Note: Just my thoughts on how Merlin must have felt during the last almost 2000 years of English (and world) history. The last episode left me kind of in a very destitute mood, so this is the result of my broodings. Thanks for reading and feel free to review.
And so Merlin had been waiting. He had been waiting for the Once and Future King to return to his rightful throne. But time and time again, his hopes had been disappointed and his long and lonely vigil at the Lake of Avalon continued.
It was not that Albion had not been in need of her greatest king, yet he had never come. Many a time Merlin had watched over the kingdom and thought that this time, this time, Arthur had to return. But each time he had found his hope had been in vain.
Arthur had not come when the Saxons finally stretched their greedy hands out to what rightfully belonged to Arthur's people, when they finally finished what Morgana had brought them into the country for: Albion's king had not been there to prevent the Saxons from invading the country and converting her into their Angla-land.
But this had been only the first of several invasions Arthur had not been there to stop. Not long after the Saxons, wild and feral warriors from the far North came and fell upon the land, followed by an irascible duke and his men from across the Channel.
All this time, Merlin had waited for his friend and king to come back. He had watched kings come and go, good and bad one alike. There had been times when he had thought Arthur's return was just a matter of days. Yet, few did he know of the much worse things to happen: the bloody and crude wars that were to come in time upon Albion.
Yet, Arthur did not return when her new age of nobles started to fight each other for Arthur's crown twice within just a couple of hundred years. He did not return when she was at war with her southern neighbours almost constantly for almost half a century. He was not there when disease and plagues hit her hard and remorselessly. And worst of all, he had not come back when the whole world was threatened to suffocate in a sheer endless turning vicious circle of hatred, violence, and war.
Then, Merlin had almost lost his hope of Arthur ever returning. In his darkest hours he was convinced that Arthur would never come back and that they both had failed their destinies. But with the stubbornness which was characteristic of him he had clung to the last words of Kilgharra the Great.
Arthur is the Once and Future King, Merlin. He will return in Albion's hour of greatest need to save her and bring about a new age of prosperity.
"And I will wait for him and be at his side when that day comes", Merlin told himself over and over again.
And thus, if you come to the Lake of Avalon which is near the place which is nowadays called Glastonbury, and if you look really hard, you may still see a not young, yet not old man walking the area, looking out and waiting for Albion's Once and Future King to return to his rightful throne. And to be honest, maybe Albion should be glad and rejoicing that his time has not yet come.
