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Dec. 21st, 2010 01:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
commotiocordisIn regards to Morgana in Merlin season 3.
Disappoint. So much disappoint.
So, Morgause obviously manipulated the fuck out of Morgie, right? All that time shacked up together, Morgause pretty much spent brainwashing her, and that's why she comes back all renewed in her desire to kill Uther.
Why didn't we see that? I mean, that seems pretty obvious, but really, there's been no support in anything Morgause has done (save maybe the implication that she has no compunction using anyone that we see from her manipulation of Cenred) in the actual show. As a result, we see Suddenly Murderous Morgana who all of a sudden has no love for any of her friends and she's turned flat and horrible and I pretty much hated it. Morgana is my favorite character, and to see her turned into stock Hot Evil Girl is horrible.
I'm not sure who to blame for that. I think there's a lot Katie McGrath should have been doing to introduce something--more hesitation to show hints of remaining compassion, idk, anything to hint that maybe the same girl we fell in love with in season 1 is still in there somewhere. But it's not like she's got a ton of acting experience, so then it falls to the directors to go "hey, maybe human her up a bit?" But certainly the writers and producers didn't give her a single excuse to be anything but either Hot Evil Girl or standing in the background, or hint that there's something more nefarious behind Morgause's relationship with her, or give her even half a moment of niceness to make us believe that in between Hot Evil Girl episodes she's able to stand in the background and pass as, you know, not evil, so I think it was just kind of a failure in orchestrating her character.
Which is a pity. I know the show's about Merlin, but I wanted a hint of the Mists of Avalon type Morgana in there, and I got all excited early on because I thought they might be going in a feministy direction--they made it so obvious that the men of the castle were conspiring to keep things from her because she's a woman and couldn't handle it (most importantly Gaius and Merlin with her magic) that I couldn't imagine them not turning that into A Thing. I guess we're supposed to believe that she assumes Gaius and Merlin didn't know what they were blocking, and that's why she didn't specifically target them when her powers came into light, but that's bullshit. She's not dumb, she knows that Gaius was around before the Great Purge, she knows Uther always asks Gaius to confirm that things are saucery, and if she heard Uther saying he was her father, it's hard to believe she didn't hear any of the rest of the conversation where Uther tells Gaius to use magic to save her.
Brings me to another point. All this love Uther has for her, and she doesn't have the slightest compunction about killing him and taking his kingdom, etc. etc.? She stopped when she was going to kill him once before, and there haven't been a whole lot of personal injustices (not nearly to the scale of being responsibleish for her "father" and actually responsible for Gwen's father's death) since. Idk, I just feel like even despite Morgause's Awesome Brainwashing(tm), we should see something in her when Uther crosses the one line that nobody ever expected him to cross in order to save her life.
So yes, the first time she planned to kill Uther, it was because of her not!father and Gwen's father's deaths. Gwen's father. She was about to kill her father figure and the precipitating event was the death of the father of this girl she presumably grew up with, who's her best friend in the world, etc. etc., boils down to they're true love, myth what myth.
Everybody's spent the entire show keeping secrets from her, from what her own nightmares really mean, to who her real father is, and finally, at the end of s3, to the fact that Gwen is destined to marry Arthur and be queen. I think she's so far detached from reality, thanks to Morgause's Awesome Brainwashing™ and the visions themselves being rather crazifying, that she's managed to miss that she can't really take Gwen's love for granted anymore. It's just been something so constant for her entire life at Camelot that it's beyond the realm of consideration that someone else would have captured Gwen's attention right out from under her (take that shippily or not).
And yet, it's gone.
Begin Super Special Season Ending Battle of Terror and Awesome and Destruction™, but even then, she has to give Gwen one last chance. Despite how she acted, I think Morgana was seriously really (if deludedly) hoping that Gwen would be all "No, Morgie, I'm totes on your side! Best Girlfriends Forever means Best Girlfriends Forever!".
Enter the picture that sums up my head canon for what was the final straw in the Morgana Is Actually Really Evil For Realsies Now game, which inspired this random rant.
Disappoint. So much disappoint.
So, Morgause obviously manipulated the fuck out of Morgie, right? All that time shacked up together, Morgause pretty much spent brainwashing her, and that's why she comes back all renewed in her desire to kill Uther.
Why didn't we see that? I mean, that seems pretty obvious, but really, there's been no support in anything Morgause has done (save maybe the implication that she has no compunction using anyone that we see from her manipulation of Cenred) in the actual show. As a result, we see Suddenly Murderous Morgana who all of a sudden has no love for any of her friends and she's turned flat and horrible and I pretty much hated it. Morgana is my favorite character, and to see her turned into stock Hot Evil Girl is horrible.
I'm not sure who to blame for that. I think there's a lot Katie McGrath should have been doing to introduce something--more hesitation to show hints of remaining compassion, idk, anything to hint that maybe the same girl we fell in love with in season 1 is still in there somewhere. But it's not like she's got a ton of acting experience, so then it falls to the directors to go "hey, maybe human her up a bit?" But certainly the writers and producers didn't give her a single excuse to be anything but either Hot Evil Girl or standing in the background, or hint that there's something more nefarious behind Morgause's relationship with her, or give her even half a moment of niceness to make us believe that in between Hot Evil Girl episodes she's able to stand in the background and pass as, you know, not evil, so I think it was just kind of a failure in orchestrating her character.
Which is a pity. I know the show's about Merlin, but I wanted a hint of the Mists of Avalon type Morgana in there, and I got all excited early on because I thought they might be going in a feministy direction--they made it so obvious that the men of the castle were conspiring to keep things from her because she's a woman and couldn't handle it (most importantly Gaius and Merlin with her magic) that I couldn't imagine them not turning that into A Thing. I guess we're supposed to believe that she assumes Gaius and Merlin didn't know what they were blocking, and that's why she didn't specifically target them when her powers came into light, but that's bullshit. She's not dumb, she knows that Gaius was around before the Great Purge, she knows Uther always asks Gaius to confirm that things are saucery, and if she heard Uther saying he was her father, it's hard to believe she didn't hear any of the rest of the conversation where Uther tells Gaius to use magic to save her.
Brings me to another point. All this love Uther has for her, and she doesn't have the slightest compunction about killing him and taking his kingdom, etc. etc.? She stopped when she was going to kill him once before, and there haven't been a whole lot of personal injustices (not nearly to the scale of being responsibleish for her "father" and actually responsible for Gwen's father's death) since. Idk, I just feel like even despite Morgause's Awesome Brainwashing(tm), we should see something in her when Uther crosses the one line that nobody ever expected him to cross in order to save her life.
So yes, the first time she planned to kill Uther, it was because of her not!father and Gwen's father's deaths. Gwen's father. She was about to kill her father figure and the precipitating event was the death of the father of this girl she presumably grew up with, who's her best friend in the world, etc. etc., boils down to they're true love, myth what myth.
Everybody's spent the entire show keeping secrets from her, from what her own nightmares really mean, to who her real father is, and finally, at the end of s3, to the fact that Gwen is destined to marry Arthur and be queen. I think she's so far detached from reality, thanks to Morgause's Awesome Brainwashing™ and the visions themselves being rather crazifying, that she's managed to miss that she can't really take Gwen's love for granted anymore. It's just been something so constant for her entire life at Camelot that it's beyond the realm of consideration that someone else would have captured Gwen's attention right out from under her (take that shippily or not).
And yet, it's gone.
Begin Super Special Season Ending Battle of Terror and Awesome and Destruction™, but even then, she has to give Gwen one last chance. Despite how she acted, I think Morgana was seriously really (if deludedly) hoping that Gwen would be all "No, Morgie, I'm totes on your side! Best Girlfriends Forever means Best Girlfriends Forever!".
Enter the picture that sums up my head canon for what was the final straw in the Morgana Is Actually Really Evil For Realsies Now game, which inspired this random rant.
