And with Nimueh, she doesn't even do that! Merlin asks her to do something, accepts the consequences, and when it doesn't go to plan he offers to sacrifice himself instead, but when Gaius gets there first he ... decides Nimueh must die.

It wasn't Merlin's best moment. :/ I know he was angry, but since when is anger a justification to haul off and kill someone? He kind of forgot what Gwen told him in the previous episode. *g* And furthermore, Nimueh did nothing more and nothing less than she said she would (she told Merlin it wasn't his life that would be taken and he didn't even hear her), and what she was asked to do. She didn't make the rules, and she didn't deserve to die just because Merlin couldn't handle the consequences of his decision to play around with that sort of magic. It's something that I hope gets explored in the next series, but I doubt it does. :/ I seriously think that the show expected us to believe that justice had been served, or something, but I found it pretty unsatisfying, dramatically.

I'm not sure I like the message being sent (albeit probably unintentionally) by the fact that Magic is pretty much only okay when Merlin does it/when it's in the service of the king/prince, and it's never okay in the hands of women, so far. And I think the next series would benefit greatly from a female sorcerer who's benevolent. So far we've got Morgana, but chances are good that she will eventually do something bad even if it's for the right reasons. *dreads*

If I were better at organizing my thoughts I'd do a whole other meta on this stuff. :P