SO. for some reason i've gotten back into bbc merlin lately (because i've been cycling through the same fandoms with very few additions for over a decade now LMAO) and i gotta say that i do think i'm in the Fandom Minority when i say that i think merlin's immortality is genuinely awesome for him. because from the last couple weeks i've been looking around it seems like the majority of the fandom thinks that he'd spend eternity in absolute misery over one guy he knew for ten years. AND LIKE. yeah. i get it. Prophecy and He Failed and all that. but imo that prophecy was...kind of doomed from the start.

like the entire point of the prophecy was that merlin and arthur were supposed to usher in the golden age together. right. two sides of the same coin and all that. but the problem arose from the moment that merlin was named arthur's servant because that set him down the path of "i was born the serve arthur" Which. No. two sides of the same coin implies equality. NOT servitude. obviously it's a bit more complicated than this but one has to wonder if uther pendragon threw a giant wrench in things when he made merlin arthur's manservant because i think that

1. arthur would've been a hell of a lot more likely to treat merlin like a person instead of like a dog if merlin had remained gaius' apprentice (i.e. becoming a proper physician himself), and

2. merlin would've been a hell of a lot less beaten down as a person if he weren't in a position where arthur could constantly berate him and his kind as if he were subhuman while at the same time getting way too attached to him because he spent all his time around him.

like great job uther you took two characters who were supposed to be on equal footing with each other and instead forced them into a violently unhealthy sun and moon dynamic and look what happened. A Fucking Death Spiral!

and this is in addition to the main point which IS: merlin is so fucked up at the beginning of the series. he thinks of himself as a monster, and he voices this multiple times at the beginning of the series. and then he gets told over and over and over again that his magic makes him useful (read: The Prophecy) and internalizes that his only purpose is in being useful amd so therefore the only thing that matters is his destiny. and he latches on to that because it means he isn’t a freak for no reason. and if he completes his destiny like he’s supposed to it’ll bring about the golden age of albion! which will be GOOD! which will make HIM good in turn and prove he’s not a monster like he grew up thinking he is!

the prophecy—and living in camelot, making himself smaller and smaller while propping arthur up to be greater and greater—destroyed him. completely and utterly. people always note how different merlin is in season 5 compared to how he is in season 1—how he went from trying to help everyone around him and denouncing kilgharrah for trying to get him to commit cold-blooded murder to a depressed, paranoid wreck of a person who's yelling at arthur in the snow about how he should've struck mordred down where he stood, despite the fact that mordred had done nothing to them.

i mean. when arthur pendragon (Asshole (Nice Guy) Lite, son of uther, Asshole Supreme) is the one turning around and asking MERLIN what the hell is wrong with him, then you KNOW there's a problem.

all this to say....i think merlin's immortality is good for him because it'll allow for him to actually grow as a person. he experienced reverse growth over the course of the series in that he got Worse as a result of. Everything. he's like the dragon he hatched: with no room to grow, he became crippled and twisted. morgana destroyed everything around her but merlin destroyed himself. but the thing about his immortality is that that gives him the space and the time and the room to grow. i mean, i'm not saying that it's going to be sunshine and rainbows all the time. of course he's going to miss the people he's loved and lost. of course outliving everyone else will weigh on him. but at the same time, it allows him to grow into his power, truly and properly. it allows him freedom unlike anything he's ever experienced before. it allows him to finally become his own person, to step outside the prophecy's shadows and learn how to do things his own way instead of being swayed by kilgharrah's words and gaius' fears. he can go on adventures! he can live and laugh and love to his heart's content! the world's a big place and he's literally stated in the show to be magic itself. the son of the earth and the sea and the sky! the world's his oyster!

and i know the final scene of merlin has him in the 21st century walking alongside what used to be the lake of avalon in what SEEMS to be a depressive manner, but it really...never seemed that way to me? like, he was just walking. he stopped for a brief moment, as if in reminiscence, but he doesn't look at it. he's not miserable or anything. it just seemed like acceptance to me. like moving on. and that's a good thing! he should get to move on and live as he so chooses! if arthur is meant to return when albion needs him most then merlin should be able to greet him not as a servant, not as a shadow, not as something to be used to lift one's self up and casted aside afterwards, but as an equal. a friend. a person, as he was never truly allowed to be in camelot.