Merlin: Lancelot
The winner of Camelot Factor, in no particular order is…
Lancelot.
What, no pre-credit spell, Merlin you’ve confused me now you’re pickng mushrooms, wait, what’s this ooooooh! A GRIFFIN! (it’s my contention that Griffins are cooler than Dragons, cus they are weirder, Dragon = big fire lizard, Griffin = bad evolution oddness, lovely)
So, plot, synop…
Merlin picks mushrooms ‘long comes Mr Griffin (not voiced by John Hurt) seems to want to nibble on our lovely Warlock, gasp. Man jumps from trees, double gasp, he’s v. hot in a Vigo/Aragorn (but younger0 kind of a way, fights of Griffy in a sub-par CGI battle and saves lovely Merl.
Merlin brings a hurted hot boy back to Camelot and learns he wants to be a Knight and he’s called Lancelot (Heads up History fans, this is not an accurite description of the tale!). Luckily what Camelot needs lots of are knights as the Griffity Griff Griff is tearing through villages and nibbling on the people, om nom nom.
Cue Rockyesque montages of Knights faling at an X Factor style knight competition where they fight Arthur. Merlin makes a lie, shocker, and says that Lancelot is a nobleman and does a spell in a library to fake a seal. Lancy goes with the lie and beats up Arthur and gets knighted “arise Sir Lancelot” whoot… Uther smells a rat however and finds out he’s all forged, oh no.
Griffin comes to Camelot and files a bit until Arther scares it away with some fire - Gaius discovers it’s a magical thing (shock horror) and can be killed only by magic, Uther of course puts on his magic blinkers and says it can’t be. Arther goes to find Mr G and kill it but frees Lancelot on his way in some kind of odd gesture. Lancelot says bye to Merlin and that he’s gonna help the prince. Merlin goes too as Gaius has taught him a spell that doesn’t work yet.
Cut to Arthur getting beaten up, Lancelot using a Lance enchanted in the nick of time by Merlin and a dead Griffin, Huzzah.
Ends with noble Lancelot doing an “I’ll be back should it be my destiny’ speech and riding off to be seen in the season finale/series 2?!
My thoughts were a little meh on this one. Merlin came off a little poorly and the ramping up of the ‘love’ sory with him and Gwen didn’t quite work. Richard Wilson was amazing telling how much he cared about Merlin but the scene fell flat with Merlin’s non reacting face, shame as it could have tugged at the heart strings and obviously means Gaius is going to scarifice himself for Merlin later!
I’m very interested to see how this is going to end we’re 5 episodes in and I don’t yet know if it has hit it’s stride… hmmm. Next week seems interesting and I love Julian Rhind-Tutt but he looks a little too much like Arthur to me!
All in all it was a good episode but I feel the menace of the Griffin was underplayed. Nice that Lancelot knows Merlin is a Wizard (harry) though, as liberating as Cloe finally finding out that Clark is Superman!
Let me know, is anyone else watching it? Thoughts…?
