maybe i'm too woke but the way Merlin handles Morgana has always rubbed me the wrong way. the show starts with magic users being persecuted, imprisoned, executed, and forced into hiding under Uther's rule. that's not a minor detail—that's literally the foundation of the conflict. so when someone who's directly affected by that oppression becomes radicalized and wants revenge against the people responsible, the narrative treats her as the real evil instead of engaging with why she got there in the first place.
what gets me is that the show rarely questions the system itself. instead, it keeps presenting magic users as the villains. almost every major antagonist is someone who uses magic, and their desire for justice or revenge inevitably gets twisted into a lust for power. meanwhile, the only "good" magic users are Merlin or people who are willing to help Merlin. if you're using magic against Camelot, you're evil. if you're using it to protect Arthur and preserve Camelot, you're good.
and then there's the ending. Merlin kills Morgana, and Arthur says, "You brought peace to this land." peace? the land where magic users were hunted and executed for years? the implication is that peace comes from killing the woman who fought back against that oppression rather than dismantling the system that created her in the first place. it's such a bizarre conclusion because Morgana didn't just wake up one day and decide to be evil—she was betrayed, manipulated, isolated, gaslit, and lived in constant fear because of who she was.
i'm not saying Morgana was justified in everything she did. she absolutely became cruel and hurt innocent people. but the show spends so much time establishing why she changed and then seems to expect the audience to forget all of that once she becomes the villain. it turns a story about persecution into one where the biggest threat is the oppressed people fighting back. i know it's a fantasy show and i'm probably overanalyzing it, but the framing has always felt really strange to me.
