Merlin Season 3 Episode 10

I actually meant to comment on this episode earlier but just forgot to do so. So, before I forget again....


The tenth episode of the third season to the popular BBC series Merlin aired on Saturday, November 13, 2010. The episode was titled "Queen of Hearts" . The episode begins with a marriage scene between Arthur and Gwen. Of course, I think all of us Merlin fans were going "What on earth? When did this happen? And where did Uther go? (Not that we really care for him. LOL)" and half of us going "Yay, Arthur and Gwen finally married!". However, the happiness doesn't last for long as we quickly realized that this was only one of Morgana's visions of the future (Sigh, guess we'll just have to wait a bit longer). In order to prevent her vision from coming true, Morgana plans to brand Gwen as a witch. Knowing their love for each other, Morgana tricks Arthur and Gwen into going on a picnic. Meanwhile, she follows with Uther, who finds Arthur and Gwen kissing and becomes angry. Uther gives Arthur two choices: either Arthur agrees to never see Gwen again or Gwen will be banished from Camelot. Arthur, of course, refuses to agree and Uther is at a lost as what to do. Morgana furthers her plan by convincing Uther that Arthur only in love with Gwen because she is  witch and has enchanted him with a love spell. Gwen is thus wrongly accused of witchcraft and ordered to be burnt at the stake. Merlin, now, must figure out a way to save Gwen before it's too late. He uses an aging spell so that he may be caught putting a love spell under Arthur's pillow. He, instead, is accused and ordered to be burnt at the stake while Gwen is declared innocent and freed. Merlin tries to escape but is unable to reverse the effects of the powerful aging spell. Now it's Gaius's turn to figure out an antidote to the spell fast before Merlin is burnt (Of course, being the main character, we all know that nothing will happen to Merlin. After all, there's still three more episodes after this one and the show can't go on without Merlin!). Gaius is able to fix the antidote in time and Merlin is returned to normal. The only damage done was that Arthur thought that Merlin had spent his entire day at the tavern and now Merlin must spend the afternoon cleaning out the stables.

There are two major things that didn't quite make sense to me. We knew in a previous episode (Episode 9: The Eye of the Phoenix) that Gwen saw Morgana casting magic and now distrusts her. She event went to Gaius to confess her doubts about Morgana's intentions! However, at the beginning of the episode, Gwen acts as if nothing of the sort happened. You would think that there would be at least some sort of noticeable change in behavior in Gwen when she's around Morgana. Only after seeing Morgana smile while Gwen is being dragged out to be burnt at the stake that Gwen suspects Morgana again. Hello, you should have suspected her earlier!

Second, Merlin was imprisoned because he was unable to reverse the effects of the aging spell. While his physical self certainly isn't as mobile as he was before, his magical abilities should not have diminished. Why spend your entire day rotting in jail and waiting for you to be burnt at the stake when you could have just blasted the freakin' door open with your magic, run back to Gaius, and figure things out later? But, no, Merlin has to wait until the very last minute to escape.

One of the good things about this episode though was that Merlin had the chance to criticize Uther without fear. After all, Uther wouldn't recognize him and he was going to the dungeons anyhow. I got quite a kick seeing Merlin do that. Someone needed to yell at Uther for all the executions he handed out.