The popular fantasy manga/anime series The Seven Deadly Sins offers its own twist on Arthurian legend and its iconic characters, including Merlin. However, with the show’s shifting alliances, fans debate if Merlin is evil or if her actions are justified in the series.
Created by Nakaba Suzuki, The Seven Deadly Sins takes place during the European Middle Ages in Britannia and follows a group of knights, each of whom represents one of the biblical deadly sins. The Sin of Gluttony is carried by Merlin, a powerful witch who has honed her magical abilities over 3,000 years while maintaining her youthful appearance. Given the shady things that Merlin does in The Seven Deadly Sins, let’s discuss whether the character should be considered evil or not.
Merlin’s Role in The Seven Deadly Sins
When Merlin is introduced at the start of The Seven Deadly Sins, she’s depicted as one of the more playful and patient figures within the seven adventurers. She is shown to legitimately care for the rest of her ensemble, visibly losing her cool when Arthur is impaled on his own sword and when Meliodas begins to uncontrollably revert to his demonic true form. Merlin is also capable of great compassion and is one of the few characters to treat the monstrous Escanor with dignity and respect.
However, Merlin is also very cunning and calculating, secretly plotting to manipulate the others into helping her free the entity Chaos and use young Arthur Pendragon as a human host for him. Though the other Sins felt understandably betrayed when they finally learned Merlin’s true intentions, it was Meliodas who convinced them to forgive her, so long as she took responsibility for her actions. By the events of the sequel series The Seven Deadly Sins: Knights of the Apocalypse, Merlin’s whereabouts currently remain unknown, as she had mysteriously disappeared several years prior to the start of the story.
Is Merlin Evil in The Seven Deadly Sins?
The more audiences learn about Merlin, the significantly more morally ambiguous she becomes, from manipulating the Sins to revive Chaos to her own backstory. Millennia before the start of the main story, Merlin was responsible for the destruction of her city, Bérialin, to boost her magical powers to prepare for the conflict against the Supreme Deity and the Demon King, two powerful figures at the heart of the series. This underscores that Merlin is willing to go to deadly lengths to achieve her goals, relatively undeterred by the consequences.
It’s implied that Merlin does genuinely care for most of her fellow Sins, at the very least Meliodas and Escanor. It can be assumed that Merlin is certainly a selfish and deceptive character, but her identifying Arthur as a suitable host for Chaos and helping him deal with this role suggests she has her sense of morality and motives for the good of Camelot, by harnessing one of the most powerful entities in existence. This does not excuse any innocents caught in the crossfire by Merlin’s machinations, however, making her more sinister than good, even if she justifies her actions as being part of a grander plan, worth the collateral damage.
