Darkwing Duck: Just Us Justice Ducks
This is it. 7 reviews, 10 episodes, 2 teams, 7 brave heroes, 13 villians but only 5 of which are relevant here. All leading to this. One big final review of one of the most loved, most important and most awesome Darkwing Duck episodes, the ONLY two parter outside of the pilot in the show’s long history. If your just joining us, as hinted at in the opening sentence i’ve been doing reviews of every episode of darkwing duck featuring the first apperances of the Justice Ducks and Fearsome Five. The only exception was Megavolt, but I ended up doing Negaduck instead, so I could cover both Megs and the original version of Negsy in one fell swoop (A great idea and comission from longtime supporter of the blog WeirdKev27). All so I could give this the build up it deserved and get the background I didn’t have years ago when I wanted to watch this, wanted to see all of the first apperances first.. then just didn’t get around to it, not even finding out the episode order is an utter nightmare.
While i’ve given out about this before, allow me to do so again: Due to prioritzing what got done first over proper order, ALL of the justice ducks first appearances eps were aired after this and while Morgana at least got an episode before this, it was her second appearance. Same with LIquidator and Quackerjack though like Morgana, Quackerjack still got an episode or two before this one. So yeah as a result to most kids it was a bunch of heroes just introduced, up against two new villians and 3 old faviorites. You kinda see the problem. It’s why I watched it in chronlogical order: to have this be a gathering of established heroes against darking’s worst foes... and the debut of the worst of THE worst, the true Negaduck at long last. So with the proper build this deserves and not much else to say, let’s look at this two parter and see if all my effort was worth it and if the hype is real. Let’s, get, dangerous under the cut
We open in St. Canard in Darkwing Duck’s secret HQ over the bridge, where he’s getting ready to go out with Morgana and does... things to his hair.
Excellently terrible hair do.. seriously I love a good pompadour as much as the next person, probably unheathily more than the next person, but this isa bit much and adding a curl to it is just..
I mean Superman’s hair looked better at this point, and for those wondering “Wait superman usually has a pretty good look”.. welll.
Yeah.. post-ressurection.. he had a mullet. Look there are only 4 people in the world who can pull of a mullet: Brock Sampson, Patrick Swayze (God Rest his soul), Hank Venture and Daniel Cooksy as a teenager. And he ALSO put a curl in it and it still looked okay because that’s one of this things along with being selfless, and idiots calling him bland for you know, being a kind hearted symbol of humanity at it’s best. But man the mullet was just not for you bud.
Morgana naturally tries to change it while Gosalyn watches and...
Yeah as you can probably guess a LOT has happened.. and all off screen. Morgana is not only fully on the side of good apparently, but she and Darkwing have gone from simply flirting with one another to dating AND Gosalyn has met her and they fought the astro mummies together.. no wait that was the Caballleros yesterday.. but still eveyrthing else is PRETTY important stuff and even with the messed up episode order the kind of thing you’d ASSUME an episode would be made about. I mean this is her meeting darkwing’s kid for fuck’s sake. That’s a big step in any relationship let alone one just starting out. And trust me, I didn’t miss anything: every other morgana ep seems to have them already in a steady relaionship. I DO think it’s stuff like this why some fans aren’t crazy about this relationship. Me I think he’s honestly too good for her.
But before they can go out for whatever vauge date they were going to have the power goes out and DW notices it’s megavolt and prepares to go after him only for Morgana to question him about their date.
Morgana.. sweetie.. the entire city is blacked out. Nowhere will be open. But Gosalyn offers an alternative, Morgana go along with him and while both are reluctant they go with it. So Darkwing confronts Megavolt... and soon finds a bunch of chattering teeth. Yup, it’s Quackerjack as the two have teamed up, and together easily defeat Darkwing, putting him in an electric chair. The two also really get along which makes sense: Both have similar personalities, being kinda nuts indivdiuals with a singular obession , which compliment each other as toys often need electric power after all. THey strap darkwing into an electric chair, that got dark fast and he begs morgana to save him.. only for her to accidently turn him into jello. I mean.. they say pudding but.. their diffrent things. Just because world famous sexual predator Bill Cosby promoted BOTH for the jell-o brand doesn’t mean Jello is magically pudding. If he could magically make one thing
Point is Darkwing is jello, the villians mock him then set up some kind of device and head off.. while also mentioning a mysterious boss. I wonder who it could be.
Nah.. too obvious. Darkwing is humilated and of course blames. morgana.. for saving his life.. as while the jello humilated him he’s also you know not dead.
Anyways Darkwing storms off while Morgana worries he likes her. Morg.. the guy got pissy because you saved his life the wrong way with some bad aim. And before that clearly just wanted you there as a trophy to impress you instead of because he valued you in any way but your looks, because let’s face it he’s shown no intrest so far in any way that isn’t superficial and neither have you in him. You both need to actually try to deepen this or end it.
Anyways enough me ranting at 90′s cartoon characters, it’s time for our next Justice Duck to enter the episode as Stegmutt is selling hot dogs now, but no one stops because they just.. run in terror. Poor guy, good thing he’s too oblivoius to notice. Maybe Dr. Fossil had a point.
Back to the plot and it turns out the next phase in the Fearsome Five’s plan is to take out the police... okay so wait are they the bad guys or not? Questions for later. Point is we get a nice mismatch as Bushroot’s timidity contrasts perfectly with Liquidator’s showman ship and he drowns them out. Darkwing prepares to attack, but gets interrupted by Stegmutt, refuses his help.. and we get the best and most iconic gag of the episodes: Darkwing makes a joke about playing pretend.. and senseing Stegmutt is a dummy have him pretend to “put out the darkwing”.. which equates to pulling a Droopy while saying “put out the darkwing”. So the two villians finsih their job and high five and this is one of the most charming parts of this 2 parter: the camradere between the five minus negaduck. The other four just.. easily bond and enjoy each ohters company, only fighting ONCE, and then being on the same page after that.
It’s also what makes them so deadly: the go too for ANY superhero team in any medium is to simply get the vilians to fight each other as most vilian teams are built on REALLY shaky ground, a mixture of egos and ambitions that unlike with most superhero teams, can’t really be overcome with the greater good.. because their only in it for what they want. The thing that keeps any of these groups together longterm.. is camradere. I’ts why the Flash’s Rogue’s gallery is easily one of the most dangerous; while there are outliers like the reverse flash, most of them are part of the rouges, and ascribe to their rules and morals.. and thus the camradre and support that comes with it. One guy with a cold gun or a super flamethrower or a weather wand or mirror powers.. is pretty damn tough. All four and more together, willing to bail one another out, having their own tailor and weapons hookups. The four remind me of that: a bunch of guys who have the common goal of beating darkwing but likely just.. hang out when not trying to do crimes. Well except negaduck, hence the four thing. By not being able to just easily turn them on one another, it means you HAVE to take them all at once. Even if you got rid of negaduck as both the comics and the 2017 reboot have shown.. you still have 4 immensley powerful, quackerjack included, supervillians who easily can work together instead of a bunch of angry assholes who tend to work better one at a time and just with a united goal. Point is Darkwing Duck is Darkwing Fucked.
Darkwing once again refuses help and yells at Stegmutt, because he’s been evne douchier than usual, and then makes the mistake of yelling at Neptunia, who promptly has her octopus friend throw him into the distance because .. well he deserves it. So while Darkwing patches up that wound to his pride and his spleen, we finally meet our vilians new boss: NEGADUCK. And... they do not explain why a guy who looks exactly like drake is here, if he has any relation to the other negaduck he was inspired by, or why any of them would trust him. This would bother me more.. if A) it wasn’t too much of a stretch for darkwing to have foes we hadn’t seen given the whole casefiles thing and B).. well okay this isn’t really a logical opinon but since when have that stopped me.
There’s a damn good reason that Negsy has one of the biggest episode counts of Darkwings villians. The guy is just.. the perfect foil to Darkwing, the Joker to his batman, the reverse flash to his flash, the green goblin to his spider-man, the sabertooth to his wolverine. He’s Drake’s equal and opposite number. While Drake can’t take two steps as Darkwing without wanting some attention, Negsy is happy to avoid having any until the moment strikes. While Drake wants attention as much as he wants to do the right thing, Negsy just simply loves doing what he’s doing. To quote the Spies are Forever song “Somebody’s Gotta Do it”
“Can’t you see.. how much I enjoy this, i’d never avoid this, cause buddy i’m a diffrent breed. This is my calling, and though it’s appaling, I love making people bleed.”
He just LOVES being evil. He’s as comically devoted to being a bad guy as Darkwing is to being a good one. He loves the idea of being able to shoot a bunny, he revels in his villiany and he loves every second. But as I said unlike darkwing he dosen’t let his flaws get in the way of his villiany as much. He still does on occasion, he’s still a version of Darkwing after all, but he has his eyes far more on the prize and is far less prone to distraction. He dosen’t care about toy deals or infamy.. he just wants to watch the world burn and laugh manically over the flames. While his obessions CAN be used against him.. as this episode shows it only lasts for a bout a second and he’s usually ready for it. He’s a Drake with no morals, no connections and few drawbacks. And he’s also every bit as clever, with him winning for most of the two parter. And not because the plot needs him too.. he’s simply THAT good at planning, with his plan here being geninely clever. I’m REALLLY hoping for Frank to lead the reboot because combining ALL of this with his reboot backstory will be divine if he gets to. Negaduck was very much worth the hype.
So his next plan, itself clever.. is to dress up as Darkwing and inflitrate SHUSH, taking out the next possibly thing that could stop them. And he does so easily, even while Darkwing is there and to show off just how friggin awesome he is predicts what Drake will say. The only thing that trips him up is drake hilarious pointing out a cute bunny, because he and the other Negsy apparently share the same burning hatred, causing him to get out his shotgun. And can I just say how wonderful it is he can use a shotgun? That’d never pass nowadays, which isn’t the worst thing but i do question why VILLIANS can’t be shown being reckless with fire arms. Their the bad guys, kids aren’t going to see it as a good thing. And they still equate laser guns with guns. They aren’t going to trivilaize gun violence because of Darkwing Duck or Looney Tunes.
Even being found out Negaduck still acomplishes his goal and floods thing. So now both the cops and shush are down, and things aren’t looking great. Darkwing’s still determined he can do this himself and beat them.. but it’s transparent that not only he CAN’T and won’t admit he’s outnumbered but freely admits he just wants the biggest win of his career by taking them all out 4 to 1. Probablem is.. he’s not spider-man and this isn’t the sinister six. As I said he’s not fighting a villian group whose egos clash so badly , at least whent hey first formed, they have to take turns or in later iterations have some member blackmailed in> Their working in concert. He needs help but as we’ve seen multiple times now Darkwing just can’t accept it. He has to be in the limelight and while he does have to relearn the lesson .. it works better here as personality flaws aren’t the kind of thing that fixes itself overnight. Sometimes never. It feels less like it does sometimes in cartoons, where the character just.. never fucking learns, and more like Darkwing has learned it.. he’s just so very human and thus can’t resist sliding black. Less peter griffin more bojack horseman is what i’m saying. I mean there are still bits of just poor writing, but for the most part his ego is like most of his enimies: he just can’t get it to stay beat.
So it won’t suprise you that when the national guard and gizmoduck are called he’s not happy. You may recall when I reviewed “Tiff of the Titans” I REALLY hated this verison of Gizmoduck. He was concited as Darkwing but treated like he wasn’t, treating the daring duck of mystery like a criminal for stupid reasons and was generally pretty useless and obnoxious. The fact that hamilton camps gizmoduck voice sounds not like a 20-30 something like Fenton is but like Grandpa Simpson mixed with a dash of dudley doo right dosen’t help.
It’s not lost on me that Dan Castellaneta’s character is NOT the one that sounds like Abe Simpson either. But while that problem is still around... the rest of them.. aren’t. Gizmoduck’s character development actually stuck from last time, so rather than be a dick to darkwing he’s warm, friendly and happy to accept his help when Darkwing shows up, thinking his old “Buddy” is just volunteering to help instead of screaming at him for doing his job. Not only that but while he still has elements of a standard superman type “Cape” hero parody... their more toned down and actually funny with him giving giant speeches, and that being useda gainst him and being over the top.. but still being the noble, big hearted hero you’d expect from the roll, just wanting to do good not for the Glory he gets anyway, but because people need him. In short.. he’s 100% better thsi go round. Well okay 80.. he still sounds like this.
Gos also brings Morgana along, because apparently she forgot the entire episode where her father was so obssed with being noticed he tried to upstage his 10-12 year old daughter... and you know the hundred other times Drake put his ego over his job.
So he naturally wants to shoo her while Gizmo. .warmly welcomes the help because he recognizes that people are counting on them not counting on him. Just then the villians make their move and activate the electro slave device from earlier which.. does nothing like that’d sound like and just creates a giant electrical wall, cutting off ST. Canard and bringing the plan full circle: The villains have now cut off the town and taken out almost anything that could oppose them. And despite you know everything Darking only gets more pissy when Stegmutt and Neptunia show up., Stegmutt because he still wants to return Darkwing’s change as Darkwing bought a hot dog from him and Stegmutt’s also a really sweet guy and Neptuina because well... .the ocean’s her thing and a bunch of bad guys just put a giant line through it she’s now on the other side of. Gizmo suggests the obvious: It’s a day unlike any other when a threat no one duck, or fish or dino duck, can face alone. It’s time to assemble! And Gos is more than excited about the idea, suggesting the name Justice Ducks which.. is honestly fairly weak in my opinon. Not BAD but very clearly just “Justice League” with Ducks in it. Given how good the series is at names, you think they’d of taken more than five minutes on this one. Maybe it was disney mandate I dunno.
But the concept itself.. is brilliant and I wish it came back in other epiosdes; Taking a bunch of other heroic characters in a setting and making them into a team is always a great idea, it’s why the tmnt unvierses have been using the mutanimals more and more lately, and they do ballance each other out nicely. You have a nice contrast of powers: while multiple have super strength, stegmutt is your bruiser, Gizmo is the tech guy, darkwing’s the strategy, morgana handles magic and Neptuina can swim in anything and is super strong and agile outside and inside water, so as long as she can keep hydrated, she’s useful> Which by the way has ALWAYS been the case for aquaman.. except the superfriends version.
He really does suck and ruined it for the rest of them till Jason Mamoa and his mighty abs, coupled with Geoff Johns run on the charcter that served as the foundation for that movie, finally rescued the character from a fucking decades old cartoon’s smear campagin.
They have the makings of a great team.. it’s just Darkwing dosen’t want a team and screams at everyone to get out and that he dosen’t need them.. I mean he does try to be softer on Morgana but.. he’s still a dick and she really should dump him. Seriously, their attraction is superficial, at this point at least we’ll see in Feburary if it gets any bettter, he dosen’t respect her as a person, and now he’s having to restrain himself at yelling at her.. for HELPING HIM. When he clearly needs it. Holy shit... I was not prepared for that amount of douche. And this would sink the two parter.. were this not clever setup for one hell of a downfall and not a key part of his character. Like has been said: Ego is a massive part of him, and as Tad Stones has put it his real arch enemy. It’s been the basis for several episodes and as we saw in the pilot was his motivation for getting into crimefighting in the first place. He means well and clearly has a heart.. but this is just as much about thwarting evil as it is the attention. And here it’s used perfectly as in the reverse of the gizmoduck episode, where he wanted attention but for fully understandable reasons and judged Gizmo more on stealing his thunder, which while petty i’ll admit is a bit fair given Gizmo did NOTHING in St. Canard but got the key of the city while Darwing had saved it multiple times at this point.
Here he’s being petty and selfish.. and he has no good reason. It’s just his own ego wanting the credit for everything when it’s not what he or the city needs. Honestly this feels like an ahead of it’s time parody of how Batman would be written when written poorly sometimes in the years after this episode: a massive dick who thinks he knows better than everybody else and everything else should be entrusted to him because he’s the goddamn batman, the kind who throws people out as potential parts of his family for petty shit and acts like a controlling ass and okay maybe this is spiralling a bit. But the refusal to see any other way is right? Yeah that defintelyf its darkwing like a glove and eveyrone leaves either bummed or pissed at him. And the most pissed? Launchpad who while agreeing to it, his face and tone clearly mean he’s disapointed in his buddy for acting like this when now is REALLY not the time.
And I wish.. we got more on this because Launchpad disappears till the ending scene after this. No really. Despite being Darkwing’s best friend and sidekick and despite warranting a spot on the justice ducks and despite having every reason to pitch in. he just vanishes. I mean Ducktales may of gone overboard in not having him around since Let’s Get Dangerous, but at least that’s a valid reason: he has another family, he’s really busy and Scrooge has another talented pilot to do the job for him. Granted he’s clearly still doing it offscreen at times but he was both a major part of an hourlong and will be part of any possible spinoff. And hell even back in season 1 when the character ballance was at it’s worst... Donald and Beakly at least HAD reasons for not being in a whole lot of episodes: Donald HATED his uncle, HATED adventure, and HATED the fact his kids were following in their mothers footsteps as he only saw death at the end of it. While they SHOULD have found ways to include him more and his exclusion was pretty bad... he at least had a reason. Here launchpad just has to go now his home planet needs him. And he’s not the only one Gosalyn gets more, she’s worried about darkwing, we’ll get to why in a second and wants to go but Gizmoduck refuses.. and then ALSO vanishes. Which makes even less sense as when has Gosalyn EVER listned to an authority figure? Especially when her dad might be dead? It’s just grossly out of character for her to agree to sit things out and not just tag along with steggmutt anyway once gizmo can’t stop her. I do get this is about the justice ducks but there’s no reason to neglect the other main characters. At least have Negsy capture them too or something. Cripes.
So yeah the “thinking he’s dead part”. Darkwing sets out to find the five’s lair and misses the big honking flag Negaduck set up, but finds a crumb, puts two and two together and finds them.. as Negaduck planned. Down to the crumb thing as, in my faviorite line of the episode, he planned on Darkwing missing the flag and focusing on the flimisiit clue instead. Naturally they kick his ass, EASILY, and throw him out a window to his death and in classic bond villian fashion don’t check for proof of death. Krakoa would be ashamed. So part one ends with darkwing duck getting thrown to his possible death...
Only for part 2 to pick up with him landing in a trash truck before exiting. And this.. is what makes the ego parts tolerable.. Darkwing.. earnestly reflects, depressed he let his own ego get in the way of things and shoo off his only hope, and thus let the villians take over the city, with Bushroot’s plants harassing people, quackerjacks teeth running the police, and Megavolt having taken the power company and using it to shake down locals and Liquidator flooding part of the city for a plan we’ll get to in a moment. He’s at his lowest point and tht’s while it work: his hubris DOSEN’T get unpunished, he’s fully sorry for it and while he dosen’t out and out apologize to them, he’s not only genuinely contrite but does work well with them and evenly when he finally does get back to them.. but we’ve got a bit to go before that.
So with Darkwing missing Gizmo takes over as big good and not bein ga prick eagerly takes the others help Neptuina nopes out of helping, which fits her personality, so with only three left because he dosen’t consider children useful which shame on you. I mean i’ts responsible from a real world standpoint but not from a cartoon show standpoint. But anyways they split up gang: Gizmo will go take the power plant back, Morgana will try and use her spells to find the lair and Stegmutt will find darkwing. I do like despite how they neglect Gosalyn that her friendship with Stegmutt was remembered and used as a plot point here.
So we then get to a rather repttitive part of the two parter. It’s not lacking in good gags or character moments but it’s basically the same scene repeated 4 times just with a diffrent scenario and gag for each of the justice ducks and the fearsome five member they encounter. They do their respective schicks the hero is defeated.. this is 5 or so minutes of a 20+ minute episode. Not TERRIBLE stuff, iv’e seen worse repttition, but not terribly intresting compared to the rest of the four parter.
So, Neptuina encounters Liquidator, whose scheme is selling rafts to people to not drown in exhange for a millioin dollars.. or whatever they have he’s not picky, and they fight but Liqui ultimately wins, Gizmoduck, in the best of the four sequences, swoops in to stop Megavolt and not only lands on his foot.. but spends so long speechifiing Mega gets him from behind, phrasing. Stegmutt hilariously tries disgusing himself with Groucho glasses and is bested by Quackerjack, and Morgana finds the lair but gets taken out by bushroot, though her pet spider archie escapes to go warn the others.
So after all that Archie makes it back to darkwing’s hq.. only for launchpad to squish him. “ew a bug!”.. just a great quick laugh. Thankfuly he’s more resilent than the average spider and is fine once Gosalyn scrapes him off and they now know the five are in trouble. Also I was wrong Launchpad does return.. for this one scene. And neither get into action once Darkwing returns and after an overly long bit of him deflecting blame to the point I was screaming.
That being said it is nice when once Darkwing is aware of the situation he gloats a little.. but still goes to save them without any hint of caring about doing it all himself. He learned his lesson.
So at the Lair of the five, Negsy shows what a sadsitc bastard he is, another great side of him.. from a writing standpoint at least. It shows that like darkwing despite a comedic exterior.. he’s VERY dangerous. And he’s set up speciic tourtures for each of the five he has: He’s hooked up Gizmoducks armor to a device that lets him control it’s power flow, so right now it’s entirely drained.. but he can overload it and electrocute him to death when he flips THE SWITCH. Neptuina is stuck under a heat lamp and will fry when he hits THE SWITCH. Stegmutt is stuck in a weightless enviorment that will also loose air when he hits THE SWITCH and morgana is in a chair that will crush her tod eath when he hits.. THE SWITCH... he really loves THE SWITCH and props to him. A lesser villian would’ve had all the traps have a diffrent trigger which while making it harder on any rescuers is just a time waster asking for the heroes he hasn’t gotten to yet to break free. And while it is based in his sadism he still fully intends to watch the deaths personally. Seriously he’s got all his bases covered.. and would’ve won.. if it wasn’t for the rest of the five.
The rest of the five are fighting over territoiry: Buddies they may be but they all want the pie. Negaduck, in his most badass scene shuts them up by pulling out his signture chainsaw for hte first time and scaring the crap out of htem, then using it to carve up the model of the city: They each get a quarter.. and he gets all the loot. Which they dont’ like but agree to to not die today. Though really... what’s the value of that? They have a full city held hostage, control over a quarter each, and no real way to SPEND the loot without letting someone else, say scrooge mcduck, in to stop them. Just give him the money and let him sit on it Smaug style. You get a quarter of a new york sized city to yourself to live out your dreams. I’d love that... maybe nto become a supervillian for that but still, point is you have carte blanche jsut take the W.
Darkwing meanwhile uses Nega’s scheme against him and plans to be delivering skulls, after flowers only piss nega off, and then knocks the guy out.. though his attempt at playing Nega fails as the Four have wisely decided that since they outnumber him and a four way split of the loot is better than none of it, to kill him. Nega.. is not pleased and just wants them to attack him, and they do, and it seems darkwing’s going to have a front row seat for THE SWITCH. But Darkwing recovers, and we get a great tug of war between him and negsy as the switch is turnd on and off on and off till Darkwing finally wins, and then frees Morgana and apologizes and has her free Gizmo, and so on and so on. So our team is reunited, Darkwing’s finally ready to lead and thus we get our battle cries
“Justice Ducks, ASSEMBLE!”
“Fearsome Five, GET OVER HERE!”
And the two face off
And the battle.. is fantastic. Easily the series best so far as everyone gets a moment to shine. Neptuina takes out both Liquidator and Megavolt, this time beating liquidator by creating a whirlpool inside him and turning him into a watery tornado and crashing him into megavolt before he can get stegmutt. Gizmoduck beats Quackerjack handily by using a drill on the teeth, great gag then giving Jacky some ansteic.. a boxing glove to the face. And Stegmutt takes on bushroot and when unsure of what to do.. we get a truly wonderous callback as Stegmutt.. honestly dosen’t know what to do.. so Darkwing gets some payback and tells him to “put out the bushroot, put out the bushroot” you can guess what happens next
Or if you want the more recent versoin
Point is three down two to go, and we get a call back to the pudding thing with Morgana trying to hit liquidator.. before Darkwing in a show of how much of a team player he is now, offers his help, simply having Morg teleport some instant pudding mix over the guy... I mean at least it’s brown this time even if i’ts still in a jello mold. And to finish it off he and gizmo awesomely use a mixer on both sides. So our heroes have triumphed.. almost. Negs has the controls for the barrier and runs out planning to destroy st canard if they refuse.. then being Negaduck decides fuck it i’ll do it anyway... but Darkwing stops him and we get a slapstick beatdown as DW uses an anvil a pie and other classics and utterly curbstomps his nemissi in an wesome scne. The day is saved, the generator shut down and the city freed.
So we wrap up with the Justice Ducks celebrating.. with Gos and Launchpad. I have an inlking how that conversation went.
Darkwing relcutnatnly is forced to eat his own words and admit he both enjoys the team and needed their help, before heading off on that Date with Morgana.. though Gizmoduck tries to make it a group thing. Dude no one likes a third wheel.. not even when i’ts ninja brian. So Darkwing uses the iris out to escape, but Stegmutt does try and give that quarter back first, with Darkwing, in a genuinely sweet moment, telling him to keep it and then going off, having earned his happy ending and grown as a person.
Final Thoughts:
This episode was WORTH the build up I gave it. It turns out I really didnt’ need most of the intro epsidoes, as while it enhances the villians the heroes are all given decent enough introductions apart from morgana so tht even without the context of how darkwing knows these people it still works. It’s a thrilling, tightly paced for the most part, hilarious and wonderful two parter that ties a huge chunk of the show together into one hour long masterpice. I had my issues of course and i’ve stated them: Gosalyn and Launchpad doing nothing, the pacing towards the middle of part 2.. but otherwise.. it’s perfect. It’ has a great character arc for darkwing on top of everything, once again having his ego bite him in the ass but in a unique enough way it dosen’t feel like a retread of the pilot, and having him genuinely feel bad about it and grow. a bit smug when he learns he has to rescue them sure but he’s never smug to the heroes themselves. And ironically.. he gets his big moment. While he dosen’t beat the five himself he still infliatrated their hq, beat up their leader, saved his friends and then beat negaduck all by himself AGAIN. It may of not been the big moment he wanted.. but it’s the one he needed.
As for the road to the justice ducks itself.. it was a fun ride. Only one honestly two bad episodes; Tiff otf the Titans and Paint Misbehavin and even those had their moments, paticuarlly Misbehavin’s art sequences. The rest of the episodes ranged from alright to standout and overall it was a hell of a time.. so i’m going to rank all the ones i covered leading up to this review.
Just Us Justice Ducks (Both Parts)
Negaduck
Beauty and the Beat
Dry Hard
Jurassic Jumble
Ghoul of My Dreams
Something Fishy
Fungus Amongus
Whiffle While You Work
Paint Misbehavin
Tiff of the Titans
And i’m proud to say this is the first ongoing project on the blog, the first story arc or what have you, i’ve completed. While I DID do a four parter of catch as cash can, this is the first one i’ve done over several months that i’ve completed and i’m proud of it. Does this mean i’m done with Darkwing?
Next week we’ll be wrapping up some more unfinished buisness with another Darkwing Double Feature, this time covering the short career of Quiverwing Quack and in Feburary, and the reason I spent so much time catching up, we’ll be seeing both Morgana and Negaduck again just in time for Valentine’s day. After that?
We’ll just have to see won’t we? So until there’s another rainbow, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
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no man can know his destiny...
...because if we told him what it was, he might decide to tell destiny to bugger off!
all right, folks. i am obviously eight years late to this party (party? maybe not party; that’s...maybe not the best word), and i am aware that everybody who was ever in this fandom has probably already consumed all the finale reaction posts that they ever needed to read. i am putting this S5 finale round-up together for my own purposes anyway, because now that i’m no longer avoiding spoilers, i want to make sure i get all of my own thoughts down on paper before i accidentally run into anyone else’s.
fair warning before anyone decides to invest their time: this post is sixteen single-spaced pages long. i am putting it under a cut here, so feel free to scroll on by.
with that said, off we go!
in a land of myth and a time of magic (i fell in love with a ten-year-old tv show):
so, to preface this, i think it’s pretty fair to say that i very rarely complain about merlin.
i watched the first episode of merlin on a complete whim - i was by myself, on a trip to atlanta, and despite the fact that i usually never sit down and just decide to watch random tv, i was scrolling around on netflix before bed and saw merlin and thought “oh hey, that’s always been on my list as something i thought i might like.” i clicked it. i watched it. i thought it was going to be a silly, fun, low-investment show i could use to fill the spare time on my trip.
it was silly. and it was fun. it was not low-investment. i fell in LOVE.
and i know this comes through in the way i write about it, like - the vast majority of the blogging i have done about merlin has come from a place of THIS THING IS GREAT AND I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT BECAUSE IT’S GREAT. sometimes the story will go places that stress me out or make me sad, but usually that hasn’t impacted my enjoyment, because generally, when i evaluate stories, i react more to my perception of the story’s integrity, as opposed to whether or not i personally ‘liked’ the ending. so i might personally prefer stories that don’t end in tragedy, but if the story has earned its ending, with integrity, then i won’t feel any desire to criticize it. i will talk about how sad i am or how low it made me feel, but if the story has earned its ending then i can’t - i just can’t argue with it. i have to respect it.
and i think i’ve demonstrated that well enough in all the other blogging i’ve done about merlin. with 5.10 and 5.11 particularly; i felt those episodes were impossibly tragic and dark and SO unhappy, but i respected the storytelling, despite this. i wasn’t hopping on here to make posts like ‘ugh this is getting so dark this episode sucks!!!’ i was writing about the story they were crafting - which, yes, WAS getting dark, certainly - and about how impactful it was (even when that impact was just “OUCH”). i was still deeply engaged, at that time.
so - i think i have earned the right to say honestly that the following analysis does not come from a place of ‘this was SAD and that makes it automatically CRAPPY!!!’ that’s not how i assess things. 5.10 and 5.11 were devastating, but i respect them. i loved watching them. i would watch them again. i thought that the show had the potential to pull off something masterful, after those two episodes.
but the one thing this series has always struggled with a little bit is follow-through. bbc merlin is at its finest when they aren’t afraid to go barreling after the moral ambiguity and complexities that their show inherently contains (‘to kill the king,’ ‘the sorcerer’s shadow,’ ‘the disir,’ ‘the kindness of strangers,’ ‘the drawing of the dark,’ to name just a few), and they achieve real greatness in those moments. but they sometimes pull back from the difficult questions they pose. and i can’t tell if it’s that they’re deliberately chickening out, or if it’s just some variation of carelessness or ineptitude that makes them fumble the ball, but the end result is that they hit these amazing highs of “wow, i can’t believe we’re finally going there; we’re addressing the central conflict” and then all the complicated questions they asked just get dropped.
it happens in ‘the sorcerer’s shadow’ (which is an amazing episode otherwise), when kilgharrah kind of...word-of-god handwaves away merlin’s conflict, saying ‘we just gotta wait for arthur to be king, that’s the right way to go about this.’ and they double down on this by having merlin say that it was gilli, not merlin, who had betrayed their kind - which is just not - that is not what that episode had been saying, up until that point! the entire point of that episode was that yeah, merlin has in fact gotten himself into a position where he’s made a morally questionable decision to serve a regime that oppresses him and others like him. they show us how conflicted he feels when he’s confronted by this reality. they show us that he knows it’s true. it was brilliantly done - and then they pulled WAY back.
but even then i don’t think it was like...unforgivable, at that point. it doesn’t break the story’s integrity; i can definitely believe that merlin would take that tack - i’m not sure he’s quite ready to confront/accept the reality of his situation at that point. so i get it. it wouldn’t be a big deal - if the show had eventually addressed/followed through on this conflict in the end.
and i think the same is true of the episodes leading up to the finale. they were dark and complicated and tragic, but they were telling an important story; and none of the terrible things we saw happening to the characters were dead-ends, story-wise. there was a place for that story to go. there was room for morgana to have her arc resolve in a meaningful way. there was room for mordred’s arc to do the same. the place in which we found ourselves at the end of 5.11 was as dark and complicated as merlin had ever been, and it was still bursting with potential.
and then you watch the finale and it’s just - empty. i described it as a paper castle in some other post, and that’s what it felt like. no substance. it was like they stuffed us on a bullet train and whizzed us past material that should have taken an entire season to handle, and you didn’t see any of it or feel anything because the trip took ten seconds and the scenery was a blur.
it honestly felt like they thought they had another season coming and then someone popped in and told them “actually you have to wrap this up in two episodes.” i can’t think of another way to reasonably explain how dramatically the quality of the storytelling downshifts between 5.11 and 5.12. i wasn’t watching the show then, so i don’t know, but it’s - at least if that had been the case, i would UNDERSTAND what had happened. it’s just insanity, otherwise.
so anyway, with all that said, here are my own reasons for why i think the last two episodes were objectively bad writing, as opposed to just writing i don’t personally like. nobody is obligated to agree with me on any of these points, but i’m also not putting them up here to debate them, really - i truly believe that almost everything i watched in the last two episodes was poorly-conceived.
(there’s an entirely different discussion to be had, of course, about the relative merits of ending your, uh, hopeful fantasy story on a bummer of a death knell, and i might touch on that later, but that’s a little bit more subject to personal preference, and honestly, it’s not the point i’m trying to make here, because to be frank, these episodes are bad without even getting into who lives and who dies.)
i. plot contrivances: EVERYWHERE.
i don’t mean plot devices. plot devices are important, in a story. a plot device is something like how merlin throws excalibur into the lake in 1.09, and then is able to retrieve it in 3.13 because of a choice he made to show someone compassion in 2.09, and thus he is able to save the day and defeat the undead. excalibur is a plot device, in that scenario - the ability to use it in 3.13 unfolds organically.
a plot contrivance, on the other hand, is artificial. it’s unnaturally convenient. it doesn’t feel convincing. it’s what you reach for when you can’t think of a way to make something happen, but a writer is supposed to look at these things when they edit and think ‘hey. if i can’t make this happen without it being contrived, maybe it shouldn’t happen. maybe i need to look at this again.’
so like, from the very beginning of 5.12, we have:
the face-sucker slug. never seen one before. never heard of it before. never given any indication that any such creature ever existed. never given any indication that “stealing” magic was something that could even happen. no idea where morgana found it. created for and introduced in this very episode, just to give merlin a reason to go to the crystal cave; removed from the episode ten minutes after it’s introduced, forgotten.
gwaine’s sudden girlfriend. NEVER SEEN HER BEFORE. NEVER HEARD OF HER BEFORE. NEVER GIVEN ANY INDICATION THAT ANY SUCH CREATURE EVER EXISTED. where does she come from? why do we care? (surprise: we don’t.) created for and introduced in this very episode for the sole purpose of explaining how morgana could get the information she needed to interfere with everyone’s plans, which was a contrived idea in and of itself, because it relied completely on making gwaine act like the kind of dope who tells a civilian military secrets.
you just. you can’t. if your plot point can’t function without a) introducing a brand new character in the penultimate episode of your show and b) forcing a long-standing character to do something they just wouldn’t do, you can’t use it. you just can’t. you have to figure out something else.
this lady’s very existence is nonsense. absolutely, utterly contrived. to waste that much time on a character we’ve never seen before and don’t care about, in the last two hours of your five-season show...incredible.
morgana’s army. they outnumber camelot’s forces “five to one.” where did they come from? how did she amass such a force? in season 4 she was losing all her allies - the episode with annis and caerleon was specifically designed to show us how people were turning from her methods and aligning with arthur. and then she spent two years in a pit. how did she amass such a force in such a short period of time? what could she offer them? why do they fight for her? there is no explanation of who the “saxons” are or what they want - the show just needed an army for camlann.
aithusa. aithusa was, apparently, just a vehicle to enable mordred to obtain a blade forged in the dragon’s breath. beyond that, he served no purpose. he literally just vanishes, along with that entire storyline - the future of the dragons, everything - just dropped, forgotten, never mentioned again.
morgana in the crystal cave. “gee, i finally caught merlin, the guy who’s supposed to be my doom. i think i’ll just...trap him behind some rocks. wouldn’t want to kill him, while i have him completely powerless and at my mercy. how then would he escape from this super powerful magical cave and ensure that the next step in this impossibly weak plot unfolds?”
the crystal cave itself. what is the entire point of this detour? killing time while arthur and merlin are separated? i mean, the whole “merlin loses his magic for all of five minutes” thing was a contrivance itself, just to ensure that merlin and arthur had a reason to be separated during the battle. but even putting that aside, once merlin is in there, and balinor says ‘you have to go into the light to discover who you truly are, you have power of which you cannot conceive’ - what purpose did that serve? all we see merlin do once he gets to camlann is call down some lightning. he’s done that before. he...he did that in season one.
the entire detour in the crystal cave changed nothing. it was a contrivance to mark time so merlin didn’t arrive at camlann at the same time as everybody else.
arthur at camlann. the idea that we are supposed to believe that arthur somehow finds himself all alone on that battlefield, long enough for mordred to sneak up on him and stab him and for him not be found by a single other human being until merlin shows up. he is the KING. there is no conceivable circumstance where his army lets him go wandering around by himself after the battle has been mostly won. it doesn’t make sense. it isn’t believable. it’s a contrivance to make sure mordred has an opportunity to get him.
“only the sidhe possess such magic.” the SIDHE????? you guys. the last time we saw the sidhe was in that gooftastically wonderful filler episode where a pixie wanted to bone gaius. you can’t - you just - you can’t center your entire ‘this is how we save arthur’ plan on a race of beings that we haven’t heard of since early season 3 and which we never knew anything more about than that they once possessed a farting princess.
“not without the horses.” are you telling me. that the reason they don’t make it to this fabulous isle in time. is because. their horses. were conveniently scared away. that’s what killed the glorious once and future king. the horses ran off.
and the horses conveniently ran off because they were conveniently scared away by morgana, who conveniently happened to show up because she was conveniently put in a position to extract information from someone who conveniently knew where arthur was going - all of this, of course, predicated on the impossible-to-believe assumption that a) gwen would ever tell anybody where arthur was going, when the stakes were this high, when nobody needed to know and camelot had already fallen prey to spies multiple times, and b) that gwaine and percival would, if they did for some reason know where arthur was headed, be so foolish as to literally serve themselves up to morgana on a plate, when they know that the whole point of this scheme is that they WANT morgana to hang out in brineved wasting her time in order to allow arthur to reach the isle safely.
I SAY AGAIN: if your plot point cannot function without making characters do things we just do not believe they would do, you can’t use it. you can’t. you have to revisit what you’re doing. you can’t just make anything happen that you want to in order to drive the story to the place you want it to go. it has to make sense.
kilgharrah. is called just in time to deliver a pat explanation of the ending, but not in time to shuttle arthur over to the isle? merlin could have called for a ride ages ago. merlin and arthur weren’t traveling fast, or far. it’s not like kilgharrah was having that much trouble getting around. we see that he handles carrying the two of them just fine. we see that he flies away, zoop, no problem. there is no reason for him not to have been called even a single hour sooner, other than that the plot demanded that he could not be, because the plot demanded that arthur not get there in time.
it breaks the boundaries of disbelief. it takes you right out of the story. it reminds you, inappropriately, that all of this is a thing someone planned (poorly). all of it is contrived.
ii. dropped plotlines
i can’t believe i actually have to say this.
i’ve seen tv shows tank before, but usually, when tv shows tank, it’s just that the quality of their writing has declined, and they’ve resorted to resolving their plotlines in ill-conceived ways.
i have never, in my life, seen a tv show DROP all of its major plotlines before it ends. i have never seen a tv show just. FORGET. to address their premise. never. i still can’t believe it actually happened. i’m sitting here trying to remember if the merlin finale was actually some kind of anxiety-induced fever dream i had while i was gearing myself up to watch the last few episodes.
merlin bbc had, at its outset, two major plotlines. these would be supplemented later by other throughlines (many of which were also dropped), but the two major ones always stayed the same, one for arthur and one for merlin:
for arthur, the question of him one day becoming the greatest king in history and uniting the land of albion
for merlin, the question of him one day liberating the magical community from oppression and being able to live free from fear
those were the two constant throughlines in this show, from episode one. the struggle to unite the land of albion, and the struggle to make the land a free and just one for ALL of its people, not just those without magic.
this show, somehow, ended without actually addressing either of these things.
it’s amazing. i don’t even know how they managed it. somehow, this show ended without actually ending.
to elaborate on this (and other dropped plots):
a) the once and future king: we never see a united albion. the show is driving at it, in seasons 4 and 5, when arthur makes peace with annis in S4, and then gets annis’s permission to travel through her lands in 5.01, and then helps Mithian’s father in S5, and makes peace with odin in 5.04, and then tries to make peace with the sarrum in 5.08, and it’s all making sense, and you expect that plotline to continue until we see its eventual fulfillment at the end of the show. you would expect, if this were supposed to be such an important thing, that the big struggle at the end of the series would have been all the peoples of albion united together against a threat.
but we never see any of these kingdoms again. we never hear a peep out of them. no one ever mentions them. it’s like they all just vanished into the wind. as far as we’re aware, camelot fights morgana’s army on their own - it’s like annis and odin and godwyn and rodor and those five kings that came together to sign the treaty in 2.10 never existed.
the dragon says at the end, “all you have dreamt of building has come to pass,” but we’re just like - WHERE? we literally didn’t see it! it was never shown to happen! you can’t just say that the most important outcome of your five-season series happened when it never did! it demonstrably NEVER DID! you can’t…..oh my god, you can’t...try to end your show offscreen, lol; i don’t know what else to say!
look - this is something i wrote before i knew how the series ended, when i was considering the possibility of arthur dying:
i wrote that before i even knew what happened. that’s not the result of, you know, retroactive complaining because they killed a character and i didn’t like it. i was doubting the idea that they would even be able to kill arthur, because i legitimately didn’t believe the show had shown us the uniting of albion yet (and they hadn’t, lol).
it just...it truly doesn’t make sense. something got tangled as they approached these last episodes. in 5.10, finna tells merlin, “without you, emrys, arthur cannot build the new world we all long for,” indicating that it hasn’t been built yet. but that scene takes place just a few weeks before the finale - you’re saying “the new world” hadn’t yet been accomplished at that point, but now, a few week later, it has? arthur didn’t DO ANYTHING in that interval! we saw camelot fight off a bunch of invaders (alone) like they’ve done a billion times before. there was nothing to hint that now albion is united.
and if finna was referring to the “new world” meaning a magical world, i mean - arthur didn’t do anything to build that, either. he died.
something happened. some wire got crossed. i don’t know what it was, but it meant that the show ended without actually closing out Main Plotline #1.
b) one day, we will be free: this show also somehow managed to end without addressing the plight of the magical community, which was THE central conflict of the show for all five seasons. more than that, it was the show’s premise - it was how they crafted their entire idea; it was one of two defining features of their pitch to BBC: that they would “wind back the clock” to when the characters were young, and that magic in this universe would be outlawed.
they literally abandoned the show’s premise. the episode directly preceding the finale was entirely about camelot’s wrongdoing and the right of magic-users to stand up and fight for their rights. it is not a crime to fight for the right to be who you are. and then we literally never heard a word about this struggle again. it was dropped like a hot sack of bricks.
IMPOSSIBLE.
and yet
it’s just left, twisting in the wind. we have no idea what happened. the one and only glimpse of camelot that we get at the end of this show has nothing to do with magic; it’s grim and somber people chanting ‘long live the queen’ in the throne room. and then we’re gone from that place, forever, never to return. it’s like they don’t even remember that ‘freedom for magical folk!’ was the driving source of conflict for the entire show. you would never have known that “magical oppression” was ever a feature in this show, if you just watched the end. camelot’s wrongs are never addressed, never referred to, never amended. the fate of the magical community is never hinted at. we don’t have any inkling of what happened to those people. we literally do not even have any indication of whether the magic ban was lifted.
it’s like none of that ever existed. it’s like the show just FORGOT its entire premise.
this truly might be the most unbelievable thing about the finale, for me. i’m still having trouble wrapping my head around it. in a roomful of writers and editors and producers, not a single person pointed out “hey uhhhh...we haven’t actually resolved either of our plots?”
i was exposed to enough vague reactions from fans to expect the finale to be disappointing. i assumed that the show would resolve its major plotlines in ways that i either didn’t approve of or found unsatisfying.
i did NOT expect them not to resolve their major plotlines at all.
i have never seen a tv show literally forget to end. never. never seen that happen before in my life.
c.) i am the last of my kind: the reveal of merlin as a dragonlord ushered in a third important plotline - his responsibility to the dragons, his duty to protect them and help them thrive. and the question was always ‘all right, so as a dragonlord, how is merlin going to ensure the survival of the dragons as a species, since they’ve been almost exterminated - .’ and that was also dropped. like a hot potato. like it never was. we never get clarity on what the heck was going on with aithusa, and then at camlann, aithusa just vanishes. gone. literally never to be seen, mentioned, or wondered about again.
d) i am old, merlin: this is a smaller thing, but in 5.10 the show starts this subplot about kilgharrah being unwell and merlin suddenly confronting the idea that kilgharrah is not, in fact, immortal. and it was actually very poignant and made me emotional despite how kilgharrah kind of drives us insane. they set us up for the idea that we are going to lose him. they set us up to expect that we will eventually see merlin arrive at a place where he doesn’t have that voice in his ear anymore, kind of like when luke goes to cloud city and obi-wan can’t help him.
but then, in the finale, kilgharrah just shows up like he always does, and there’s no mention of anything that came before. he’s fine.
it’s - it’s inconsistent, it’s not appropriate; there’s no emotional throughline. the exchange they have in 5.10 is such a beautiful moment, when a wavering merlin asks “what will i do without you?”
and kilgharrah says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world, “you will remember me.”
that’s such a powerful thing. for someone like merlin, for someone who has lost so many people who mattered to him - you can feel that line expand to cover miles and miles of ground. it’s about more than just kilgharrah.
but having kilgharrah then show up at the end of the finale to deliver his neat little explanatory summary the same way he always does dilutes that previous moment down to almost non-meaning. there’s no emotional consistency. they emotionally prep us for this figure’s departure, and instead he shows up, the same as always, with no reference to the fact that a few episodes ago we were getting ready to watch him leave us.
it’s not good writing. it just isn’t good writing.
iii. i want you to always earn your ending
i think it’s hard to come to grips with the idea that bbc merlin was specifically a show whose kind of...big premise was being a deliciously torturous slow burn up to some massive and long-awaited reveal, and then it fizzled just before it gave the audience what it had been leading up to for five seasons. it’s really just...wow. i’ve seen shows fizzle before, obviously, but the fact that this one was specifically built on the idea that you were waiting for something momentous (and inevitable!) to happen - which then doesn’t happen? that’s just...hoo boy.
the long-awaited, promised “payoff” doesn’t happen in any way that is convincing or satisfying or remotely plausible. it’s a little walk in the woods, and it ultimately doesn’t matter, because as soon as it’s over, so is the show, and everybody except merlin is long dead.
not with a bang, but with a whimper, indeed.
for a show that had its audience waiting on tenterhooks for five seasons for merlin’s secret to be stripped away, the fact that the show’s biggest “payoff” ended up carrying so little weight and feeling so unconvincing is truly a shame. there was no way for the show to give this concept the weight it deserved by flying through it in thirty minutes. the audience knows that there’s no way this could have been resolved so quickly, so everything that happens between the “reveal” (such as it was) and the end feels...false. it doesn’t seem real. it’s not believable. it feels (again, to use the word that truly sums up the entire spirit of this finale) contrived. rushed and squished together to be neatly tied up in the time they had available.
and that’s poor craftsmanship. stories shouldn’t feel like ‘well, i needed to reach x destination no matter what, so i made this that and the other thing happen to ensure that we got there.’ a reader/viewer shouldn’t be able to sense the presence of the author. they shouldn’t be able to feel the hand of god reaching in and arranging pieces to force a conclusion or extract an emotion that hasn’t been earned.
stories, if they are crafted appropriately, should feel like they have no author at all. like they just are. like everything that happens is the natural next step to whatever came before, as if events could not possibly have unfolded any other way. and i don’t feel like the “reveal” and arthur’s reaction to it met those criteria. all the supposedly super sad and emotional moments they were having at the end made me feel absolutely nothing, because the things arthur says don’t feel real. they haven’t been earned in-story. i felt like i was watching that sequence from a hundred miles away...just like...clinical. removed. like i was taken completely out of the story. like i was in the lighting booth of a theater watching some scripted scene play out below me.
(and this might be the time to mention that this has NOTHING to do with the actors. the entire cast was killing it. they were AMAZING. their performance threatened to wring emotion out of me even despite me being completely unconvinced by the idea of what was happening.)
but that aside - how can you stay immersed in something when you can feel the creator’s hand coming down and forcing a resolution that doesn’t make sense, that hasn’t been earned? it snaps you right out of the suspension of disbelief that all stories require you to maintain in order for you to engage with them. the writers needed arthur to say these things sometime before the end of the show, and so he says them, regardless of whether or not it would ever actually happen like that. but i didn’t believe it, because it wouldn’t have happened like that, and so the emotional impact was zero.
here’s the truth: you can’t use lines like “i want you to always be you” and expect me to get weepy about it when you haven’t earned that kind of resolution. it’s a false tearjerker. the writers are relying on our previous emotional attachment to these characters and our burning desire to see merlin validated in order to slip a contrived resolution past us without actually doing the work to make it plausible. they’re playing on our affections in order to cover up the structural shortcomings of the story they cobbled together.
i don’t like when a story tries to manipulate me like that. i’m not going to play that game.
iv. you are destined to be albion’s greatest king (*thor face* are you, though?)
i think there are probably some people out there for whom arthur’s death would have been a dealbreaker no matter what the rest of the story looked like. i respect that.
i’m in the camp where i could have accepted the ‘legend-compliant’ ending, if only it had been earned. as it is, arthur is never allowed to fully realize himself before he dies. the show keeps saying, and i quote, “one day you will be the greatest king this land has ever known,” but arthur skips off to avalon after having reigned for a whopping total of three years, during which time he is not shown to accomplish the only goal that was prophesied for him (uniting the land of albion) and during which time he also becomes further entrenched in his father’s anti-magic views (along with the hypocrisy of using magic for his own purposes), as opposed to ever seeing the error of his ways. he doesn’t right his father’s wrongs. he doesn’t usher in justice and freedom for all camelot’s people. he doesn’t change the status quo in camelot much at all, to be honest - and then he dies. and they try to tell us “there will never be another like [him].”
how? how can that not fall completely flat? he hasn’t accomplished his goal yet! he hasn’t become what they’ve kept telling us he will become.
so i can understand the ultimate plan of arthur shuffling off this mortal coil and being prophesied to return, and i could even accept that as an appropriate ending, but not when it hasn’t been earned. the way it actually unfolded, watching this moment feels like we skipped a season somewhere. it feels like a sham.
we’re being asked to give arthur credit for something he did not actually achieve, and it makes the whole thing feel like a farce.
v. gratuitousness and inconsistency
i had no emotional reaction when i realized they had actually killed gwaine.
that is insane, because you know how much i love him. but his death was so ridiculous that I actually started laughing in disbelief. and that in and of itself should be a sign that something wasn’t working. when your emotional beats are landing this wrong - falling this flat - something has slid fundamentally sideways with your storytelling.
i laughed when they killed my favorite knight! but what other reaction was i supposed to have? it was laughably silly! the premise itself was already foolish - that gwaine and percival would even come out here and endanger arthur in that way - and then gwaine dies because morgana used a nathair to extract information from him? we’ve seen morgana use the nathair twice before! she tortured elyan with it. she used it on alator. neither of them died. it’s never been indicated that being tortured with this creature will kill you. which isn’t to say that it can’t be the case, but from a writing perspective, if you’re going to use a sudden inconsistency to kill a major character, it’s noticeable! it’s jarring! and it makes us feel, once again, that the writers just grasped at any little thing they could think of to make what they wanted to happen happen.
and then there’s the whole question of why they wanted gwaine to die in the first place. what purpose did it serve? gwaine didn’t have to die in order for morgana to get the information the writers wanted her to have. and you’d assume that if they still killed him after that, that there would be a reason for it, or that it would at least...matter, somehow, but - WE LITERALLY NEVER HEAR ABOUT HIM AGAIN LOL. i wasn’t even sure he was dead at first. that’s how insignificant it felt. i felt like zuko in the ember island players.
that’s it. we never see him or percival again after that scene. there’s this weird moment where percival examines a footprint and the implication is that he’s going to follow morgana or something, but then it never happens. it’s like the showrunners ran out of time and were like ‘ok well, we just won’t be able to get back to that dangling thread.’ they gratuitously axed their most developed knight and then forgot they did it.
that’s why i laughed. it was so unbelievably bad - there was literally nothing else for me to do.
vi. let the bodies hit the floor (but like, anticlimactically)
i don’t feel like i need to examine mordred and morgana’s fates too closely, because i suspect the subject of “they deserved better” has already been done to death, and that’s kind of a different conversation than what i’m dealing with here. i’m not here right now to argue that they should have lived (though of course, yeah, i have my opinions on what would have made a better story), i’m just here to deal with how ineffectively the story we did get was executed.
one thing that amazes me is that when i watched the S5 deleted scenes, i realized that the showrunners did in fact originally have the right ideas about making morgana and mordred’s arcs deeper/more nuanced, but somehow these ideas never made it into the final cut. there are two deleted scenes that change so much about what could have been - one where arthur and merlin are talking about morgana and arthur is expressing regret and confusion about what happened to her, and merlin says it’s not arthur’s fault, that “there were others better placed to help morgana,” indicating his own guilty feelings.
and the other one was after mordred defected to morgana, where he has a whole conversation with her about how he thinks there is still GOOD in arthur!!!! he’s uncertain about what he’s doing! I JUST
i can’t believe
they had the seeds
of this better story
and they consciously decided not to pursue them. it’s not like they didn’t have the idea. it’s not like they just never thought of it. they thought of it, filmed it, and deliberately removed it. unfathomable.
it’s also pretty remarkable that the big baddie they’ve been touting for the last three seasons just pegs out from a stab wound in about 5 seconds as we’re being hustled on to something else. there is no space devoted to morgana’s death scene (such as it was…). it’s a parenthesis. it feels like, ‘oh we gotta get this out of the way quick hurry up let’s move on.’
and the thing is, i am not wholly opposed to the idea of morgana ultimately destroying herself - it’s not necessarily my first choice, but there are ways they could have gone that route and still told a meaningful story - but if they wanted to go that way, her death would have to matter. it would have to be treated like the terrible failure it represents. it would have to be given the weight of tragedy.
but structurally, the way this scene is set up, there is no way for this to happen. the viewers are already hyper-strung out on tension, when she appears, because they’re suddenly starting to get this horrible realization that one of the show’s two central characters might actually be about to die, but nobody wants to stop clinging to hope despite their bad feelings so there’s just this desperate, screamingly loud ticking clock running in the background, and when morgana shows up in the middle of that clenching fear, there’s absolutely no way her death can receive the attention she deserves. the audience doesn’t have room for something like that. they don’t have room to feel anything on top of what they’re already feeling. they’re already about to explode. they’re already maxed out on investment. they can’t focus on her; they want her to disappear because something more urgent is going on.
and so the show hustles us past her, and her death is just this blip. it barely registers. if you sneezed, you would miss it.
(and then mordred, for his part, doesn’t even have the benefit of a structural problem to explain the anticlimax of his death. he just gets taken out like the trash. for a character that they just spent all this time developing and making sympathetic - boy.)
i think...the thing, ultimately, is this: if this show truly felt that what they had to do was take their previously hopeful premise and stun their audience with the death of the hero, then they should have understood that trying to stack other things on top of that is too much. trying to squash morgana’s death right up against arthur’s is foolish. it’s ridiculous to expect your audience to be able to process morgana’s death and arthur’s in-progress dying at the same time. these two things happen within two minutes of each other. the audience has been following these characters for five years. it’s unreasonable to expect your audience to hold so much emotion at once.
vii. you’ll just have to trust me
the last thing i want to say is a more general thing.
the rest of this analysis focused on the ways in which the finale is poorly-crafted, rather than on my personal feelings about who they did dirty. it’s not really about my own personal thoughts re: the merits of killing gwaine and morgana and mordred and arthur or stranding merlin across the centuries; it’s about if these things (and all the other things in these episodes) were done effectively, and the answer, sadly, is no. the show could have killed all these people and still written something i would have respected (even though it would have been devastating), but that’s not what happened.
but here, at the end, i think i can make room for a little sentiment.
so what i want to reflect on here is this: ultimately, i don’t end up rejecting stories just because they do things i don’t like. the pre-finale episodes were filled with things i didn’t like. i hated how merlin turned mordred and kara in instead of letting them run. i hated how he let the execution proceed. i hated how arthur refused to see the injustice of his own actions. i hated how merlin was getting so wrapped up in ‘make sure arthur doesn’t die’ that everything else was fading away, that he was doing things he could never have done in good conscience before. but i was still deeply wrapped up in these stories, because i believed they were plausible and true. i accepted them. it made sense to me, that these things would be happening, dark and unpleasant as they were.
i don’t start rejecting stories just because they go places i don’t want them to go. i start rejecting stories when i feel they’ve betrayed my trust.
writers and readers/viewers can only ever move together if they trust each other. i allow stories to take me places i don’t want to go because i trust the authors to keep me safe while we travel. i know that they may take me somewhere i don’t want to be, but i trust that they will never take me somewhere i don’t need to be. i trust that they are taking me somewhere intentionally, with the story’s integrity in mind. a creator i trust can take their story anywhere, because i know they will take care. a creator i trust can end their story tragically, because they remember that i am experiencing it alongside them. they don’t surprise-punt me off the edge of the cliff so i can crash, alone, into the painful conclusion. they carry me the whole way, and by the time we get to the end of the line, we can both look back and see that the road that led us here was straight and true. i don’t fault them for taking me here. it was the right place to go.
the end of merlin didn’t feel like that to me. putting aside the fact that it was all so contrived that it didn’t even feel real (illustrated clearly enough in the ten pages above) - the truth is that even if it had displayed the highest quality writing in the world, the way this show ended felt like the audience had been abandoned. the bond of trust between the creator and the consumer was severed. the show forgot to take care.
i’m a ‘galaxy far far away’ girl first and foremost, so i’ll borrow an excerpt from the world according to star wars in order to make my point:
kasdan: i think you should kill luke and have leia take over.
lucas: you don’t want to kill luke.
kasdan: okay, then kill yoda.
lucas: i don’t want to kill yoda. you don’t have to kill people. you’re a product of the 1980’s. you don’t go around killing people. it’s not nice.
kasdan: no, i’m not. i’m trying to give the story some kind of edge to it…
lucas: by killing somebody, i think you alienate the audience. (x)
i think merlin forgot this.
i’m not saying that merlin shouldn’t have killed anybody at the end of their show. i’m not even saying that they shouldn’t have killed arthur. i’m saying that they forgot to take care.
merlin bbc betrayed their audience. you cannot take a show whose underlying theme has consistently been the promise of better things and then turn around and end it like that without taking special care of the people who are watching. you cannot just take an audience who has spent five years listening to someone bright and full of unflinching hope say - without any indication that anyone should doubt the certainty of this statement - “one day things will be better” and expect them to walk into this kind of ending safely.
by killing someone, i think you alienate the audience. and this doesn’t mean that nobody can ever die. but it does mean that if you’re going to kill someone, you have to understand that there is going to be an automatic pain reaction from your viewers/readers/etc, and if you want to maintain their trust, you have to take so much care. you have to be sure that you know exactly what you’re doing. you have to be sure that it’s the right thing. the only thing. you have to make sure that it doesn’t betray the fundamental promises you’ve made whilst crafting the rest of your story.
the end of merlin is truly stunning in a) its utter reversal/unfulfillment of every major promise that comprised its premise and b) the casualness with which it throws its characters away in the last episode. it’s not just “killing someone.” it’s a slaughter. we have to watch almost half the cast die onscreen, and then at the very end literally everybody is dead except merlin himself.
and this is merlin! not game of thrones! merlin is a “family show;” that’s what the writers/directors/producers keep calling it when you listen to the episode commentaries and they talk about how they can’t show certain things or make it too bloody. they wanted to follow in the tradition of “big, kind of epic family-entertaining shows, that—across generations—work on lots of different levels.” but i cannot imagine a young person who has watched this show for five years coming into the finale to see mordred and gwaine and morgana and arthur violently executed, and to see gwen in mourning, and merlin anguished and then more alone than he ever was even when he was hiding his secret, and then, whoop, there’s the credits, that’s all folks. aren’t you glad you got on this ride?
the show ends without fulfilling any of the promises it made repeatedly for years. the liberation of magic, the uniting of albion, and, for merlin, especially, the long-predicted day when he would be known and recognized for who he was - all forgotten. all abandoned. the finale finishes without giving the audience any of the things that they have spent five years being told to expect. the show rewards five years of emotional investment with death and desolation. it breaks all of its promises. it doesn’t take care.
i was lucky enough to have been so disconnected by how shockingly bad these episodes were that i mostly sat there shock-laughing at them in disbelief, the first time i watched. but going through them again to put this write-up together was just like - that’s when a deep sadness kicked in, for me. not at the ending itself, exactly, because, as i’ve said before, it was so poorly put-together that i can’t even see it as real. but just - at the idea that i still had to see it, period. that i had to witness this thing that i loved so much descend into this misery, for all that i didn’t recognize it as something plausible or true. that i still had to watch merlin drag arthur all over creation, still trying, still scrabbling for that sliver of hope, only to have arthur bite the dust like ten feet from their destination. that all merlin ever wanted in his life was to be accepted and loved for who he is, and that he put all of this on hold so he could (supposedly) bring about a world where it would be possible, and then he never gets it. that a life of hiding himself and believing that everybody around him hated who he was inside - that was as good as it was ever going to get, for him.
the writers just - piled it on. ‘you can watch mordred die, even though we just went to all this effort to make you root for him! and now you can watch gwaine die (why????? we don’t know!!! it doesn’t change the story, but why don’t you watch it happen anyway!). and now you can watch morgana die! but don’t look too long, because arthur is dying! and now you can see camelot cold and in mourning - but only for one second, because now you can see merlin, who we never showed meeting any of his friends ever again, wandering around as a solitary old man thousands of years after everybody else is dead and the universe we spent the last five seasons living in no longer exists!!!!!!’
unbelievable.
it doesn’t upset me in the sense of “it’s so terrible that the story ended that way” because i know it didn’t, really. it was contrived and false enough that i laughed through most of the episode. i know it isn’t the way things would have gone, and i won’t have any trouble forgetting it; whereas if it had been well-done, i wouldn’t have been able to dismiss it so easily. but i still had to watch it, regardless. you’re forced to watch it, because you care, and the creators know you care enough not to look away, and they use that trust to keep you glued there while they gut-punch you over and over and over again and then peace out without concluding any of their plotlines, saying, “isn’t it clever??? we really fooled you, didn’t we? technically, we fulfilled the prophecies - nobody ever said any of the characters would get to enjoy the new world they would build! i bet you’re so surprised!”
it leaves you stunned.
it’s so...mean.
it’s so careless.
i don’t have any desire to subject myself to that a second time. after i’m done with this post, i know i’m never going to watch those episodes again. they weren’t good, first of all; and if you need more clarification on that, please see the first ten pages of this document. but more importantly, i don’t feel the need to subject myself once again to the callous disregard for the trust i gave this show’s creators.
if i’m supposed to trust a creator to carry me over rough terrain, i’m trusting them to carry me all the way to the end. they can’t violently dump me to the ground two feet before the finish line, run me over with an ATV, and then expect me to willingly climb back into their arms.
viii: if you want something done right
in conclusion, i guess the one nice thing about this is that we can crawl the last two feet ourselves.
for me, sadly, i think canon!merlin is always going to end at 5.11. the last two episodes don’t feel believable to me. i couldn’t watch them and be convinced that i was watching something plausible; i felt like i was watching two hours of scripted theater. which is, of course, what we’re always doing - but if the story had been crafted appropriately, we shouldn’t have realized it. we shouldn’t have been able to feel the writer’s hand reaching in and making improbable things happen. we shouldn’t have been laughing in disbelief as supposedly “sad” things were happening in front of us, and we definitely shouldn’t have been almost falling off the couch because the last scene was so jarring we thought it was an advertisement. (the TRUCK, people. blaring across the screen and bulldozering through medieval fantasy-adventure show merlin bbc. nothing on earth or in high heaven could have prepared me for that moment.)
but the one good thing about a piece of media that ended so unsatisfactorily is that it lights a fire under people’s butts to go ahead and sort of...row the boat themselves. i was afraid, before i watched this, that seeing it would make me never want to go back to merlin again. i put off finishing season 5 for an entire year because i was in the middle of writing a fic and i thought that if the end of the show upset me, i would never want to write another word. but now that i’m finished, i’m relieved to be able to say that the finale, while it will always be a bitterly disappointing sore spot, was also SO laughably bad that i don’t feel the slightest compunction about just...letting it lie unrecognized. if it were well-crafted and i was just ignoring it because it made me sad, i’d feel guilty for being petty. but it was Just Actually That Bad, so my conscience is clear.
and so is the path to more fun things, i hope, because that is the point of fandom, in the end, to have fun with something you love in the company of other people who love it the same way.
i hope i haven’t written the last merlin thing i’ll ever write. i hope there’s more inside me that i want to say. i hope i haven’t come in too late to make connections. i hope i’ll enjoy rewatching (most of) this show someday. i couldn’t imagine that any of these things would be true, when i knew the end was going to be a let-down, but now that i’ve finished, i feel like there’s infinite room to play, and that, at least, makes me smile.
i’ve said before that this was a hell of a ride. it ended in a trainwreck, sure, but i’m not sorry i got on.
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