Merlin is a major character in Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders. He was inspired by the Arthurian character Merlin and voiced by the late Bob Kaliban. He was confirmed to return in the Jewel Riders comics sequel.
Merlin using his staff to display the royal Sun Stone in the book
Merlin is an ancient and eternal wizard who has dedicated himself to the safety and well-being of the magical kingdom of Avalon, always endangered by the wild magic. For over a thousand years, he been preserving the goodness and delicate balance of the magic in Avalon, always willing to help those in need. He was also a fierce protector of the kingdom who would do whatever it took to keep it safe. But as the show begins, Merlin becomes banished into the realm of Wild Magic by his former apprentice Lady Kale, having sacrificed himself to scatter the powerful Crown Jewels that she needed to rule.
Now lost in the Wild Magic and missing from Avalon, Merlin entrusts his current generation of young students—the titular Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders—to defeat the evil Kale and save Avalon from darkness. In their mission, the girls are aided by Merlin's sentient animal companion, a talking owl named Archie, and rely on the wizard's own infrequent advice and also his magic staff, now turned into the key to the Jewel Box. Meanwhile, Kale realises that expelling Merlin was not enough and will need to find and destroy him to make the magic of Avalon hers. Later, his disciples and Merlin himself will also has to face again his ancient enemy Morgana,
"Darkness always returns, my child. But the strength and love of our friends will hold the darkness back."
In the show[]
Background[]
"Have Heart, Have Hope"
Merlin's home outside New Camelot
Merlin is the great and wise wizard that is over one thousand years old who has dedicated himself to always preserve the goodness of the land of Avalon. He has long ago harnessed and bound the wild magic, so he could create a wondrous and beautiful place where humans and magic animals could work and live in harmony. As such, he is known as the "Father of Avalon". It was also him who planted the Travel Trees through the lands and established the laws, including his protection of forest animals and allowing only those chosen by him to use the Enchanted Jewels for doing magic. But not everyone is happy with the order Merlin creates.
Some of the evil ancient wizards
His ancient nemesis Morgana
A millennium prior to the beginning of the story, the evil enchantress Queen Morgana and her ancient wizards have plotted to betray and destroy Merlin during their Friendship Ring ceremony, but their plan did not work out and Merlin won. Since then, he has continued protecting the magic of Avalon, living in his home near New Camelot and making sure its magic cannot fall into wrong hands. Merlin may look like harmless old man and usually is wonderfully kind and compassionate, but he has no tolerance at all for whoever wants to use Avalon's magic to harm.[1]
Merlin's Jewel Riders champions
Merlin's great new enemy, the "outlaw princess" Lady Kale
Merlin has been training the Jewel Riders in the use of the Enchanted Jewels and watching over the royal family for generations. Years ago, he taught the gifted young princess Lady Kale in the use of magic, too, but it was her kind sister Anya who has been chosen to inherit the royal Sun Stone and the throne of Avalon. The hateful and power-hungry Kale would never forgive Merlin for what she thought was denying her birth right. She began scheming to not only replace Anya, for which she has been banished from New Camelot, but also take "all that is Merlin's" and reign over Avalon forever.
Appearances[]
First season[]
Merlin is captured by the evil Kale's Dark Stone in "Jewel Quest, Part I"
Lady Kale, the depraved sister of the queen of the Kingdom of Avalon, intends to get rid of Merlin. As the series begins, she discovers the long lost Dark Stone, a dreaded jewel of purely evil magic that had been originally created by Morgana to specifically use against him. She taunts the helpless Merlin as he is caught in a light sphere and held completely in her power. (Kale: "You have taught me too well.") When he denies her the key to his Jewel Box, the cruel Kale sends him hurling into the wild magic to perish there. But, unknown to Kale, she has failed to destroy the old wizard, as he floated until the Gliders found him and brought him to the relative safety of the Cloud City. Soon afterwards, Merlin briefly appears in Avalon to prevent Kale from stealing the seven Crown Jewels, thus ruining the witch's plan to rule Avalon. Since then, however, he will not be able to return until all seven of them are collected again.
Merlin briefly appearing to advice the Jewel Riders in "Wizard's Peak"
His former student Lady Kale attacks Merlin in a storyboard
Merlin is now forced to place all hope on the three young Jewel Riders led by Queen Anya's daughter Princess Gwenevere. He appears to them at Gwenevere's Friendship Ring ceremony and calls them to action, sending them on a great quest in which they will need to restore harmony in the magic to make Avalon safe. On their mission, the girls are accompanied by his faithful talking owl familiar Archimedes, better known as Archie. With his guidance, the young heroines need to fight to stop Lady Kale's power from growing stronger, and hopefully put an end to her ruthless ambition for good so they can bring back peace to the kingdom. Once each of the Crown Jewels is secured by the girls and placed within the Jewel Box, a projected image of Merlin appears for a short while to talk with them and say some words of advice. He orders the Guardian of the Magic back to his sleep ("Wizard's Peak"), and helps the Jewel Riders convince his old friend King Odeon to trust humans after the Jewel Riders take back Faeryland from Kale ("The Faery Princess"). Meanwhile, the witch has realised that she cannot control the Crown Jewels as long as Merlin still lives, as "even from the Wild Magic he torments her", and so she works to find and get him out of her way once and for all.
Merlin casts a spell to pull Kale into the Wild Magic in "Full Circle"
Merlin's congratulatory speech to his champions and the royal family after the completion of first Jewel Quest
Eventually (in the episode "Full Circle"), Kale succeeds in taking over New Camelot. His relentless enemy is now more powerful than ever and is ready to do anything to be finally rid of Merlin who keeps taunting her in his mocking politeness, swearing that she would destroy him even "if it's the last thing she does." Kale does find Merlin by following the Jewel Riders also searching for him. but he uses her own anti-magic device to free himself. He then forces the dark sorceress to engage in a magic duel within the Wild Magic, fighting over his staff (the literal key to the Crown Jewels). But the wizard outsmarts her in a gamble, when and then only feigns being finished off in a ruse to trick Kale into believing him gone so she can at last rule all of magic with the Crown Jewels. Merlin prophecy for her that she "will only destroy herself" thus comes true as the just self-declared 'Queen Kale' traps herself in her own Crown Jewel matrix and is vanquished by the secret and great good magic of the Crystal Palace activated by the Jewel Riders as instructed by him. Yet saving the kingdom from the reign of evil comes at the cost of Merlin's staff, and without it he cannot return and will have to remain exiled after his short farewell appearance in the Crystal Palace. (Merlin: "Sometimes we make sacrifices for our friends.") However, Queen Anya and the Jewel Riders refuse to accept that and start looking for a way to find a way to still get him out of the Wild Magic somehow.
Second season[]
Merlin's loyal Jewel Riders facing the returning Morgana in "Shadowsong"
The evil witches Kale and Morgana working together against Merlin's students in "Prince of the Forest"
In the second season, Merlin is mostly absent. He is rarely able to communicate with the Jewel Riders or do anything until the very end (the episodes "Morgana" and "Shadowsong" are two exceptions) as they fight his returning archenemy, the witch Queen Morgana, now alive again thanks to the Dark Stone but trapped in the Wild Magic. Morgana sends the also revived Lady Kale to find and collect for her the Wizard Jewels that once belonged to his evil rivals but now are scattered across Avalon and the other realms. But Merlin of course cannot let it happen. Even unseen in the Wild Magic, Merlin still tries to help to the girls get the Wizard Jewels first before Kale and Morgana (both of them really united only in their shared hatred of him) can claim the stones' powers. In the episode "The Fortune Jewel", Merlin manages to send back Derek, one of the ancient wizards who had been his friend before he was seduced by Morgana, back to Avalon in a cat form, so Derek can redeem himself by securing the formerly his own magic stone for the Jewel Riders.
Merlin's return in "The One Jewel"
Gwen reunites with Merlin in the end
Once the second Jewel Quest is completed and the Jewel Riders are ready for a final battle against forces of evil, Merlin sends them a message about the secret of Grandfather Travel Tree. ("His image is filled with static break-up, as if the wild magic can't hold him together."[2]) Soon afterwards, after Kale has been dealt with (this time by Gwenevere herself, with the help of Merlin's mysterious friend Lady of the Lake), Merlin at last appears in the episode "The One Jewel" ("The Last Dance") to face off with Morgana and the also the summoned ghosts of several ancient wizards in the great showdown at the Center of the Wild Magic. It is revealed Merlin had been staying there since his staff was destroyed and he has been trying to turn all the magic everywhere to good. In the end, thanks to the aid of Gwen and her friends, Merlin emerges victorious in a fight against his once again gathered old enemies, but this time so completely that nothing remains of them even withing Wild Magic. With the power of the Dark Stone finally destroyed and the world seemingly free of Kale and Morgana, Merlin makes sets out to at long last returns to Avalon with the supremely powerful One Jewel as his new personal jewel containing all magic of six former Wizard Jewels along with that of the Staff of Avalon.
In the comic[]
The Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders sequel comic, to be released in 2024, will include Tamara "training under Merlin to better harness the power of her Heart Stone." However, "when Merlin begins acting oddly, it's a sign that the evil Wild Magic has returned to the kingdom--and so has a foe the Jewel Riders thought they'd once vanished." This presumably means hints that not only either Kale or Morgana will be back but also somehow the strange state of Merlin may have something to do with this.
Behind the scenes[]
Merlin in the series draws from the popular imagination of this legendary figure following the success of T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone and its Disney cartoon adaptation, that is an old magician mentor with long beard and moustache, clad in a blue robe with a pointed hat decorated with magical symbols, and living in a forest cottage. His pet owl Archimedes was also directly inspired by the character of the same name from that work. One difference is that the Jewel Riders Merlin was always shown with four fingers (including thumb) in pre-production images, but he has five fingers in the show. It is not actually shown in the series, but he is bald under wizard hat.[3] The second season scripts describe the vision appearances of Merlin as "ghostly", but he looks quite his normal self in the show. He was voiced by Bob Kaliban in English, by Wolf Rahtjen in German, by Roger Carel in French, and by Maurizio Scattorin in Italian.
A storyboard of Merlin and Kale's confrontation
In the Enchanted Camelot version scripts, Merlin is trapped in his bubble not by a deer apparition, but by a green cat. Lady Kale does not just throw Merlin into the Wild Magic, she full on vaporises him into "Wizard Pixie Dust." When he appears after Gwen gets her Sun Stone, Merlin says he now exists in the "spiritual plane, flowing within the wild magic of Camelot." A different Merlin character, who however also served as the protagonists' mentor figure in their fight against Morgana, has previously appeared in King Arthur and the Knights of Justice, another Arthurian-themed animated series from the same production company (BKN).
Merlin and Kale's magic fight over his staff as animated in "Full Circle".
The original script showed them destroying each other within the Wild Magic before Kale's unexplained return to Avalon in the next scene.[4] As described in an internal guide summary after the first season: "Without their jewels, even the most powerful and experienced wizards, after a prolonged exposure to the Wild Magic, will actually dissipate and become a part of the Wild Magic themselves. Thus, at the end of Episode 13, Merlin becomes like a ghost. Merlin was willing to give up his jewel [Crown Jewel Box key] to throw Kale into the Wild Magic and save Avalon because he assumed his tie to the matrix of the Crown Jewels would bring him back. But without that tie or his magic jewel, he's suck as part of the Wild Magic itself... until the Jewel Riders can figure out another way to bring him back."
Legacy[]
Avalon's Henry Gardener
Merlin from Jewel Riders inspired the Avalon: Web of Magic character of Henry Gardener.[5] Gardener was supposed to be mentor to the current mages, but was kidnapped by the Dark Sorceress before the current party even discovered their jewels; they found a hologram of him, but were not taught about their powers or mage levels. Merlin’s speech in "Shadowsong" is actually a part of the books' Avalon prophecy. Furthermore, a character named Marlin also appears in the series.
See also[]
References[]
- ↑ This is evident in the dweasels' lines when reacting to Kale's plans for Merlin in "Jewel Quest, Part I": "Merlin would fry us like little ants / Squash us like bugs / Tweek us like tomatoes / Burst us like bubbles."
- ↑ The Fortune Jewel (script)
- ↑ Greg Autore and the Toy Design of Jewel Riders - Part Two - The Jewel Riders Archive
- ↑ Revenge of the Dark Stone (script)
- ↑ Character Comparison: Henry Gardener | The Avalon Archive
| Characters |
|---|
| List of characters List of episodic characters Main characters |
| Magic |
|---|
  Magic, Wild Magic, Jewel Quest, Jewel Armor |
