#merlin just. decides hes going to do whatever he can to prevent the tragic fall but hes always going to be a little too late

[pyreshe]

one day I will write out my lil arthuriana thing where m.erlin raises a.rthur and loves him like a son but he still loses him and is more or less doomed to an agonizingly long life where he is constantly reminded that he failed his boy and is looking for a reincarnation he can't even be sure will ever come,,

[magic-and-moonlit-wings]

How I think Wizards will go

Based on scenes in the two commercials I’ve seen and patterns in the previous two series

Episode 1: 

Douxie is leaving work, fights that glowy lizard-thing in an alley, yells “You’re welcome, Arcadia!” after slaying/banishing it. [Opening credits roll] 

Rest of premiere episode shows Douxie’s life in Arcadia. Show overlap with Trollhunters (namely the Battle of the Bands where he knocks out a Gumm-Gumm with a guitar) and maybe with 3Below (where Douxie was when Kubritz and Morando attacked Arcadia.)

The Three Rules of Wizardry, keeping with the “three rules of _” motif.

Final scene is hologram-Merlin approaching Douxie, telling him the world is in peril. Douxie volunteers to save it himself but is told he isn’t powerful enough/doesn’t have the control over his magic to do it alone. “Bring me the Guardians Of Arcadia!” This is why Archie was looking for Steve, Toby, and AAARRRGGHH at the end of 3Below.

Episode 2: 

Everyone goes to the flying castle and Sir Galahad is introduced.

Claire and Blinky reunite with Toby and AAARRRGGHH. Jim is already in the crystal thing. Jim either got trapped in that crystal by the Arcane Order, or got injured by them and was put in the crystal to recover (like the stasis pods in 3Below). 

Exposition is given as to who the Arcane Order are and what it is they want, and what Merlin thinks the protagonists should do about this. 

Nari is either a deserter from the Arcane Order, or was a prisoner of theirs who has escaped/been rescued. Either way, she blames herself for them attacking the flying castle, since they presumably found it by following her.

Episode ends with Claire, Douxie, Steve, and Jim falling through the time-portal.

Episode 3: 

The group in the past gets found by the Knights of the Round Table. Gunmar’s been attacking humans in the area, so Jim, being a troll, gets locked in the dungeon after he breaks out of the crystal thing. 

Everyone else gets presented to King Arthur. Claire is annoyed at the knights for bragging about ‘capturing a troll’, (especially if the knights claim to have rescued Claire, Steve, and Douxie from Jim,) but she plays nice in order to persuade King Arthur to let Jim out of the dungeon. 

Since Merlin can ‘glimpse the future’, the past version of Merlin might be able to vouch for them.

Claire either goes to the dungeons to visit Jim or to break him out, or to let him out with permission. Since Jim was unconscious during the time-portal part, he doesn’t know they’ve gone back in time yet. “What are we doing at a Ren Fair?” (Alternately, this exchange happens earlier, while he is caged and they are journeying back to Camelot.)

The group in the future is trying to fix the time portal so they can retrieve their lost teammates, while keeping the Arcane Order from accessing said portal. 

Somewhere in all this, somebody hits Steve in the face hard enough to knock him on his back, because that happened in Episode 3 of both previous series.

Episode 4: 

Quest time! The group in the past decides they have to gather three components (as with the Triumbric Stones and Daxial Array) in order to rebuild the portal from their side, hopefully without changing the past. 

Three Rules of Time Travel, keeping with the “three rules of _” motif.

Some flashbacks to Douxie’s magical apprenticeship, explaining whether he’s immortal/magically long-lived and slow-aging, or from the past and went to the future, or from the future and has gone back in time previously. 

Episode 5: 

Enter the trolls. Or rather, the group in the past finally meets the past versions of the trolls they know in the future. Said trolls are more interested in hiding from Gunmar rather than being rallied to fight him. “We shall, bravely and heroically, hide until this dreadful conflict blows over.”

Because it’s halfway through the series, one of the father-figure characters will die/be presumed dead, but be revived/rescued later, as happened with AAARRRGGHH and Varvatos.

Episodes 6-8, general ideas, no chronological order:

Fighting Gunmar in the past, the Arcane Order in the future. 

Claire gets desperate enough to turn to past-Morgana for magical help. 

The group in the past fights the Arcane Order in a sequence genuinely ambiguous as to whether it’s the past version of the Arcane Order or if the Arcane Order made a time-jump, with that detail revealed shortly after the fight concludes. 

Reveal that the armoured guy who seems to have Excaliber is either Mordred or a ‘magically corrupted’ version of King Arthur; and possibly also James Lake Senior because there’s supposedly going to be a ‘reveal’ about him in Wizards. Either way, the reason Merlin opened the portal to the past was to prevent whatever happened there from happening, since the armoured guy who seems to have Excalibur is such a dangerous threat that Merlin decided it was worth the risk to try altering the past. 

Armoured guy who seems to have Excalibur also has distinctive glowing yellow eyes - that visual parallel to Angor Rot and Tronos Madu practically demands he has some kind of tragic backstory.

More backstory about the Arcane Order and about Nari. 

Hopefully some more stuff about the Changelings and/or Angor Rot, but I’m not so much expecting that as much as I’d just like it to happen.

AAARRRGGHH deserting Gunmar.

Worldbuilding explaining why Arcadia Oaks is a paranormal magnet.

Akiridions show up, either in person or in lore, unpacking the “ancient prophecy” mentioned in 3Below about Gaylen’s Core being from Earth and one day returning there. 

Possibly Krel is involved in fixing the time-portal from the future side. He’s built a wormhole from scratch that cuts through space to avoid the time-delays of interstellar travel - repairing a preexisting time-portal can’t be that much more difficult.

Episode 9:

Time portal is completed. Nari is probably instrumental here, since she was the one who powered up the first time-portal. Characters past and future reunite, again. 

Douxie builds a staff using the blue stone from the Amulet - either because Jim’s only using half the Amulet anyway or because they’re discontinuing the Trollhunter job - or a rare mineral of the same type, size, and shape. Possibly the blue stone comes from Seklos’ core? We know what happened to Gaylen’s core, but not what happened to Seklos’ core after she used hers to power the canon that defeated him. 

Possibly the staff gets made instead of the Amulet, but that would definitely change the future so probably not.

If the Amulet gets made during this series, it gets sent back in time, because the novels and comics show pre-Medieval Trollhunters.

Climactic battle begins, with the episode ending on a cliffhanger. 

Episode 10:

Final decisive victory for the protagonists. 

The Arcane Order, like the Janus Order and Xeron Brotherhood, gets wiped out. 

Douxie’s apprenticeship is completed and he is now officially a wizard. 

It would be nice for Jim to end up with shapeshifting powers, so he can switch between troll and human forms at will, but again that’s more of a personal desire than an expectation.

The other possibility is that they change the past so much that there is no longer, and retroactively never was, a Trollhunter, because Gunmar got defeated some other way and Morgana and Merlin retroactively never turned against each other, but (a) that would greatly anger a large percentage of the audience because it potentially undoes so many great character relationships and having an ‘undo button’ doesn’t fit the tone of the rest of the franchise, and (b) stable time-loops are more fun and less headache-inducing than paradoxes.