Interview: Merlin Co-Creator Julian Murphy Talks About The Upcoming 3-Year Time Jump

Although Comic-Con was a few weeks back, KSiteTV still isn’t done sharing interviews from this year’s convention in San Diego. Today, we share our chat with co-creator Julian Murphy at the Merlin press room, which was, appropriately enough, with a bunch of us circled around a round table. In the interview, Murphy talks about what’s coming for the show, specifically the three-year jump the show will take as it goes into Series 5.

“I think this season’s probably the biggest sort of change we’ve ever made to Merlin,” Murphy says. “We jump three years in time, so we’ve gone to a world where there is a Round Table, and Knights, and an established King and Queen. Camelot in its Golden Age. And then we start to feed in the dark seeds of destruction, that are a part of that very classic story. So it’s a bit more adult. It’s a bit darker in tone, and it really takes the characters to very new places. They’re older; Gwen is a mature Queen of Camelot. She is all of that. You see stories where she plays the politics of that role in a very sophisticated way. Arthur is the King he always dreamt of being. Merlin is a much stronger character; that naivete’s gone. He’s out there to protect what they’ve built, and he’ll do what it takes to do that. The Knights have bigger parts now. Obviously they’re Knights of the Round Table, so that gives a whole raft of stories that we haven’t told before.”

Have any characters disappeared in the three-year period? “Nobody has disappeared,” he assures. “I’m just checking in my mind, because I believe that’s true… nobody has disappeared. Obviously Lancelot died in the last series – twice! Tony Head died in the last series, but no, everybody’s back. Some other people are back, so we return… Queen Annis comes back, who’s Lindsay Duncan, and he gives us a lot of gravitas, and is an ally of Camelot’s. Janet Montgomery comes back as Princess Mithian. She was such a great character. Tony Head comes back, oddly enough…” he hints, “and that’s all I can say. There’s a couple of others.”

Also this year with the time jump, we will have a new Mordred. Replacing Asa Butterfield will be Alexander Vlahos. “Part of the reason for the jump was – Asa’s, what, 13 now? We just can’t tell the stories we need to tell with a 13 year old. There’s simply no way that that rich part of Arthurian legend that involves Mordred as an adult character…. obviously he’s not Arthur’s son, but all of the rest of it is really valuable stuff for us, and we definitely wanted to do it. So we felt if we jumped, we could cast… I mean, Mordred’s still a very young man, but he’s a man, and he can play the stuff we need. Otherwise, I think there was no way we could go with that story. It’s too big a part of the legend to ignore,” Murphy says.

The time jump will be very good to fans of Guinevere, as we will see her settled into her role as Queen. “You do see her as the Queen in a very different and interesting way,” Murphy says. “I think Gwen has one of the most interesting journeys of this series, and I think for the first time, we’ve given her a very big role. And we’ve moved on the story with Morgana as well, actually, by a certain device that we’ve managed to do. I don’t think fans will be disappointed. I mean, there’s always that question of if you make that jump, they miss that process… on the other hand, it opens up a whole raft of stories that we simply can’t tell [otherwise].”

With all of this excitement for Series 5, are they already planning for the end? Or are there a few seasons laft? “The end is not my decision,” Murphy says. “We are in discussions about a sixth series. Whether that happens, you’ll have to watch this space. I don’t think it’ll be resolved for a month or two.”

And there you have it. Want more Merlin? Come by the KSiteTV Merlin forum to talk about it and check out our other Merlin coverage, including interviews with Colin Morgan and Katie McGrath, here.