The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly From The Daily Wire's New Merlin TV Show
A new hope and an opportunity lost.
The Daily Wire has demonstrated something quite remarkable with its new Merlin streaming show: it has proven that a competitor to mainstream Hollywood can produce high-quality television to compete with giants like HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” and do so without shying away from the source material’s Christian faith.
“The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin” brings together many excellent elements of fantasy storytelling, bringing together great acting, solid cinematography, gripping musical themes, and a few great character moments.
The show punches far above its weight class in many of these elements, paving the way for true competition in fantasy storytelling. Here’s hoping this paves the way for more conservative fantasy that rejects the destructive “woke” versions like Amazon’s “Rings of Power” series.
The Bad
All that said, the Merlin show also proved a tremendous disappointment. The high-quality elements I mentioned earlier ultimately fall flat due to one singular error: bad editing.
I thoroughly enjoyed the opening credits, which play a mysterious and ennobling musical theme with video vignettes from various parts of the story. Unfortunately, the story didn’t live up to this opening.
The Daily Wire crammed too much of Stephen R. Lawhead’s rich material into 7 meager episodes.
Left on the cutting room floor were not only the “padding” scenes that would have helped non-book readers get up to speed about the world—fleshing out why bards truly matter, for example—but also the climactic conclusions to the developing story, including key aspects of the final battle scene.
The show’s first two episodes leave out too much of the backstory of Merlin’s parents: the bard-king Taliesin (James Arden) and the survivor of Atlantis, Charis (Rose Reid).
My wife, who has read none of the books, repeatedly asked me why everyone in the show remembered Taliesin as powerful and impressive when we saw very little of that on screen.
I had hoped that this failure had more to do with the show rushing to tell the story of Merlin, but the later episodes dashed my hopes.
The Ugliness of Confusing Editing
The show presents the mythic wizard as a mysterious figure, starting his story after Merlin (Tom Sharp) had gone insane in the wilderness for 50 years. While Episodes 3-5 fleshed out a bit more of his backstory, the audience didn’t get the full picture of the romance between Merlin and Ganieda (Brett Cooper), and why he went insane, until Episode 6.
While devoting the penultimate episode to a grand character reveal might have worked in a mystery TV series, it completely killed the momentum of this epic fantasy.
“Rise of the Merlin” had been building toward a climactic battle between the forces of the Roman leader Aurelius (Finney Cassidy) and the Saecsen Hengist (Thor Rosland). Aurelius and Hengist even have a minor fight in Episode 4, teasing a grand mano a mano face-off in the finale—a face-off the audience never gets to see.
The show does feature a climactic battle, but the camera cuts away from key moments and doesn’t always return to them. The battle is so confusing, I watched it multiple times to make sure I didn’t miss anything. The show leaves the audience scratching their heads about what exactly happened at the most pivotal moment in the battle, and it resolves the major tension off screen.
The show instead focuses on Merlin’s role in the final battle. Merlin defies expectations, but not in a satisfying way for the audience. The show takes another direction, focusing on another villain, but the “twist” falls flat because the show didn’t put in the work to make it make sense.
Yet another example of poor editing involves an unrevealed threat to Charis. During the battle, Merlin’s mother is tending the wounded in what should be a safe location. The camera cuts to her twice, however, showing her grasping a dagger as if she’s in danger. Yet the audience never sees the off-screen threat, or its resolution.
What “Rise of the Merlin” Shows
“The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin” proves that The Daily Wire can make great fantasy. Unfortunately, it also shows that The Daily Wire needs to focus on editing, so the team can tell a coherent story.
Say what you will about “Game of Thrones,” but its pacing and editing were top notch, especially in the earlier seasons. “Game of Thrones” told the story slowly, building to a climactic penultimate episode, and then resolved the story and led up to the next season in each finale. Aspects of the world that audiences wouldn’t immediately understand were given time to breathe, and the characters really came to life.
My advice to The Daily Wire team would be to slow down. You don’t need to tell the entire story of Merlin in just seven episodes, and you really shouldn’t take a detour from the main story to have the entire penultimate episode devoted to a flashback.
I’d love to see this series better edited, with a few more episodes, more scenes explaining what, exactly, is happening, and more discipline.
There’s so much to love about the Pendragon Cycle, but sloppy editing really killed it for me. I’d love to see an “extended edition” that actually makes more sense of the fantastic material here, but I don’t have high hopes.