this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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Watched the trailer and oooh boy. First off, why is it called Rise of the Merlin? Shouldn’t it be Rise of Merlin? Does Merlin talk about himself in the third person?
Trailer makes it painfully obvious there’s going to be a suffocating amount of evangelical propagandizing. It’s clearly not historically accurate and is anachronistically pasting modern evangelical framings of the religion onto early Catholicism. It’ll all be about “personally” finding Christ and no acknowledgement of the international politics of the Christianization of Britain.
Speaking of historical issues, while Arthur is clearly a legendary figure, it’s pretty clear that he’s a post-roman legendary figure. Having him present at the same time that the Romans are still a strong presence in Britain makes neither historical nor narrative sense. Arthur is the national foundation mythos in the aftermath of the WRE, there’s no element of conflict with Rome in that. I suspect the show is forcing some pained “Britain is America and Rome is Britain” metaphor.
The trailer is vague about what the show is about. It’s a lot of people being dramatic with each other but not offering any glimpse into the meat of the thing. Despite the description, I don’t think I heard a single concrete thing about the barbarian invaders in the trailer. It also seems contradictory on the religious element; the Christian god is the true god but there’s also magic coming from other gods? It also seems like it’s the Romans who are skeptical of Christianity, which makes no sense as they’re the ones that introduced Christianity to Britain.
the OP/imdb might be a little misleading, wikipedia claims the show is mostly post-roman. but specialists have been using the terminology "sub-roman" for a long time due to longstanding disagreements about what "Roman" even means or meant in that historical context. Elements of Arthurian myth have been frequently identified with "roman" figures and since the central figure is made up, it's feasible to place your 'Arthur' as a 'last roman' sort of character.
I don't want to give the Daily Wire any credit, but the nature of the grains that make up the heap of Arthurian myth don't fall on a neat roman-not-roman axis.
Yhea, I think I'm some versions he is even a cavalry commander from Romania, hence the knights.
the 'sarmatian theory' grain is completely untenable but it was the basis of the 2004 film so it has outsized cache. the sarmatian commander guy was over a century too old! it still gets used a lot because it's hard for audiences to wrap their heads around "knights" being direct descendents of roman cavalry. it's a whole heap of communication issues & narrative decisions