Magic Itself

Lancelot: “Will you ever tell Arthur?” Merlin: “I would like him to know. To see, just once…."    

When all else had been stripped away, we were left with Merlin and Arthur. With Arthur dying in Merlin’s arms, looking into Merlin’s eyes, telling him to, “Just hold me.” And instead of goodbye, it was “thank you.” While there was a lot left unsaid between them, and a lot of things Arthur never got to do, he died peacefully in the arms of someone who loved him.

It was Merlin who would be left alone, just as he had always been, and therein lay the true tragedy. But the dragon brought him that small, tiny speck of hope which proved once and for all that Arthur was the only thing which ever truly mattered to Merlin: “This is not the end. Arthur will rise again.”

And so, thousands of years later, Merlin is still at Avalon. He is still waiting for Arthur. “I was born to serve you,” he had told him once, and so it would always be. “Stay with me,” he had begged, but Arthur hadn’t been able to. Instead, Merlin had stayed with Arthur.

This isn’t about shipping. It isn’t about romance and whether or not you see it. And if anyone is rolling their eyes thinking, “god, get over the Merthur already,” you’ve been watching the wrong show. There’s nothing to read into here, there’s no “head canon” or other fandom conjecture. There was only the raw, honest story which the Merlin writers were brave enough to tell exactly as it should be told, and which the actors handled with commendable grace and integrity. -  BY SELINA W