Merlin (TV series)/Fridge

Fridge Logic

• Merlin questioning what Arthur will do to preserve his honor if Morgause asks him to do something even less honorable then breaking his word.

• Uther's methods are completely useless against most of the magical threats he uses them against every week. How did he push out the old order in his territory in the first place?
  • Uther's methods don't work against the really big threats which Merlin often has to deal with. The show consistently demonstrates that all but a few very powerful magic users are still vulnerable to the sword (and their magic is virtually useless in combat). Case in point, Uther tricked a Dragonlord into helping him capture the last dragon, a foe he could not conceivably have bested without magic, then hunted down the Dragonlords, who are more or less normal humans. Merlin might be able to hold his own for a bit if he didn't have to hide his powers, but offensive magic seems to be a seldom-taught power.

• When Elena was a baby the Sidhe had her possessed by one of their own with the intentions of her growing up and marrying Prince Arthur, thereby putting a Sidhe on the throne. So, what was all that about in the first season when they were actively encouraging Sophia and her father to kill Arthur in order to regain immortality?
  • There was probably some plot to do with replacing Arthur with a Sidhe with his appearance and memories once they had his heart. The Sidhe have multiple plots to get onto that throne, it seems.

• How on earth did Freya fit in that cage every night when she transformed? And how did the bounty hunter fail to notice anything?
  • Not sure how she fit, but the man himself did say that she was cursed... Perhaps he was sleeping.

• Despite the fact that their mutual goal is to take over Camelot, Agravaine and Morgana congratulate themselves on the fact that Camelot is "falling into rack and ruin", just as they'd planned. With entire families being massacred and evil spirits on the loose, is there a reason why either of them would want to rule over a kingdom that is void of any subjects?
  • Morgana could conceivably close the breach whenever she wanted. All she needs to do is get the people malleable enough to accept her rule. Once Arthur is dead, they have no one else to turn to.

• In 4x03, why didn't Gaius tell Arthur about the charm that was actually responsible for killing Uther? Why keep it a secret?
  • Perhaps they thought that it was simply irrelevant. Switching the blame from Dragoon to Morgana would have devastated Arthur even further, and either way, magic is still responsible for Uther's death. Maybe it'll come up in the future.
  • As well, there's no guarantee that Arthur would have believed that Dragoon wasn't just working with Morgana to finish off Uther.
  • Okay, it just happened again with Gaius not telling Arthur that Merlin was possessed. I know it's a bad idea to use magic in Camelot, but can it not even be spoken of to save a life?
  • And they did it again in Hunter's Heart, Arthur never finds out afterward that Gwen was enchanted into doing things with Lancelot.
  • They probably did it to show that Arthur and Gwen loved each other enough to overcome that, but it still sucks that nobody found out.

• If Arthur can knight a handful of commoners and make them his inner circle of allies, then why can't he just elevate Gwen to the status of a lady? Heck, shouldn't she kinda be that already considering her brother is a "sir"?
  • It would defeat the purpose of the relationship (class distinctions don't matter) if Loophole Abuse made it acceptable.

• When did Sir Leon get so close to Merlin? Season 2 to Season 3, their relationship could at best be described as friendly indifference, but come Season 4 he's always sticking up for Merlin and ruffling his hair like Merlin's his kid brother!
  • Same reason a shady uncle came out of nowhere and became Arthur's most trusted counselor...the one-year-gap.

• If Askanar put the egg into the tomb in order to keep it safe, why did he rig the place up so that it would collapse if someone removed the egg from the plinth? It would end up killing the intruder, but there was a pretty high risk of it smashing the egg as well.
  • Fridge Brilliance: If the tomb's intruder was powerful and ruthless enough to get all three parts of the Triskelion and get past the trap at the door, then they're the last person you want in possession of a dragon's egg! It's also assumed Askanar thought that any dragon would prefer to die rather than be enslaved to someone that would use it for his or her own gain.
  • It also seems likely based on the actions of the Druids that Merlin was meant to be the one to recover the egg all along.

• In The Hunter's Heart Merlin tells Arthur: "you're the once and future king." Except at that point Arthur is the current king. The only time in which he's the "once and future king" are the periods before he becomes king and after he dies.
  • It's probably meant more along the lines of "you are the king everyone will remember and everyone is waiting for." In a sense, they're still waiting. Arthur hasn't gotten around to uniting the land just yet.
  • Though it's still odd that Merlin continues to make these grand epithets about Arthur and Arthur never once says: "what on earth are you talking about?"

Fridge Brillance

• Penny Anna had two while watching Merlin back on DVD:
  • When watching the first episode for the first time, she was immensely irritated by Arthur swinging his mace around above his head in a completely superfluous way. When watching it back, she realised that he just does that with every weapon he can get his hands on. She just wasn't familiar enough with his character to realize this first time round.
  • She was always very irritated by the titular character suddenly using spells to do things he could do perfectly easily without in the first episode. Now she thinks that was probably deliberate - he's just learned the spells, so they have a novelty-value for him which takes a while to wear off. She expects to see him using them less to do simple things in future.
  • Also with Merlin, Freya, in her werewolf rip-off beast form, is mortally wounded by Arthur. It took this troper about three days to realize that Freya, implied to be the Lady of the Lake, would be the one to end up giving Arthur Excalibur. -Lord Khajmer
  • Another Merlin pointer: the actors for Merlin, Morgana and Freya are both Irish and Pale-Skinned Brunettes, which may be a reference back to the fact that Ireland is infamous for its closer connection to myths, fairy tales, and Paganism which lasted much longer during the Middle Ages. - Pickled Plums
  • This troper was initially irritated by Morgan's constant Psychotic Smirks but eventually I figured that given she was new to giving in to her evil side, she would have trouble suppressing her smirks.
  • A small bit of Foreshadowing in Season 1: Merlin makes a dragon out of sparks for his mum. She smiles sadly at the sight. Later in Season 2, it's revealed that Merlin's father is a Dragonlord.

• A minor one: I kept being bugged by the fact that the show opening line calls Merlin 'a young boy'. Of course, he is not a grown man yet, but 'young boy' associates in my mind with a 10-year-old, not 17-18-year-old Merlin seems to be. Then I realised, the narration is done by the Great Dragon who is very, VERY old. Of course, Merlin is a young boy to him!
  • Now the title sequence has switched to calling to the Dragon calling Merlin 'a young man.' This seems to coincide with the Dragon's growing respect and deference to Merlin as seen in 4x02 the Dragon does not complain at all about being called by Merlin, he asks Merlin not to sacrifice himself and flat out tells him that the world will be a lesser place without him.

• A case of Fridge Brilliance: In 3x10, Merlin is serving Uther, Arthur, and Morgana during their meals. When Merlin goes to fill Morgana's drink, she slightly covers her up, giving him the signal that it isn't necessary. Of course she would when you remember Merlin poisoned Morgana through what she thought was an innocent drink in 2x12.

• Excalibur. The sword itself was provided by Guinevere, Merlin instructed the dragon to forge it with his fire, and Arthur will eventually wield it in battle. The Power Trio are all connected in this one sword.

• The cover art of the season 1 DVD has a fun case of Fridge Brilliance: Except for Guinevere (the Love Interest), everyone is wearing clothing that shows where they fall in terms of loyalty. Morgana and Gaius are pro-magic and in full blue while Arthur and Uther are anti-magic and in full red. Merlin, in the middle of them, is the only one to wear both colors, showing how he is stuck balancing his loyalty to magic and to the crown.

• I guess this would be more Hilarious in Hindsight but imagine what the guards posted outside of Arthur's room would have heard in Season 2's episode The Sins of the Father

Arthur: (muffled) What are you doing...the rope!
Merlin: (panicking) THERE IS NO MORE ROPE!
Arthur: (straining): Merlin...
Merlin: (groaning): Oh...I don't know if I can hold on any longer!

Arthur: (even more strained) ...don't let go of the rope!

(Merlin groans until there's a startled shout and then a thump)

• • Merlin had sneaked a length of rope into Arthur's room to help him escape and seek out Morgause. Unfortunately it wasn't long enough to get Arthur down the entire way and Merlin was forced to drop Arthur halfway down.

• When season 3 began, I wondered why Gwen still worked in the castle since she was the maidservant to Morgana, and Morgana had been gone a year. Even if Uther didn't want to accept it, why was she still on staff? And then I realized... in "To Kill the King," Arthur promised that Gwen's job was safe, and her home was hers for life. I guess when Arthur makes promises out of guilt, he really means them.

• For the first two seasons of the show, many viewers were baffled at the Dragon's animosity toward Morgana, especially since the two of them wanted the same goal of getting rid of Uther and establishing Arthur as King. If anything, it should have been Morgana and not Merlin that the Dragon tried to ally himself with. But then in season three, we finally discover the reason for Kilgarrah's distrust of Morgana - he knew all along that she was Uther's daughter.

• In the last episode of season one, the Questing Beast appears. According to Gaius, it is "supposed to foreshadow a time of great upheaval". Yet by the end of the episode, it would seem as though everything has returned to the status quo. Arthur survived. Gaius survived. Merlin's mother survived. Nimeuh was killed, but she didn't really have much impact on the flow of the show anyway. So what was the "time of great upheaval" that the Beast was meant to foreshadow? Well, this is the episode in which Arthur and Guinevere have their first blatantly shippy scene together...
  • It could also be Foreshadowing for all the Angst in Series 2.
  • Or it could be Nimueh dying, and Merlin getting the power over life and death. To the Old Religion, that's an upheaval.

• The unicorn in The Labyrinth of Gedref looks a little goofy considering its mane is brushed down over its eyes, making it near impossible for the poor horse to see anything. Then you realize - they probably did that in order to hide the harness that holds the fake horn in place.

• This might be a little late to the game, but it just occurred after a rewatch of the Season 3 finale, the Coming of Arthur, which ended with Merlin putting Excalibur into the stone. Remember the part in Terry Pratchett's Discworld which Deconstructed the whole concept of the Sword in the Stone? Where it was mentioned that real interesting person was not the person who managed to pull the sword out, but rather the person who managed to put it in to begin with? Arthur may be the Chosen One, even in this retelling, but Merlin's one making it all happen!

• The controversy in casting a dark-skinned actress in the role of Guinevere has never entirely died down, and to their credit the writers and producers have never dignified any of it with a response. However, in season three Guinevere's brother is introduced. Out of all the canonical Arthurian knights that they could have named him after (Bors, Galahad, Tristian, Kay, Pelenore, etc) they chose the relatively obscure Elyan. Elyan's title in the legends was "Elyan the White." There's no way this isn't a very subtle Take That to those that whine about colour-blind casting.

• Why is the time skip between Seasons always a year? Because the only time the BBC shoots footage for Merlin, it's summer, so skip a year and you neatly explain why it never rains or snows in Camelot!

• Dragoon/Emrys a.k.a. Old!Merlin's actions are justified, given the setting, but even more brilliant when you remember the older legends surrounding Ambrosius/Merlin. He was originally more of a Chaotic Neutral trickster or a Trickster Mentor for Arthur. So Dragoon/Emrys as seen by those unaware of his true identity might come to be seen a developing from a Chaotic Evil to a Chaotic Neutral character or even a Stealth Mentor for Arthur, before The Unmasking when people finally understand that he was on Arthur's side all along. That is, the people going to tell the stories about Emrys/Merlin are currently witnessing Emrys' progression from trickster Fae to wise adviser for King Arthur since they are unaware of his true identity!

• It was pretty annoying that Agravaine just showed up out of nowhere in Series 4. Then I remembered that his brother tried to kill Uther and that he knows the secret of Arthur's birth, and I realized there's a reason for it... Uther would keep him away from Arthur to protect the secret of Arthur's birth and because he feared Agravaine would want vengeance for it. As soon as Uther was out of commission, Agravaine was free to come back to Camelot, because Uther would have never told Arthur why he was being kept away in the first place.

Fridge Horror

• 3x03, Goblin's Gold, is mostly a light-hearted comedy... until you realise that it's quite likely Gaius was fully concious and aware the whole time he was possessed by the goblin, given that at the end he seems to understand what has happened. He was forced to watch as the goblin gleefully had Merlin sentenced to death.
  • Not to mention the goblin's comment that Gaius's body was so much "fun." Yeah. That's just wrong.
  • I realized that back after it aired...it popped out to me really fast due to my obsession with Animorphs. It needs a fanfic if you ask me.

• In a similar vein, Lancelot's last words to Merlin (a "thank you" whilst on his funeral bier) suggest that on some level he was aware of the terrible things that Morgana was forcing him to do, and was just grateful to be free of her control.

• The Fisher King was forced to wait upon his throne for untold centuries, helpless to do anything about his beloved kingdom crumbling by his own magic, while being stuck in a chair due to immense levels of pain. It's no wonder he was Driven to Suicide.

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