Dominic Monaghan Talks Merlin and Magic, Body Swap Episode (Exclusive)

The hijinks continue on The Librarians: The Next Chapter with the Monday, August 17, episode, and Merlin (Dominic Monaghan) gets in on the body swap fun. TV Insider spoke with Monaghan about that and more.

Warning: Spoilers for The Librarians: The Next Chapter Season 2 Episode 6 ahead!

Elaine (Caroline Loncq) takes Merlin captive in the annex, refusing to believe he’s not up to something and trying to get his hands on magic, just as the rest of the team — Viktor (Callum McGowan), Lysa (Olivia Morris), Connor (Bluey Robinson), and Charlie (Jessica Green) — is in the middle of swapping bodies, and on one of the switches, he’s caught up in it. However, he pretends to be Lysa back in her body. Once Lysa wakes in Merlin’s body, however, she’s able to convince Elaine of who she really is.

Meanwhile, Merlin-in-Lysa’s body suggests to Vikram that the person who uses magic should be someone who has learned it’s too wild to master, pointing out the good that magic could do. As he sees it, Camelot fell because Arthur was flawed and when he inherited the throne by pulling the sword from the stone, he got all that power too fast with no life experience. Instead, Merlin posits, someone who has lived, lost, been hurt, and earned that power could become a new, better Arthur — and he thinks that person could be Vikram.

Once back in his own body, Merlin runs, telling Vikram it’s because of Elaine and him being afraid what the Library might do. He leaves him with the suggestion that he could be the new King Arthur, the king to save them all.

TNT

Below, Dominic Monaghan discusses the body swap and what Merlin sees in Vikram.

How was Merlin first pitched to you?

Dominic Monaghan: It’s been a while obviously since that conversation, but obviously I knew of Dean. Dean is known as being one of the nicest guys in the business, and not only that, but having produced some incredible pieces of work, some successful pieces of work. So, when Dean’s office got in touch with my agent’s office, they were like, “Oh, Dean Devlin has something that he wants to talk to you about.” And I said, “That sounds great.” And then Dean and I spoke about this idea of a kind of modern take on what might arguably be the most famous wizard ever. Of course, Gandalf is in the conversation, but I think a lot of people might say, “Well, Merlin, he’s the original Gandalf.” He came before Gandalf, and I’m sure Tolkien knew all about Merlin while he was writing Gandalf. But Dean had said, “This is a modern take. This is Merlin trying to be part of the modern world, and his addiction is magic.” So that’s the thing that he’s really struggling with. And obviously magic is all around Merlin. And for me, that just sounded like a really interesting challenge for me: How can I make him feel modern when he’s a character that goes back thousands of years in mythology? And how does he, as someone who is almost completely personified by magic, try and navigate a world in which that is his major weakness?

So, with the body swap, did you have conversations with Olivia about playing each other’s characters?

I don’t think we did actually, because I think we both purposely were not wanting to get — Oh, actually, now that I think of it, there was a couple of things, but I didn’t want to do anything that might necessarily upset her or do anything that might seem kind of cliché. So, I stayed away from that. But I did ask about, are there any kind of rhythms or cadences in the way that she speaks? Because obviously Olivia is English, she’s playing an American person. So I said, when you put on an American accent, is it different? Is the rhythm different? She thought that her voice was probably a little bit higher. And also her character’s quite inquisitive, and her mind is always racing. So she kind of gave me that.

And then, in terms of me, I just said, good luck because there’s no way you’re going to get your voice as deep as mine has gone, unfortunately, over the years. But I did say that Merlin had this very brooding, dark energy. And I think Liv did a fantastic job. It’s really great. Really funny as well.

TNT

Now that Merlin’s gotten a look at the team under the guise of pretending to be Lysa, what does he think of them?

I think, unfortunately, the real power of magic slightly sways what might be his actual opinions because he is kind of like a drug addict. He needs his fix. So, outside of all that, I think he’s really aware that the Librarians are doing great work and that they’re trying to do the right thing and fight for the right things. But unfortunately, that sometimes gets in the way of what Merlin is trying to do.

I think with Vikram, he kind of knows that he has to be firing on all cylinders because Vikram is the leader and also probably admires Merlin the most. So he’s watching Merlin with a lot of focus. And then the combination of all of those characters creates this single monster that goes up against them. You’ve obviously got Charlie, who has that kind of physical thing. And then Connor’s energy is a little bit more spiritual and instinctual. He just kind of feels things out. And then you’ve got the cerebral kind of mind of Lysa. So they, as individuals, I think, are characters that I think Merlin thinks he can handle. But when they come together as a team, I think he’s up against it.

Merlin tells Vikram he ran because of Elaine, and he was afraid of what the library might do. Whether or not that was his only motive for running, because obviously he doesn’t want to be caught and he wants magic, like we’re talking about with the addiction to magic, was he being truthful about that at least?

I think this is something that I talked about with Dean. He kind of said Merlin knows magic better than anyone else. And because of that, he knows the power of it. He knows what it can do. And I think he is starting to realize that it’s out of his control, that the magic is the strong power, and he’s just kind of chasing after it somewhat. And I think he’s trying to protect the librarians. Can he solve it on his own? And then realizes quite far into the season that he’s in too deep and that now he’s just fully embraced that dark side of the magic.

Speaking on that, because Lysa says that when she was in Merlin’s body, she felt the overwhelming need to find magic, and Merlin couldn’t breathe without it. Do you think that’s at least partly because magic is what Merlin knows, and he doesn’t want to face who he is without it for good?

Yeah, I think Merlin probably isn’t a lot outside of magic. Of course he’s a wizard. Of course, he’s someone that people come to for help with magic. He’s extremely intuitive. He’s powerful. He’s able to work in magical fields and navigate through them. And we don’t know anything about Merlin’s parents. We don’t know anything about his partners. We don’t know anything about his other life, apart from the fact that he’s addicted to magic. And he thinks that if he’s the person with the most amount of magic and the most amount of power, then he can rule over the land, which obviously, is that whole thing about “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He cannot handle it, but he doesn’t want anyone else to have it either.

So, when he tells Vikram that he could be the new King Arthur, is it that he sees something in him, or does he see him as a means to the end to get what he, Merlin, wants?

I wonder if it’s maybe a double-edged sword. I wonder if maybe what he’s saying to Vikram is I see the path that Merlin could go on with magic if everything was good. If I had a good headspace, if I was doing it for the right reasons, I think I could see that I could be this person that could create all this balance like Vikram could. But then, once Merlin decides that he’s going to be it, I don’t think there’s any other way that it’s going to go anywhere other than unmanageable and dark. Because once he walks down that path of how powerful can I get with the magic, it’s only going to head into a situation where it’s all going to blow up in his face.

The Librarians: The Next Chapter, Sundays and Mondays, 9/8c, TNT