We deserved more of just Merlin
The little head tilt, the sweet voice and the tiny smile, the moment he asked Arthur:
“Don’t you?”
To Merlin, magic had always been there for everyone to see, to feel.
He is magic, after all.
For all those years, Merlin had believed what he felt was obvious, and that everyone else felt the same way. It was strange to Merlin that Arthur couldn’t understand that the forest, the animals, even the smallest, living in it, were sacred. Because life is sacred. He couldn’t grasp the reason why the knights couldn’t feel that the old Druids’ camp was haunted, and therefore didn’t believe him. He had literally heard death, and cried because of it.
“As if everything is much more than itself.”
The phrase could refer to him too. Merlin is much more than… Him.
That’s what brought his doom. He had never had the chance to truly know himself. He was either a servant, or the sorcerer of a prophecy, or a Dragonlord.
Never just him.
And in this moment we see he had missed being one with nature, breathing in the animals’ lives. He was himself again.
He was vibrating, much like anything else there living with him.
They never went deep into Merlin’s powers, they were just there for Arthur. Merlin had lost sight of what he wanted to do with them, he even forgot he was so powerful he could have overthrown Arthur himself, if he really wished to.
Merlin was the only man alive able to see Avalon.
During the knights and the king’s quest to save Gwen, Merlin met the Queen of a Queendom no one had ever even seen.
He could have killed Morgana (and did try) multiple times, although she was an High Priestess, and simply decided not to, but he had more than just the power to do so.
The Catha, the Druids bowed to him, met him in the woods, called to him.
Merlin created a telepathic connection with Arthur the first days he was in Camelot.
He survived death multiple times.
His immortality forbid him to die.
Merlin hated hunting because he could feel the animals being scared, followed; he had recognised Gwen when Morgana transformed her into a deer; he could hear the magic around him, inside objects and inside people, like a whisper, as if it was nothing; he could call lightning from the sky.
He could stop the time, or at least slow it down.
Every magical being knew him by name only. But he was not a leader, he was just different.
“Is she like me?” “No one is like you, Merlin.”
After everything he had witnessed, even Gaius knew Merlin was special and did nothing to help him understand why he was.
Merlin was the reason Aithusa was born, why Kilgharrah was free, and we were robbed of him getting to really know his powers, both as a Dragonlord and as the most powerful sorcerer to ever walk the earth.
He literally deleted himself just to be at Arthur’ side, and it hurt him. We saw it constantly. He was sad not only because everyone and everything was against him, or because he couldn’t use magic for simple tricks, but because he couldn’t really know what he could do, both as a magical being and as just Merlin.
To study his powers meant treason and death, and Merlin forbid himself to go beyond what he already knew.
His incapacity to understand, his lack of will to know, and his indecision about who he was, literally helped the fall of the great destiny he was a part of.
Merlin’s decisions, whatever he wanted them to happen or not, helped Arthur die.
Merlin’s real enemy was himself.