Question of the Day - 12 December 2020

We first went to MGM Resorts International, which seems to have taken a vow of silence of on the issue. 

“A lot of casinos aren’t into preserving their own history, which is a shame, and a lot of stuff just gets tossed,” says Clark County Museum history Mark Hall-Patton. Hall-Patton says he knows it wasn’t donated to any of the museums in the Las Vegas Valley (he runs three of them). But he does offer two theories for where Merlin might be. 

One is that he’s in the back of a warehouse someplace, forgotten. The other is that he hasn’t gone anywhere and instead was simply covered up: first in 2007 by the sign for Dick’s, then in 2016 by the clock that currently crowns the Excalibur façade. It would certainly have been quite a job to remove Merlin, as he’s several times life size and would have required a construction crane to remove.

Vegas historian and newscaster Tom Hawley knows for certain that the Excalibur dragon is now reposing under the drawbridge and theorizes that Merlin might be there as well. What’s a dragon doing in the (drained) moat? The fiery backstory of Merlin and the dragon can be found in our archives. Long story short: They used to do pyrotechnical battle seven times every night like the pirates of Treasure Island, also long gone. You can see a YouTube video of the Merlin-dragon thing here. 

If Merlin has been removed, finding him is a job for Indiana Jones. He’s probably in the warehouse that MGM uses to house retired decor, such as the two ornamental dragons that used to guard the entrance to Aria, a truly incongruous touch that didn’t last long. At any rate, the giant wizard will certainly be hard to miss.