‘The Pendragon Cycle’ Is Fantasy Grounded in Truth| National Catholic Register

COMMENTARY: The new Arthurian series succeeds by drawing on ancient stories, taking Christianity seriously and remembering that great fantasy needs something real at its core.

There is seemingly no end to the production of cheesy, tiresome television and film fantasy. The genre is an ancient and honorable one, if one looks back to cinematic precursors like the 1914 Italian silent epic Cabiria (the first film ever shown at the White House) or Fritz Lang’s marvelous 1924 Die Nibelungen. 

Through the years, we’ve had both good and bad, but mostly bad. The film fantasies created by Ray Harryhausen still hold a lasting charm. John Boorman’s Excalibur is a fine work as is Peter Jackson’s initial Lord of the Rings trilogy.

John Milius made a good Conan movie that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star. But Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy is long and expensive schlock seemingly motivated by “the search for more money,” as Mel Brooks once said. This year, television has featured the third season of House of the Dragon and will feature later this year the third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, both of them terrible in my opinion.

It is with some trepidation that I approached the premiere of the seven episodes of The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin on Amazon Prime in the United States (it had earlier been a surprise hit on Amazon Prime in Europe and the United Kingdom) this September. The production wasn’t even on my radar as so much of this modern fantasy stuff just seems to blend together, especially on streaming services, into just blander “content.”

The fact that Pendragon was made by a right-wing media company with Christians in key roles no doubt increased the skepticism of many. That category of skeptic would include me as I am a Christian who doesn’t usually watch self-consciously “Christian” movies and a right-winger who eschews most self-identified “right-wing” media. 

I was only very vaguely familiar with both the Daily Wire and Jeremy Boreing, who created, co-wrote and co-directed this work as a passion project. I knew, of course, by its very name that the subject matter would be Merlin and Arthur — “the Matter of Britain” as it is known — and that it was based on a series of novels by Stephen R. Lawhead. Both Lawhead and Boreing are Evangelical Christians. I have never read any of these novels, although I quite liked an excellent later book by Lawhead, Byzantium, from 1997. 

So I was very pleasantly surprised to have my low expectations far exceeded. The Pendragon Cycle is very well made. It is very well acted, produced and filmed. The locations (in Hungary and Italy) are stunning and the effects are well done, without being overdone. There are no anachronistic African Vikings here. But all of that can be said for many a professional production. There are two additional elements that made it a success.

First of all, Lawhead and the screenwriters who adapted his work drew on a rich vein of materials produced over centuries — myth, song, legend, history and literature — which still have weight in our consciousness and which by the patina of their antiquity communicate both sincerity and seriousness. It is like that recent Odyssey movie: The scenes with power are Homer’s; those without are director Christopher Nolan’s.

Pendragon’s creators are honest and humble enough to know that they stand on the shoulders of giants, drawing from the medieval chronicler and Catholic cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Welsh epic The Mabinogion and others, and from a rich tapestry of intertwined Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Roman and Norse taproots.

Secondly, it is Christianity that grounds and holds together the series in a way that gives it meaning and depth. It is not a spoiler to say that Merlin is both a man of power and a man of Christian faith. The series does a fine job of capturing the flux and flow of contending faiths and ethnicities of late Roman/post-Roman Britain, with its various pagans and its monks preaching a strange Eastern faith. “Trust in Jesu [Jesus], he is the only hope for men like us, if hope we have,” counsels a wise old king. 

Christianity, which obviously was a very real, growing presence during the time frame the series portrays, is shown with a naturalness and a deft, delicate touch all too rare in entertainment media. It is seen as both natural and supernatural, accepted and rejected, without falling into the trap of saccharine or heavy-handed preachiness. Achieving that balance is a real accomplishment for a filmmaker at any time, especially in the Year of Our Lord 2026. 

After I saw the series, I came upon this quote from Jeremy Boreing: The Pendragon Cycle “is the culmination of a 10-year vision to create culture, not just to criticize it. Lawhead’s novels present a visceral, masculine Christianity in a world of conflict and mystery. It isn’t saccharine or clean. In short, it is very much like our world.”

Those are bold words, and anyone willing to fight for and create Christian culture in our fallen age is to be commended. We need more such media warriors who have not just sincere belief but real artistic talent, who have something to say and know how they want to say it.

It is no small thing to have a vision, for that vision to be a good one — as this is — and to be able to pull it off with enough artistry and conviction for it to work as entertainment. The Pendragon Cycle pulls this off. There are seven books in Lawhead’s series and this rich and rewarding production only covers the first two. It is to be hoped, in an age where so much that is inferior is funded in Hollywood, that the filmmakers will have the ability to see their entire vision brought to fruition.