Merlin “Arthur’s Bane Part 1”

Hey, it’s another Game of Thrones actor doing fantasy stuff before he got on Game of Thrones!

Yes, Morgana is still causing problems, and this time she has Davos Seaworth as her sidekick.  Sure, he has a name, but I know him as Ser Davos.  He can stay Ser Davos.  Even if he’s on the side of evil this time.

So, what is Morgana up to now?  Well, she somehow captured a bunch of Arthur’s men, including Percival and Gwaine, and has them working shirtless in a mine to find something a prophecy calls “Arthur’s Bane”.  What is it?  I’m not sure anyone knows.  But she’s digging for the thing that will doom Arthur.

Arthur, meanwhile, wants to get his boys back.  And Queen Gwen even offers a good suggestion of attacking from the west instead of the south.  That’s through a different kingdom, but Arthur’s on good terms with the queen there (hey, we saw her once before!), and the only cost is Merlin has to juggle since the queen thinks Merlin is really Arthur’s fool.

Yes, Merlin can juggle.

However, there are some twists.  If you’ve seen maybe two episodes of this show, you know there’s a spy in Arthur’s court.  That would be Gwen’s new handmaid.  She’s actually Davos’ daughter.

And to the show’s credit, this time Morgana’s sidekick actually has a motivation.  He’s a druid sorcerer.  He knows what Pendragons do.

However, in a nice twist, Gwen actually figures out what happened.  True, she only figured it out after Leon and Elyan returned reporting there was an ambush and Merlin and Arthur disappeared during the battle.  She has the girl arrested, interrogated, and from the looks of things, executed.

As it is, Merlin’s biggest problem is a dying druid prophet showed him a vision of Arthur dying while fighting some other knight.  And the Great Dragon confirmed the vision.  Merlin spends most of the episode worried about Arthur, and when he finally tells Arthur…Arthur shrugs it off.  He isn’t afraid to die.

He is afraid to be caught in a net because Merlin is hungry and never saw Return of the Jedi.  But someone cuts the two down eventually, and the guy who rescues them knows both of them.  Arthur saved this guy’s life once.  Merlin knows him as the guy from the vision.  And the guy figures Arthur doesn’t recognize him.

Why should Arthur know this guy?  It was originally a different actor in the role.  Who is he?

Mordred.

Oh, and Gwaine found a tunnel, some guys attacked him, and then something found him unconscious.

My god…what is that awful-looking thing?  And by “awful,” I mean the CGI is really bad.