where he had been, hiding his magic, and hearing promises of the great time to come when magic would be free within the kingdom.

That season five should have been the Golden Age of Camelot – and clearly, to the characters, that’s what it was. I have been holding out hope, even during the last two episodes (in fact, I was right until ten minutes before the end of the episode, when Arthur finally says thank you to Merlin), that the producers were going to have the same regard for this part of the myth as they have others. In other words, they would take incidents from the legend and rework them to their own purposes. Yes, Arthur would receive a wound from Mordred at Camlann, but he would be magically cured, thus giving him a reason to support magic finally, and yes, we would end up with an ending with Merlin assisting Arthur as ruler. If necessary, the “Iron Man” scenario could have been left just ticking over – Gaius could have confided to Merlin in a final scene that the tip of Mordred’s weapon couldn’t be removed and was working its way towards his heart. Astute members of the audience would recognise what that meant – Arthur’s time was limited – but it would still allow the show to go out on a positive note.

We could even have had a season five in the Golden Age, with perhaps the final three-parter charting Camlann? Instead, although, as my (p)reviews showed, I enjoyed the majority of the episodes, we went from the build-up to the aftermath with none of the triumph (or, as one person astutely pointed out, jumping from the foreplay to the cigarette without any of the fun.)

What we got was a bit of a cop-out: the dragon reminds Merlin that Arthur is the Once and Future King, and the inference is that everything that was promised for Arthur’s reign is going to happen when he returns as King in England’s darkest hour. Technically, that means all the promises about freedom of magic aren’t invalidated, but it’s not really playing fair with the audience: it reminds me of those people in the first century who were convinced that the Second Coming would happen in their lifetime because of the way they interpreted the teachings of Jesus. To me, that cheated the audience, and lost the episode marks.

But in terms of what we got, given that  this was the route the producers decided to take: the episode belonged to Colin Morgan and Bradley James, quite rightly. James played Arthur’s reaction to Merlin’s revelation with exactly the right amount of anger and disbelief – and finally acceptance – while Morgan was simply at his best throughout. If this could have been built on in future seasons, then I think Merlin would have been unbeatable. Ah well…

Paul Simpson

Don’t miss A Fan’s Guide to the End of an Era, the second part of our feature on the fans’ reaction to the finale.