THE PENDRAGON CYCLE: RISE OF THE MERLIN

In the twilight of a crumbling Roman empire, as barbarian hordes press upon the shores of ancient Britain and the old pagan ways clash with emerging truths, a young man of extraordinary gifts emerges from the mists of legend. Gifted with prophetic visions and bound by a profound spiritual awakening, he navigates treacherous courts, forbidden romances, and epic conflicts, forging a path that will ignite the rebirth of a nation and lay the foundations for the age of Camelot. Before the Sword in the Stone, before the Round Table, one enigmatic figure’s destiny intertwines with the dawn of a new faith and the rise of kings. This is The Daily Wire’s The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin.

The Pendragon Cycle Review: (S1: E1-2)

Rise of the Merlin

While the rest of us complain about the woke, flavorless programming being foisted upon us by streaming services and movie studios, The Daily Wire is at least putting its money where its mouth is. Although no official budget has been disclosed for Rise of the Merlin, online estimates suggest tens of millions were spent bringing the first installment of The Pendragon Cycle to life, and it’s easy to see where the money was spent.

The production quality is easily on par with the vast majority of today’s other fantasy offerings, and better than a lot of them. Obviously, DW+ cannot compete with shows like Rings of Power, which spent $60 million per episode. On the other hand, they’re not desecrating a legendary, genre-defining masterpiece either. Arguably, the visuals are the aspect of Rise of Merlin that is most consistently excellent. The sets and costumes are detailed and coherent, with garments and locales that look worn rather than costumed—peasant clothing and domiciles are appropriately shabby, royal finery and castles appear suitably lived-in—lending the series a material authenticity many other higher-budget productions would do well to emulate.

In March of last year, the co-founder and erstwhile CEO—and god-king—of the conservative platform The Daily Wire, Jeremy Boreing, stepped down from day-to-day leadership to focus on the company’s growing entertainment division. A small-town Texas native with a notably thin filmmaking résumé, Boreing spent a handful of years in Los Angeles as a producer and writer and has exactly one feature-length directing credit to his name: a screwball comedy best described as a spiritual 3rd cousin to Revenge of the Nerds.

With little overall experience and absolutely none working on an epic-level saga featuring thousands of moving parts, large-scale battles, special effects, etc., fans of The Pendragon Cycle, as well as those of us simply rooting for conservative filmmaking in general, could be forgiven for any trepidation that we might have harbored upon learning that Boreing was helming this audacious project. Happily, most of those fears seem to be misplaced.

Overall, these first two episodes of Rise of the Merlin are competently directed and well performed. That’s not to say that there aren’t a few rough edges that could be smoothed. On occasion, some of the smaller action set pieces lack precision, resulting in mildly immersion-breaking moments. In one scene, the co-lead who plays Taliesin is tasked with lifting a fallen obelisk to a standing position, so he runs a rope around some trees and branches and begins to pull. The actor does a credible job of selling that the 800-8000 lbs of force needed to accomplish this task is appropriately daunting; however, the mechanics of the lift feel wrong, and the amount of tension in the rope is fairly inconsistent. It’s a small thing, but moments like this, or a nervous actor uncomfortably shifting from foot to foot, even though his character is supposed to be supremely confident, can easily add up over time and seriously damage a program’s vibe.

That said, what troubles Rise of the Merlin most is two-fold: one seems unlikely to persist as an issue once things start rolling, while the other has more potential to sink the series. The former is that these two episodes, though generally entertaining, are incredibly rushed. Decades of backstory fly by in chunks with disorienting rapidity. Subsequently, little time is given for the audience to bond with the characters or events. What’s worse is that there’s a very strong sense that these elements, while potentially intriguing and almost certainly receiving significant time in the book series, could be explained away with a little dialogue and a flashback or two. More experienced filmmakers may have chosen a more narratively economical route, leaving more time for future character and plot development. Less can very often be more, especially when translating a book into a film ro series.

The next problem may or may not be related to the first, but if it isn’t—and if it proves persistent—this entry in The Pendragon Cycle could find itself in real trouble. High-concept series like this are often carried through their weaker stretches by sharply drawn characters with clear, internal logic. In these opening episodes, the characters’ goals are communicated plainly enough through dialogue and plot mechanics, but their personalities remain frustratingly indistinct.

This isn’t a matter of blandness so much as opacity. We’re told what these characters want and who they are, but their outward expression of this doesn’t always match. Even characters designed to unsettle or remain unpredictable require a kind of narrative clarity—a sense that their behavior is grounded in a fully realized inner life. That comfort comes from subtext, from specificity, and from the unmistakable impression that the actors understand their characters at a level deeper than what’s being spoken. At present, Rise of Merlin gestures toward that depth without quite arriving there.

However, as these two episodes seem likely to serve as a prologue, episode 3 will ostensibly introduce us to an almost entirely new cast. So, it’s impossible to say with any certainty.

Taken on its own terms, Rise of the Merlin is an ambitious and largely competent opening salvo—one that stumbles occasionally, but never collapses under its own weight. Its shortcomings feel less like fatal flaws than the growing pains of a production reaching for something larger than its experience would normally allow. That matters. Ambition, especially in modern genre television, is no small virtue.

If nothing else, these first two episodes demonstrate that The Daily Wire is serious about competing in a space long dominated by ideologically hostile studios—and serious about doing so with craft, scale, and respect for the audience. Should the series slow its pace, allow its characters room to breathe, and trust subtext as much as spectacle, The Pendragon Cycle could yet grow into something genuinely distinctive. For now, Rise of the Merlin earns cautious optimism—and, more importantly, another episode’s worth of patience.

WOKE REPORT

None

• Early into the episodes, it looks as though there will be a girl-boss the likes of The Rings of Power’s Galadriel, but fear not, she isn’t.