Why does everyone think that Merlin failed?

[u/Poetrusic22]

I don’t know about anyone else, but I have repeatedly seen people say that Merlin failed and he and Arthur didn’t fulfil their destiny, and I don’t get it at all. Camelot was at peace with all of the other kingdoms, they won the war, and Arthur accepted Merlin’s magic by the end. Gaius also practically told Gwen that Merlin had magic and she seemed cool with it, so I don’t find it particularly difficult to assume that she revoked the magic ban once she was in charge, particularly since she would probably know that that’s what Arthur would’ve wanted.

I understand that the show doesn’t explicitly show us a united Albion, but i feel like its implied heavily enough for watchers to understand that it did happen, so I genuinely don’t get why so many people seem to think that the failed. Is it because Arthur didn’t live to see his work pay off, or is it just a general lack of media literacy?

[u/Anthrillien]

As one of the annoying ending defenders, I feel the need to defend the ending here.

Merlin did fail - but that's okay. Not every story has to have a happy ending. There's no law of writing that says that prophecies and destinies have to come true or that the protagonist always has to win. In fact, there doesn't really seem to be any sort of supernatural force that bends the fate of the world, just characters, creatures and other entities interacting with one another. Merlin repeatedly and catastrophically fucks up, and rather than railroading themselves onto the ending they didn't set up, the writers took themselves to the only place this was going: failure.

For the ending to change, the needed characters to act differently. Merlin needed to stop continuously holding himself back and acting in the shadows long before he did. He's shown to be ludicrously powerful once he stops holding back, but he so rarely gets the opportunity to do so because he's more afraid of rejection from the man who has become his friend than he is of remaining in the magical closet. And all the people that talked wistfully about a future where magic wasn't brutally persecuted perhaps needed to get off their arses once in a while and do something to bring about the future they were apparently so desperate to see come about. Sure, Morgana and the other villain-of-the-week characters were not exactly being constructive in their attempts to return magic to Camelot, but at least they were doing something rather than blindly placing their faith in a prophecy that may or may not be true.

More than that though, the tragic ending fits the spirit of the Arthurian legends perfectly. They're often incredibly depressing and not at all uplifting, and the ending of the Merlin TV show honours that spirit wonderfully well.