Siren Season 3 Episode 6 Review: The Island

This Siren review contains spoilers.

Siren Season 3, Episode 6

It might be time to let the town in on the mermaid secret, Bristol Cove has become a battleground, and the fighting won’t stay in the water for long. Tia’s brutal attack on Ryn’s clan was a success, and the remaining survivors are weak and taking refuge on an island. When Ryn brings Ben and Xander to help her retrieve her people, they are ambushed by Tia’s tribe.

Katrina’s betrayal left Ryn’s people without a place to hide because she gave Tia everything— well, almost. With Ben’s and Xander’s help, Ryn is able to save some, but not all of her people. Hunter was left behind, thought to be dead, but she awoke surrounded by Tia’s people, and was given the ultimatum: to join or die. To prove her new loyalty, she went one step further than Katrina, and told Tia about Hope. Now Tia is armed with information that could be used to devastate Ryn, but Hope is a full-blooded newborn mermaid, which may give Tia pause. It’s thrilling to think about all the ways this war can play out, especially with the stakes being what they are.

When Ryn comes to Ben for help, he asks Xander to come along, and Xander doesn’t refuse. His relationship with mermaids has been contentious but he’s not stuck in his old mindset of complete fear and distrust, unlike Ted. Ted’s recent encounter with Tia, and his encounter with a mermaid a decade ago, are his only experiences with their kind, and they are bad ones. Ted hasn’t had the chance to get to know them, to see their humanity, and he’s where Xander was when his father was killed, fully convinced of their maleficence.

Xander has had the time, and when he’s on the island with Ryn’s people, he puts bad blood to rest with Camille, and protects her from one of Tia’s soldiers. But Xander hasn’t completely softened, and Tia’s arrival and subsequent attack only reaffirms his choice to join law enforcement, so he can protect Bristol Cove with some level of authority. Ted, on the other hand, is arming himself with knowledge about mermaids and hybrids, to do… who knows what. The hybrids are preparing for the worst, though, which makes sense given he’s a Pownall.

It seems the secret about mermaids is slowly leaking anyway. When Robb questions Maddie about the mermaid body they found in the freezer, she makes up a believable enough story about a new species she and Ben discovered washed up on the beach, that they’ve been independently researching. Robb, being a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, throws out the mermaid “what if” and Maddie only barely convinces him that’s not the case. This is a weird sequence of events because Maddie could’ve walked away from the mermaid hypothetical completely, but she leans into it, even while trying to refute it.

This is a rare moment in Siren where it feels like the writers were trying to kill time, and it ultimately felt purposeless, especially given the reveal that Robb is from the water. I suspected as much, because he was too eager to be in Bristol Cove and he did not seem even mildly taken aback by the body or any of Maddie’s revelations, looking exactly like this gif the entire time.

Plus, the writing gave him a lot of narrative real estate despite both his newness to the series, and otherwise irrelevance to the story as it stands. Tia proved that merfolk could assimilate completely, it was only a matter of time before we met others, and Robb was the obvious candidate. I’m mostly indifferent about him, but I can’t wait to learn who he really is, what he wants, and whether he’s friend or foe.

Ryn could use friends right now, in the land and in the water. It would be nice to have another mermaid, or better yet, another tribe, come to Bristol Cove to back Ryn. But Siren doesn’t concern itself with being nice, so there are never guarantees that our “good guys” will get the assist or take the W. Tia is not just a threat to other merfolk, she’s coming for land-dweller blood, too.

The hybrids are prepared for whatever Ted has in store, and Ted is gathering all the intel he can on merfolk and their half-human descendants, so they’re both preparing to fight… maybe Tia’s impending attack will make strange bedfellows of these otherwise opposing groups, and we’ll get to see a grand battle play out on land and in the sea. I have enjoyed all of the underwater scenes and look forward to seeing them on a grander scale.

Additional thoughts

• Someone commented regarding my episode 3 review that the mermaid body Ben dug up was likely the half-transformed mermaid from the previous season, not Donna’s, which is correct. This changes things somewhat, because Ryn’s connection to this mermaid isn’t the same as with Donna, so her reaction to the knowledge that Ben is experimenting with her cells may be different. It also makes Donna’s appearance in Helen’s dreamstate a bit more mysterious, which I’m okay with; it only deepens my engrossment in the story.