The Netflix fantasy series Cursed makes a lot of changes to the classic Arthurian legend,
and raises a lot of new mysteries.
Here are some of the biggest questions which are still left unanswered by the end of the
show's first season.
From the very beginning, Cursed lets us know that Nimue is eventually doomed to sink into
a deep body of water while bleeding from multiple arrow wounds.
During the closing minutes of the first season, we finally see how that happens: While attempting
to save a wounded Merlin alongside Morgana, Nimue is confronted by a bow and arrow-wielding
Sister Iris.
Iris ignores Nimue's pleas for mercy and fires several arrows into her.
Despite Merlin's attempt to save her, Nimue tumbles from the bridge, disappearing into
the churning waters below, and leaving the sword of power abandoned on the bridge.
When last we see her, Nimue is sinking to her supposed death, recalling the image that
opened the season.
However, despite all signs pointing to Nimue dying, her role in the Arthurian legend as
the mystical Lady of the Lake indicates that she'll survive... somehow.
Nimue showed herself capable of tremendous magic throughout the course of the season.
Maybe Merlin will use his magic to save her, or perhaps Nimue will save herself through
her own magic.
When Nimue realizes that Merlin is her biological father, she finally understands why her mother
tasked her with bringing the sword of power to him.
Even more pieces fall into place when Merlin shows her the circumstances that led to her
own conception.
The two met when Nimue's mother Lenore healed Merlin from something inside his chest that
was causing him pain.
She promptly cut him open to extract it, and was shocked to pull out the very sword of
power that Nimue returns to him years later.
Merlin mentions that the sword was his once, but never explains how it ended up inside
him.
The most he offers is that it wasn't an enemy who did it, but beyond that, we never get
any information on what the sword was doing inside Merlin's body.
Was he hiding it?
Was it a curse?
We may never know -- or at least, not by the end of season one.
Merlin insinuates several times that he's actually hundreds of years old, but we never
uncover the reason behind his staggeringly long life.
Originally, Merlin was born into the Fey, but his powers seem to exceed those of the
other Fey that we meet.
When we encounter Merlin in Cursed, he's been without his magic for some time, and we later
learn that he lost his powers when Lenore extracted the sword of power from his body.
Merlin spends most of the season endeavoring to get his magic back through various methods,
and as he does, he winds up brushing against death quite a few times.
At one point, after having been stabbed multiple times through the chest, he even asks the
rhetorical question,
"Why can't I die?"
It's a good question.
Not only should his stab wounds have been mortal, but he was shot in the heart with
an arrow earlier in the same episode.
We see plenty of other Fey die over the course of Cursed, so what makes Merlin different?
Probably one of the biggest twists Cursed throws at its audience comes when we learn
the true identity of the Weeping Monk that has been terrorizing the Fey for the entire
season.
"Lancelot.
A long time ago my name was Lancelot."
The Weeping Monk's adopted father is Father Carden, leader of the Red Paladins, who despise
the Fey and their magic.
But midway through the series, Gawain the Green Knight recognizes the Weeping Monk as
a fellow Fey.
By the end of the season, the Weeping Monk has turned on his adopted father, saving the
young Fey boy, Squirrel.
Yet the reveal that the Monk was actually named Lancelot before he was taken by Father
Carden still comes as quite a shock.
Carden tells Lancelot that he spared him from the slaughter of his village because of his
ability to sense other Fey, but considering Carden's track record, we can't believe that
that's the complete story.
We're curious to learn more about the young Lancelot before Carden took him.
While Cursed is up front about the identities of legendary characters such as Merlin and
Arthur, it enjoys doling out the more famous names of other characters throughout the course
of the season.
On several occasions, characters we've met under one name reveal that their actual name
is much more familiar.
"Igraine was my grandmother's name.
Bit of a mix-up when they first brought me here.
To friends, I'm Morgana."
"Go, Squirrel!"
"I won't leave you here."
"Percival!"
It begs the question of whether there are any other well known Arthurian characters
who have already made an appearance, but under different names.
Since Cursed plays pretty fast and loose with the characters' backstories, we can't rule
anyone out.
After all, if the chivalrous knight Lancelot can be introduced as one of the season's most
terrifying villains, anything is possible.
Perhaps Sister Iris or Pym will eventually turn out to be familiar characters from the
legend, or a minor character will turn out to be much more mythologically important than
we'd thought.
Something about Iris has always seemed a little strange, starting with her first meeting with
Nimue, where Iris reveals how she can spot demons.
"I just stare at them.
I stare at them until I see through their faces to their real faces."
It's clear that Iris and Nimue are likely not going to be friends, and sure enough,
Iris is soon burning down the abbey and attempting to find the Red Paladins, determined to join
their bloody cause by killing Nimue.
But while Iris is certainly motivated by a strong hatred of the Fey and their magic,
there seems to be more to her than that.
Several times, she seems to be internally conflicted about the path she's set for herself,
and at one point, she punishes herself for straying from her task by burning her own
arm over an open flame, berating herself as though she's of two minds.
Between her radical hatred, her unflinching capacity for violence, and her strange internal
debates, we wonder if there's a lot more to Sister Iris than meets the eye.
When Nimue asks Merlin about the sword of power, he admits that it was once his, and
that at one time, he might have desired it again.
However, he claims his motives have since changed.
"Let me destroy it."
"What?"
"That's my true intention, if you must know it."
It turns out Merlin did want the sword back almost immediately after Lenore extracted
it from his chest, since he realized the sword was tied to his magic.
At the time, Lenore lied and told him that she had destroyed the sword.
But by the time he learns that Nimue is his daughter, he seems to have experienced a true
change of heart, and seems sincere about destroying the sword.
Yet, by the end of the season, Merlin's magic has returned, and it seems to be tied directly
to his reclaiming of the sword.
The last we see of him, he survives only by channeling the sword's magic.
Will he still be committed to destroying the sword, now that he's had a taste of its power
again?
We'll have to wait to find out.
Nimue may be the character who spends the most time with the sword of power, but Merlin
has the longest history with the magical object.
The first indication of Merlin's connection to the sword came when he was struck by lightning
and branded with a sword-shaped burn mark that ran the length of his body.
Later, we learned that the sword was at one time Merlin's, that it somehow wound up embedded
inside his body, and that his magic is somehow linked to it.
Yet for every small detail we do know, there's plenty we don't.
Where did the sword come from before it came into Merlin's possession, and how did it get
so strongly linked to him?
What is the source and extent of its magical abilities?
For an object that was at the center of most of the conflicts in Cursed's first season,
we actually know very little about it, and are eager to learn more.
Midway through Cursed's first season, King Uther Pendragon receives a rude awakening
when he learns that he is not, in fact, royal by birth as he'd always assumed.
It turns out that when his mother was pregnant with her son, complications in childbirth
led to the baby being delivered stillborn.
The king had just died several months prior, and desperate for an heir, the queen sent
her midwife out to pay a local peasant to give up her baby.
The midwife returned the baby to the queen, who raised him as her own.
Uther learns that his biological mother was named Sylvia, and that she died shortly after
giving up her child, at the age of only 19.
Enraged, Uther poisons the queen with spiced wine, which is the same method she used to
kill Sylvia.
However, as far as we know, Sylvia was the only member of his family ever killed as part
of the queen's cover-up, which means his father may still be out there, somewhere, along with
other members of his family.
Will he go seeking them, or will they eventually track him down?
We'll have to wait and see.
Once the truth of Uther's illegitimacy begins to come to light, the Viking ruler Cumber
the Ice King arrives with a claim to the throne.
Although Cumber claims to have Pendragon lineage, it is never clarified exactly what his relationship
to the late king was.
The most we learn is when the midwife gives Cumber a blood-soaked cloth, presumably from
the queen's stillbirth.
"This is the blood of my cousin?"
"It is, my lord."
Perhaps his use of the word "cousin" means that Cumber was the king's nephew.
However, "cousin" could also be a broader term referring to any distant relative, in
which case Cumber's bloodline could have diverged with the Pendragons several generations earlier.
It will be interesting to see whether the connection between Cumber and the Pendragons
is explored further in future seasons, and exactly what that connection is.
Many times throughout Cursed, Uther seems to refer to himself in the plural, using pronouns
like "we" and "our" to express his thoughts and opinions.
"Tear us down, and you will suffer as we suffer."
There doesn't appear to be much rhyme or reason to when he uses plural pronouns, and when
he refers to himself as "I," begging the question of what exactly is going on here.
Maybe Uther is referring to either his kingdom or his court when he speaks in the plural,
but that doesn't feel like what is happening.
At times, it almost seems like there may be multiple consciousnesses warring inside him.
Yet no one ever seems to blink at his fluid oscillation between singular and plural pronouns,
suggesting that either no one notices, or everyone has just accepted it as a strange
quirk.
We have to wonder who Uther is referring to whenever he says "we," and if we'll ever learn
any more about them.
The mysterious, shrouded character known only as "the Widow" appears in a handful of episodes
to warn characters that death may be swiftly approaching.
While it's obvious that the Widow has one foot in the world of the living, and the other
in the world of the dead, very little is ever communicated about her own identity.
Some sort of shared history with Merlin is hinted at, but no real detail is ever given.
Adding another intriguing layer to the mystery of the Widow is that she's not actually immortal.
Morgana actually manages to kill her off screen toward the end of season one, and subsequently
takes her place.
Even Morgana herself isn't entirely sure how it happens, but her becoming the new Widow
suggests that the previous Widow was also once someone else entirely.
Was she someone Merlin knew?
How did she become the Widow?
And who was the Widow before her?
We'll just have to hold out hope that Cursed gets a second season, so we can find out.
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