By Will Barber – Taylor

Merlin knows he must act fast before Morgana‘s control over Gwen gets further out of hand; but only the most powerful magic can save her.

After several episodes of Gwen being evil we finally get the resolution. It is not disappointing but confusing. The episode beings with Gwen sneaking out of Camelot and is caught by Sir Percival. After convincing him that she is simply going for a walk, Gwen goes to the forest to meet Morgana. After a few words, the camera pans to Arthur and Merlin hiding behind a tree. We never really get any explanation as to how Arthur finds out that Gwen is evil. Did Sir Percival tell him and then Arthur automatically went after her because he has a suspicious mind? Or did Merlin finally tell him after several episode of biting his tongue? We are not given any satisfactory answer and the episode skips on to the next scene. There is no resolution to Merlin’s dilemma which has been the centre point of the previous episode; instead the episode seems to mainly focus on returning the series to how it was before. However apart from this point, the episode plays out well though mainly like the previous episode because of the comic aspects. I hope that next week we finally get some series arc development because though this episode was an improvement on last weeks it was still not as good as it could be and the Gwen being evil arc was not just bad but pretty forgettable. I hope that in the coming episodes the producers will give Merlin the ending it deserves and not bad cop out material like we have been seeing in the past few episodes.

Colin Morgan gleefully plays Merlin pretending to be The Dolma. After convincing Arthur that only magic can save Gwen, Guyus convinces him that this time the wizard can be trusted as it will be a woman. So Merlin has to pretend to be The Dolma, an ancient high priestess. After over ten minutes of build-up we finally see Morgan in his full glory. It is worth it.  Morgan brilliantly plays The Dolma in such an over the top camp manner that it is beyond funny. The genius really comes from the scene in which after Gwen has been cured Arthur almost forgets about Merlin. Morgan’s attempts to remind Arthur how important he is is excellent when combined with Arthur’s refusal to believe him in his Dolma disguise. Morgan’s over the top pacing of Merlin is also comically excellent. It seems to me that Merlin is becoming stronger in the way it does humour than its attempts at drama. Hopefully, this will be resolved by the end of the series and the comedy and drama in Merlin will both be excellent.

Even with its faults, With All My Heart does improve on the previous episode and the comedy is going from strength to strength, however I hope that with the pointless Gwen arc out of the way Merlin can return to the excellent drama series it once was.

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