Merlin Spell Review
After rewatching the entirety of the show, some episodes more than once, and taking notes the whole time, I am so excited to finally present to you a full summary of the magical data* from 2008-2012's BBC Merlin.
*Specifically about the spells, therefore innate/passive abilities were not included! Morgana's visions, Merlin's Dragonlord commands, Anhora's teleportation etc DO NOT COUNT.
BBC Merlin contains 512 spells over the course of 65 episodes.
Characters
Merlin
Merlin cast 312 spells (60.9%) over the course of the show for an average of exactly 4.8 spells per episode. 112 of his spells were cast nonverbally, comprising 35.9% of his total magic usage. This proportion was at its highest in s1 (35.1%) when his magic was at its least refined and most instinctual, and s5 (71.2%) when his magic was at its most powerful.
(The other 39.1% is divided between 41 other characters.)
He is the most consistent magic user in the series, being the only magician to cast in (almost!) every episode. There were 12 episodes where he was the only character to perform magic (including some surprising ones like s4e9: Lancelot du Lac, where Morgana's resurrection of Lancelot doesn't actually use any spells. In fact, Merlin is the only one to use spells in any of the three episodes named after Lancelot - s1e5: Lancelot, s2e4: Lancelot and Guinevere, and s4e9: Lancelot du Lac).
Season 3 Episode 8: Eye of the Phoenix is the only episode in the show in which Merlin does not cast any spells. He does still perform magic in this episode via the use of his Dragonlord abilities, however these were not measured in this tally.
Merlin did not throw anyone until Season 2, where he throws Jonas against the wall in a confrontation in Episode 5: The Beauty and the Beast I. The first time he threw anyone nonverbally was in Episode 13 of the same season, The Last Dragonlord, when, in a fit of anguish, he instinctively threw and killed the soldier who had just stabbed Balinor. In general his combat strategy tends towards using the environment (dropping tree branches, chandeliers, slamming doors) or the opponent's own equipment (heating sword hilts, breaking saddles, pushing weaponry against their will) against them rather than brute force, though he does transition more toward throwing in the later seasons. By the end of the series, he had used spells to throw people, either verbally or nonverbally, 24 times, still less than Morgana despite his head-start.
He cast his highest amount of spells in s4 (69) and his lowest amount in s5 (52).
Merlin used magic to do his chores 9 times on screen.
The lovely @arrowlovesdragons asked that I note how many of Merlin's spells were for Arthur, which I did and subsequently turned into this graph:
The most common characters included in "Other" were Gwen and Gaius, Morgana in the earlier seasons, and very notably in s2 (hence the large increase), Freya. Any spells Merlin did for Uther were counted under "Camelot".
Or, if you want a simplified version (wherein I factored "Others" as Merlin's own desires, and "Camelot" as being for Arthur):
TL;DR when Merlin said "I use it for you, Arthur, only for you." he was blatantly lying. That being said, he still devotes almost half of all of his magic to just Arthur. In s5 when he makes that statement, it's more than half. Considering Balinor told Merlin that he is magic itself... well. Merlin wasn't too far off.
Morgana
Morgana is the second most prolific caster in the show, casting 59 spells (11.5%) across the 25 episodes she is magically active in for an average of exactly 2.36 spells per episode. She has the highest proportion of accidental casts in the show, the first in Season 1 Episode 12: To Kill the King, wherein her touch activates the Mage Stone, and the other 5 in Season 2 Episode 3: The Nightmare Begins, where she casts magic in a panic after being woken by nightmares.
The aforementioned artefact activation in Season 1 is her first specific usage of magic in the show, and if you would prefer not to count that, then the also-aforementioned panic-magic are her first spells.
Morgana had the highest proportion of magic intended for violence by a very large margin. 34 of her 59 spells (57.6%) were intended to cause harm to others (harm to others for the purpose of protecting someone not included - this is why Merlin's stat for this is so much lower). She also used throwing as her chosen method of combat magic more than anyone else in the series, throwing people a total of 25 times (38.5% of all person-throwing in the show). The first person she threw was Merlin in Season 3 Episode 5: The Crystal Cave.
In Morgana's final episode - Season 5 Episode 13: The Diamond of the Day II, where she casts 5 spells - her last four spells are used to hurt or kill others, but her first was to protect Mordred (albeit by killing the soldiers around him). All the way at the end, she still truly cared for someone.
Other High Priestesses and Servants of the Old Religion
Nimueh is the first recurring magic user, aside from Merlin, to appear in the show. She mostly uses her magic to be malicious and evil, but does take Merlin to the Isle of the Blessed and gives him water from the cup of life with which to heal Arthur. Her intentions around this are never made clear.
Despite 70% of her spells being used explicitly for harm, she never directly attacks someone until Episode 13, where she launches two fireballs at Merlin. It is also interesting to note that she is one of very few villains who never attacks Arthur. Her malice was always focussed on Uther and his kingdom, not misdirected towards his son.
Throughout her time on screen, Morgause was a formidable enemy. In her first appearance (Season 2 Episode 8: Sins of the Father) she performs 4 spells. She is the first person to enchant an animal (discounting Edwin Muirden's Elanthia Beetles because they operated more like magical items than natural animals) and is linked to both of Ygraine's appearances, with the spirit she raised in s2e8 and the mandrake root she enchanted in the first two episodes of Season 3. Like many more experienced magic users in the series, she relied heavily on enchantments to weave complex and manipulative webs of magic rather than brute force violence. In Season 2, she actually doesn't use magic for direct violence at all. The Knights of Medhir, who were meant to carry out violence on her behalf, were only shown to be responsible for the deaths of the knights Arthur took with him to inspect the fortress in the beginning of the episode. They did not kill anyone in Camelot.
That being said, she can be extremely violent when she so chooses. The first person she acts against directly is one of Cenred's guards, who gets little further than drawing his sword before she has thrown him across the room and through a table. In that very same episode, her soldiers knock Merlin out (for several hours), and she subsequently binds him in magical chains and leaves him for the serkets. Very friendly. Catching up on the violence I see.
Most of the other creatures and messengers of the old religion are bound to a specific purpose. Anhora, the keeper of the unicorns, only ever deals with matters dealing with unicorns. Grettir and the Cailleach are gateway spirits. None of them get to do many spells because, within their purview, there just isn't a need for it. The Disir do slightly more, but only slightly.
Fun fact, those were the only four I categorised under "Messengers of the Old Religion" in my spreadsheets. Anhora is from Season 1 and so cannot count towards this, however the other three are post-Gwaine, and all three of them use a spell to get Gwaine to lay off threatening them. For Grettir and the Cailleach, it is their only spell. The Disir's only other spell is summoning the rune mark that got them into the situation in the first place. That is a 100% pissed-off-by-Gwaine rate among the spirits of the old religion. I'm sure Merlin would be thrilled (he was there for all of them).
All of them seem to believe in Arthur's potential, but they are not as assured of his fate as Kilgharrah leads Merlin to believe they should be. The Dochraid -- who I included as a Magical Creature and not a spirit -- chooses to support Morgana and quite actively opposes Arthur, despite being a creature aware of Emrys, and, you would think, probably the prophecies too. She's not alone in this. That being said, the Cailleach seemed to derive some joy out of Morgana's fear in 4x01, and did refuse Merlin's sacrifice. To me, this shows that at no point in the show did the old religion itself "pick a side" in the war, it was only ever up to Merlin, Morgana, and Arthur to prove who was right.
I don't have interesting magic stats about these characters for you because they were usually too busy dealing with Gwaine to do any actual magic. My apologies.
Mordred
Mordred did very very little magic throughout his time on screen, especially in Season 5. In his three child episodes, he performs exactly one spell in each of them. The first is an instinctive reaction to Cerdan's execution in Season 1 Episode 8: The Beginning of the End, shattering Morgana's mirror with a mental scream, and the other two are both violent actions of self-defense when surrounded by Camelot soldiers. Poor kid.
As an adult, Mordred performs only three spells.
- He throws Morgana at the Cauldron of Arianrhod after Merlin abandons him to deal with her on his own (5x09),
- He screams, out loud this time, and absolutely destroys the dungeons around him as a reaction to Kara's execution (5x11), and
- He performs the only cooperative spell in the entire show, wherein he and Morgana combine their powers to launch a gigantic fireball at Stowell (5x12).
As a child, he was built up as someone with a great deal of power dealing with an incredibly hostile world. We were led to believe he would grow into someone dangerous, perhaps matching even Merlin's calibre of sorcery. Mordred ended up growing into a world in which he suppressed his magic for the sake of laying low and fitting in, but when he used his power, he was unstoppable.
Sorry for the break from the stats there, there just isn't a lot to say about Mordred statistically, except that the only spell he ever performs verbally is that final one he does with Morgana. All of his personal magic usage is done without incantations, and half of it is pure instinct.
It's understandable why Merlin was so afraid of him.
Guest Characters
These are characters who only appeared in one episode (double-parters not-withstanding) (or in Alator's case only cast magic in one episode).
The highest casting guest character was Edwin Muirden, who cast 9 spells in s1e6: A Remedy to Cure All Ills.
The lowest casting guest characters were Anhora (1x11), Cornelius Sigan (2x01), Jonas (2x05), Balinor (2x13), Taliesin (3x05), the Sidhe Elder who attacked Merlin in his chambers (3x06), Grettir (3x08), the Cailleach (4x02), Lochru the Vates (5x01), and Ari (5x12), who all cast only one spell in their on-screen appearances.
The median was represented by all the characters who cast 2 spells in their on-screen appearances: Sophia (1x07), Aulfric (1x07), Cerdan (1x08), Tauren (1x12), Alice (3x09), and Osgar (5x05).
Honorary mention to the only two on-screen sorcerers who went unnamed in BBC Merlin, both of whom were vendors who sold their enchanted items to extremely-obviously-evil people and were immediately killed. R.I.P these guys (1x02 and 3x04):
(There were other magic users who went unnamed, but they weren't human: the goblin in 3x03, the troll in 2x05 and 2x06 -- "Lady Catrina" was her DISGUISE -- , the Diamair -- more of a title than a name --, and from 4x08 you could argue 'Lamia' is her species and not her name, but she does introduce herself by that.)
Episodes
The episode with the highest amount of spells was Season 5, Episode 13: The Diamond of the Day II with 19 spells cast. This was split between Merlin, who contributed 14, and Morgana, who contributed 5.
The runner up was Season 1, Episode 1: The Dragon's Call with 17 spells cast. This is split between Merlin, who casted 12 times, and Mary Collins, who casted 5 times.
The episode with the lowest amount of spells was Season 5, Episode 11: The Drawing of the Dark with only 2 spells cast. This was split between Merlin and Mordred, who each casted once. Mordred's spell was instinctive, a wave of destruction following his anguish at Kara's death.
There were 2 other episodes that shared such a low count. The first is Season 1 Episode 11: The Labyrinth of Gedref. Anhora's teleportation and the curse itself both were not counted as no deliberate spells were involved. One of this episodes spells didn't even happen on screen, we only saw it being cast (Merlin used magic to kill the rat in Arthur's chambers, though we never saw exactly how). The second is Season 2 Episode 2: The Once and Future Queen.
The median was represented by all the episodes which had 7 spells to their name, listed as follows. s1e8: The Beginning of the End, s2e11: The Witch's Quickening, s3e4: Gwaine, s3e5: The Crystal Cave, s3e9: Love in the Time of Dragons, s4e2: The Darkest Hour II, s4e12: The Sword in the Stone I, and s5e8: The Hollow Queen.
As a bonus: The most common spell value per episode (the mode if we're talking stats, which we are) was 5. 10 out of the show's 65 episodes (15.4%) contained exactly 5 spells.
The average spell count per episode was 7.88.
Spells
The most common type of spell cast in the entirety of Merlin was Telekinesis in both verbal and nonverbal forms. It comprised 108 spells, or 21.14% of all spells shown on screen. That being said, if you separate verbal and nonverbal forms, the nonverbal Telekinesis becomes the second highest usage of magic, and the verbally incanted Object Manipulation becomes the fifth. It is bearing that separation in mind that I give you the following spell type top 3:
- Enchantment. The big catch-all. 97 spells, 18.98%
This is a big one, it accounts for every spell targeted on an object or a creature, provided they didn't belong to other categories*. It included enchanting poppets, amulets, bracelets, potions. It included all the love-spells, applied directly or not. It included the one other instance of mind-control, it included the GPS function Morgause installed in Arthur's horse, it included the spell Merlin used to clean the stain off Arthur's shirt. It included Morgana's blatant Darth-Vader rip-off force choking, and plenty of other things. Huge catch-all, very common. Merlin used enchantments 46 times. - Telekinesis. Classic. Non-verbal only. 62 spells, 12.13%
- Elemental. Also classic. Verbal only. 61 spells, 11.94%
This is another category that is split between verbal and nonverbal. If you combine both types of elemental spells, it comes out as 86 spells total (16.83%). The vast majority of this is flame and heat magic, but Merlin also uses wind several times throughout the show (he's the only one to do this) and, on occasion (literally only where his loved ones -- Arthur -- are in mortal peril -- 1x13 and 5x13 only), lightning. He is known to be able to cause rockfalls (also done by only Merlin) and precisely one time causes a full-scale earthquake. No one uses commands water magic at any point in the show (spirits who happen to live in lakes/rivers doing magical things do not count, it has to be related to the water).
Honourable mention to Violent Telekinesis, the term I used for the nonverbal "throwing people" spell, which came in 4th with 51 spells (9.98%). If you combine it with its verbal form, which I literally had to title Throwing (14 spells, 2.74%). That means that on 65 instances was magic used to throw people with an intention of causing harm, which averages out to exactly once per episode.
* There were two types of spells that were definitely enchantments but which I chose to separate into their own categories. The first of these is Artefact Activation, which is when a spell is used to activate a magical item that has already been enchanted. A good example of this would be the entirety of Gilli's magic, all of which was done via the use of an already-magical ring. Another good example is in s4e5: His Father's Son, when Morgana uses a nonverbal spell to activate the curse she placed on Arthur's sword the night before. The other of these categories is self-explanatorily named Locking/Unlocking, and I separated it simply because it was so common and I was curious.
Seasons
Seasons 3 and 4 are tied for most amount of spells cast, each with 108 spells in their 13 episodes. Season 1 has the least, with only 96. Overall, the show was pretty consistent with the amount of magic it did, with the average sitting mostly within the 7.5-8.5 range at any given time whilst I was constructing these tallies. The top five episodes of the entire show are a perfect distribution action the seasons, with one episode from each (1st. 5x13, 2nd. 1x01, 3rd. 4x06, 4th. 2x03, 5th. 3x06).
Season 4 has the highest lowest-episode spell count at 4, whereas s1, s2, and s5 have their lowest at 2, and s3's lowest has 3.
Most of the data on the spreadsheets were not organised by Season, though many of my physical tallies were. If you're interested in how the seasons compare, send me an ask or a message and I'll happily fish that information out for you. Otherwise, most of the data about the individual seasons has already been uploaded under other posts, so I won't make this section any longer.
Fun/Opinions
I'll do my narrative analyses later on a separate post, but just know it's so important to me that the top two episodes are the finale and the pilot, and the lowest is The Drawing of the Dark. At the top, two episodes that are so quintesentially about a magic boy in a world where his powers are desperately needed, Merlin (Arthur) at his very beginning and at his end, and at the bottom an episode that really was not about magic at all. The story of Kara's death was never a story of magic. She was not condemned for her sorcery, she was condemned for her murder. She was both caught and treated like any other criminal. 5x11 is fundamentally about people, about loyalty, about how our choices shape us. Mordred saw it as if it was about magic, and it was that misunderstanding which turned him away from Arthur for good.
Anyway. Silly spells (with references)!!
- Merlin trips Arthur twice in the first episode.
- Merlin successfully lures guards away from their posts using dice in the first episode. The second time he's shown using telekinesis on the dice is when he's cheating in a gambling game against Arthur in 5x12.
- Merlin uses barrels to distract guards on two separate occasions (2x04, 4x10). One the first one, he knocks them out.
- Merlin slows time four times throughout the show (1x01, 1x07, 3x06). One of them is in order to observe Grundhilda's massive purple frog tongue.
- Merlin uses magic to wind a rope discreetly up his pant leg and around his torso (2x08). This has a verbal incantation, which means someone either made a spell for this, which would be absurd, or Merlin is bastardising the hell out of someone's real actual sorcery that they wrote down formally.
- Merlin uses magic to put a princess to sleep and stuff her into a cupboard, which he then seals shut with magic as well (2x10).
- Merlin uses magic to pull down people's pants. Twice. It works perfectly for his plans both times (3x07, 4x04).
- Morgana also has an elderly disguise (5x04)!!
Sorry that they were mostly all about Merlin, everyone else in this show is so serious about magic. For other magic users who get silly with it, just rewatch Season 3 Episode 3: Goblin's Gold. I couldn't make up half the things that guy does.
I do have Fun/Vibes as a 'Purpose' category. It's populated mostly by Merlin, but also by the Goblin (3x03), Edwin Muirden (who lights a flame in the opening shot of the episode for the purpose of looking spooky and magic to the audience, and also who does some telekinesis just to show off to Merlin) (1x06), and Gilli (who activates his ring once in the opener of the episode purely for the benefit of signalling that it's magic to the audience) (3x11).
And no, I'm still not over the toad in s2e7: The Witchfinder, and I'm certainly not over the use of the Sidhe staff as a TAZER in s3e6: The Changeling. See the posts for Season 2 and Season 3 for elaboration on those.
Data
I am human, I have biases and make mistakes, I oversimplify things, I have a preference for viewing certain characters in certain ways. If you thought I was disingenuous, or wasn't clear enough, or have some other issue with this post, or otherwise are curious, the raw data I collected is now yours!!
Do with it as you wish. If you do end up using it for something, I would really appreciate a credit. This took me a very long time to put together.
Tally
A list, with descriptions, of every spell in Merlin by episode.
Spreadsheets
The numerical data in a variety of different tables and graphs.
Please note that I know there are mistakes in this dataset and I will be continuously working on fixing those. If you have need of the data, always refer back to the original post/document/spreadsheet. Reblogs do not update when previous posts are edited.
If you notice a mistake, even a minor one, please let me know!! And if you have any questions, I would be more than happy to answer them. Thank you for your time <3 I really, really appreciate it.
