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Welcome back to our breakdown and analysis companion podcast for The

Cycle, Rise of the Merlin. I'm Megan Basham, culture and entertainment writer

Daily Wire.

We're experiencing the show together, then digging deeper into each episode.

Spoilers and all. So if you are not caught up on episode three, hit pause

because we are going to be jumping straight into the fifth century where

world has now changed.

Rome is gone. Britain is fractured. And stepping out of the mist to meet us is

an adult Merlin. He's goldenized. He's ageless. And he's already spoken of in

half whispers and half legends.

Merlin Emrys has returned to the land of the living.

Now, the first thing I want to note is that Tom Sharp is absolutely crushing

this role. So this is not the whimsical wizard of later medieval romance.

I'm Merlin.

But it's also not the doddering old man of Disney pop culture. What we really

have here is this otherworldly warrior prophet.

He's someone who's ancient, he's restrained, and he's very clearly

Fun fact, Sharp snagged this breakout part after a massive worldwide open

casting call, and obviously he nailed it. He brings all the mystery, the

gravity, and just... the right touch of menace. And we immediately see that as

the son of Vortigern brings the wizard to his father, Vortigern's men all know

Merlin's name. They say Merlin is of the fearful, my king.

They call him Emrys, immortal.

So his legend has clearly not been forgotten.

Now, Bede describes him as a king or warlord whose reign coincided with

Britain's unraveling.

after Rome's withdrawal.

And here, he's confused, because the Merlin he thought should be ancient.

Instead, Merlin appears young, and we know that that's Merlin's Atlantean

heritage coming out.

Time has marched on, and Taliesin and Charis are now names from the fog of

legend. They're figures who are already slipping into myth.

Taliesin was no mortal. He was an otherworldly being, as had been used to

mother.

Now, the Druids, bless their hearts, have apparently never heard of Occam's

Razor because they have decided that the reason Vortigern's fortress walls keep

collapsing is not because of something obvious like poor engineering, but

because of a curse requiring human sacrifice.

And that is extremely on brand for the fifth century. You can think of it a

little bit like that Parks and Recreation episode with Fred Armisen as

American general, bread gone moldy.

human sacrifice.

Walls falling down, human sacrifice.

Flu outbreak, believe it or not.

Human sacrifice right away.

So that's their answer to everything.

But Merlin, even as a chained, quote unquote, prisoner, radiates this calm

authority. And he tells Peleus that nothing will happen to him that is not

appointed. It's left unstated who does the appointing, but that echo of Christ

before Pilate is fairly unmistakable. You would have no authority over me

it had been given to you from above.

And that really brings us to one of my favorite visual moments in this episode.

As the fight between Peleus and Vortigern's son, Passion, is happening

Merlin, he just casually keeps working his pickaxe until he reveals the cause

the construction problem, a hidden spring collapsing the walls.

So now Vortigern knows that his druidic counselors are not to be trusted and he

executes them.

Then comes Merlin's confrontation with Vortigern. And this is where the episode

really sharpens its teeth because Merlin decries Vortigern for equating peace

with accommodation.

and he charges the king with giving the Saxons safe harbor to plunder the

British lands.

And again, that dovetails with the historical record.

Gildas, writing in the 6th century, blasts a quote -unquote proud tyrant who

widely taken as Vortigern for inviting Saxon mercenaries to fight Picts and

Scots. only for those Saxons to then turn on him and begin carving out their

kingdoms as Vortigern fled to North Wales.

Now, Bede names Vortigern explicitly as the British king who kicked off the

Saxon incursion around 449.

So Lawhead is masterfully blending myth and actual historical record here. And I

think what's really intriguing is that Vortigern is far more of a flawed

pragmatist than, say, a cartoon villain.

Because he's complex.

He's even likable in the way that he has the self -awareness of his failures.

Though, of course, he's no less deserving of Merlin's pretty Reagan

chastising here. You traded strength for peace.

But there'll be no peace without strength.

True in the 1980s, true in the 5th century, and true today because that is

rule of nation building and it never changes.

I had a vision.

Then we get to the vision.

The white dragon and the red dragon, locked in combat beneath the collapsing

fortress. Now, this is classic Arthurian imagery, again, pulled straight from

12th century cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of

The white dragon represents the Saxons. The red dragon represents the Britons.

Merlin prophesies that a high king will rise, a king who will unite the land,

but he doesn't yet know who that king is.

I do not know.

We also get another indication of the passage of time here.

Doffid, the young man who stood with Taliesin on the day of Merlin's birth,

now old, very old.

Yet we see from Vortigern's reaction to their appeal to Christ that Britain is

overall still pagan.

Now, in part, that's because petty kings like Vortigern have kept missionaries

like Dauphid from doing their work. So the Christian kingdom Taliesin foresaw

has not yet come to pass. That promise lingers, but it's not yet realized.

We also confront the question of unrealized promise in this flashback to

Merlin's youth.

Clearly, he was being trained to rule, and he expected to be a king.

So what happened? Why isn't he? Hopefully, that's... something that

some answers to soon, and we'll get a little bit more information about where

he's been and what he's been up to. But it's certainly an intriguing reference

to whether he will earn the name Ambrosius, meaning eternal or divine.

Seems like he did live up to that expectation.

And finally, the end of Vortigern as Merlin predicted.

Another British tribe that we don't know yet attacks, and it's a brutal fight

scene. Vortigern proves himself less than heroic. He hides and abandons his

so that there's an almost poetic irony when the very child that he ordered to

watch the archers back is the one who kills him.

But I do hate that that little boy died.

War is cruel.

Hey, Luther.

Son of Constantine. Then we move into the forest and we hear that name again

that should ring bells for anyone who's even casually familiar with Arthurian

legend. Uther, the predecessor to Arthur's throne.

But it's interesting because right now it's not Uther who's pursuing kingship.

Instead, it's his brother, Aurelius.

Aurelius Ambrosius is another figure who straddles both history and legend.

Gildas, once again, a 6th century British cleric, described him as a war

who resisted the Saxons and restored at least some measure of order.

And then we have later writers who folded him into Arthurian genealogy, and

Lawhead then follows that tradition.

Now, Aurelius is honorable and compassionate. He clearly wants to be a

kind of king, the kind of king who works for the good of all and sees himself as

the protector of his people, not just their ruler.

But we also know that there will be a fight over the High Throne, so we have

wonder if his decision to show mercy to Passant is eventually going to come back

to haunt him. But in the meantime, it's fascinating that he recognizes Merlin in

some way that we don't understand yet. It may be that he simply means he's

Merlin from the stories, or it may be that something more mysterious is going

here.

Then, as promised in our Episode 1 discussion, another sword.

Now, from Merlin's vision, we know the last time he saw this sword, it was in

the possession of the Roman commander Magnus Maximus, the Roman general who

declared himself emperor in Britain in the late 4th century.

Historically, Magnus Maximus was real. He ruled Britain and Gaul before being

executed in 388 AD.

In Welsh tradition, he becomes a heroic legend, so it's appropriate that Merlin

calls it the Emperor's Sword.

What we don't know yet is how Magnus Maximus came to have it, or how it ended

in the hands of Aurelius' father.

We know that Merlin says this sword represents Britain. And we know the

he had as a child of the sword rusting, as the kings of the realm argue, is

disquieting. But how does that differentiate it from the sword that

mother gifted to Taliesin? That we don't know yet.

But as we move on with the story, we see that distrustful Uther is not a fan of

Aurelius' plan to bring Merlin in as counselor. And he doesn't like Merlin's

plan of allowing the southern kings to desert and go home so they can

what living under Saxon rule will mean.

But Merlin does believe that he can rally support from the northern and

kingdoms.

Now, Peleus doesn't love Merlin's plan. We see him many times in this episode

questioning his master's judgment.

But Peleus is also smart. So like Elisha and Elijah in scripture, this situation

is one where even though he doesn't understand, he's going to continue to

and follow his master. And to comfort Merlin, Peleus brings out his harp. And

learned something really important about him in this moment. He's been carrying

this harp for 50 years.

So even though he looks about 19, clearly he must have some of that

ancestry.

Next, we move on to a slightly confusing scene where Uther approaches Merlin's

tent at night.

And it's a little unclear what his motivation is. Is he trying to rob him?

trying to kill him, wake him up, protect him? The show leaves that ambiguous.

And personally, I don't mind that because the overall sense that we're

is that Uther is a man of action, not introspection. So his intentions may not

always be clear, perhaps not even to him.

Then we move on to the Saxon raid. And it is immediately clear that Uther is

lethally effective.

This is not a man destined to be a philosopher king. This is a man forged

war. And it's a good thing, too, because finally we meet Hengist, the Saxon war

leader. And there is some debate among scholars over whether Hengist was merely

a legendary figure or if he was real. For what it's worth, J .R .R. Tolkien,

did make a great study of these materials and also, of course, drew on

The Lord of the Rings, believed that he was historical.

Either way, Lawhead treats him as both a symbol of invasion and also a man of

flesh and blood.

I'd say we've proven ourselves more than capable on our own. You slew the

usurper, Hartigan.

Now, Uther may not like Merlin, but he and Aurelius are going to need some

serious help because time is very precious now as the Saxons are taking as

of Britain as they want. And after all the bloodshed and prophecy, we return to

something small, something human and profoundly grounding, Caris. We find her

prayer in that old humble shrine after all the kingdoms and swords and dragons.

This is where the heart of the story still lives.

Britain is broken.

A new man is championed as king, but not crowned yet.

The Saxons advance. The promised high king has not yet appeared. But

Merlin walks the land.

And that, more than anything else, tells us that this story is far from over.

Episode 3 masterfully bridges generations.

It blends gritty history, things like Vortigern's doomed pact, Aurelius'

resistance, Hengist's rise, with this soaring myth.

So what grabbed you most?

Merlin's unflappable cool?

The dragon prophecy chills?

Or the legend of the Sword of Britain?

Hit us with your thoughts and join us next week as the pieces continue to move

towards Arthur's birth.

Thanks for joining us.

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