Review: Merlin 3.7: The Castle of Fyrien

We take a more straight-laced approach at the mythology than last week, with the episode presenting an new sort of format. While The Castle of Fyrien wasn't perfect, it was still a great episode in context with Series Three, and fully exercised its characters.
     Cenred (our gruff enemy-type bloke from The Tears of Uther Pendragon) has Gwen kidnapped as part of a plot by Morgause and Morgana. He's also got her brother, and offers her a deal - get Arthur to come to his hideout, Castle Fyrien, or her brother dies. Predictably (to the villians) Arthur organises an attempt to rescue her brother and stop Cenred. They do so, but Morgana comes along for the ride.
     The Castle was really a character piece for both heroes and villians. The extent to which Morgana was fully on the Dark Side was exposed, but there were some good moments where she was confused by Merlin about loyalty. We also saw that Cenred was fighting Camelot sheerly to please Morgause, who he seems to have fallen for. On the other side, we look at the extent to which Arthur will now go both against his father and for Gwen, and there were also some nice quick bonding scenes between Arthur and Merlin.
     On the whole, Castle excelled more on Character than it did on its Plot, but this is never a bad thing. It was enjoyable, well-written and didn't fall back on any of the conveluted plots that we've come to expect from Merlin so far in Series Three. I'm glad that by this half-way-point, the quality has taken a turn for the better.

Thanks.