Siren episode 3 review: Is Freeform introducing a polyamorous relationship?
Chris reaches out
After snagging a nurses cell phone, Chris is able to send a distress message to Calvin and Xander asking for help. They call the number back and get the voice mail for a Donna Stevens, which is a good starting point for them to get an address. After the figure out where Donna lives they head to her house to wait on her, hoping that eventually she will get in her car to go to work and will lead them to Chris. Once she comes out of her house (what she looks like was confirmed for them by a picture on her Facebook profile which once again reminds us of why we don’t have a personal Facebook page) the hunt is on. They follow her to the facility that is holding Chris, but it’s heavily guarded and they can’t get in. New plan: They go back to Donna’s house in hopes to corner her and force her to get them into the facility – not the best plan in the world, but they are kind of out of options.
At the super secret lab, the experiments are going well as they have found that the spinal fluid they extracted from the mermaid is helping to heal rats. Good news for the rats… not so good news for the mermaid who seems to be getting weaker. While the lead scientist pleads with the military to slow down the testing since their mermaid is sick, they want to push forward at alarming speeds. Is Ryn going to find her sister before it’s too late to save her? Luckily for now her sister is somewhat safe since the lead scientist has decided to suspend testing indefinitely. As it turns out, she’s not actually sick but is playing sick in order to regain her strength.
Interview with a Mermaid
After seeing her father’s police photos (and hearing that there was non-human blood found at the crime scene where Ryn murdered that rapist), Maddie and Ben are concerned that Ryn has murdered someone in the town (which Ryn later confirms to Maddie in private). This gives them pause as to just how strong she really is to have thrown a 200 pound man through a windshield. They really don’t know what they are dealing with when it comes to Ryn, but it’s not stopping them from wanting to help. They are all in.
After assuring Ryn that Xander is following up on a lead for her sister, Ben and Maddie take the time to learn more about her in hopes that they can get a better handle on just what they are dealing with. They record their interview with her beginning with some more simple questions like can her sister lose her fin and gain legs like she does (the answer is yes) and are there more mermaids besides Ryn and her sister (also yes which means we may see even more mermaids!!!). When they start getting to some harder questions they realize that what Helen said about Ryn being a predictor is true when she says she attacked Ben in the water because it’s kill or be killed.
When they start getting into some other testing with her they learn that she is highly intelligent and picks up on things at an extraordinary speed. When they weigh her, she is 196 pounds, which is a bit mind boggling since she is the size of a postage stamp. Watching her rip the blood pressure arm band off was extremely satisfying since we’re sure everyone out there (including us) has wanted to do that at one point or another.
As the interview goes on, Ryn’s skin starts to turn scaly again and they learn that she can really only be out of the water for about a day before she starts to get sick. They take the interview they taped and lock it up (not sure why they wouldn’t take it with them instead of leaving it at the office, but here we are). While they are busy hiding the tape, a co-worker (Jerry) shows up and invites Ryn to a party, but she misunderstands and thinks that he’s going to take her to find her sister. Instead we see Ryn at a party, drinking her first beer (or 2 or 3) and getting a bit more comfortable around people. When Maddie and Ben get there they are a moment too late before Ryn is accidentally pushed into the pool. Like them, we expect her to turn into a mermaid, but she didn’t – saying that she can’t change in that type of water (guess chlorine and mermaids don’t mix?)
Are we looking the beginning of a polyamorous relationship?
We did see Ryn drawing Ben almost into a kiss, but it was clear that she was using her super special mermaid powers to make that happen – even Maddie who was watching understood what was happening and later we see something similar happen once again between Ryn and Maddie. Can we just take a moment to give a shout out to the writing of Maddie’s character? Many other women or men in her position would feel threatened or jealous, but she really has an understanding of what’s happening here and is able to keep a level head about it all. This is probably why Maddie is one of our favorite character’s on this show: She’s strong willed, highly intelligent and has compassion that we don’t often see in these types of situations where another woman has entered the picture. We are starting to think this might be moving into a polyamorous relationship with Ryn, Ben and Maddie. After seeing Ryn have moments and chemistry with them both and crawl into bed with them to sleep we could see it going in that direction. One of the things that we appreciate most about Freeform is that they are completely unafraid to dive into complicated sexual relationships as we’ve seen before on The Fosters and on Shadowhunters, so if they do go in this direction we wouldn’t be surprised.
CarterMatt Verdict
Episode 3 was the perfect time for us to get to know Ryn better and we love watching her trying to learn about human interactions. Like we’ve said before, this process reminds us a lot of Leeloo from The Fifth Element, and Eline Powell does such a great job with it. She’s incredibly funny with some of the things that many of us don’t even think about (like how post-it notes work). One of the things we really loved about this episode that we have never seen on any other show done quite this smoothly is how they deal with texting and driving. We all know that texting and driving leads to accidents and the message to stop doing that has been pushed hard, but if you watch any show people are doing it all the time or the passenger is receiving the message and then showing it to the driver while they are still driving. Here we had a text come in while Ben was driving, him ask Maddie to read it and once she has something to show him asked him to pull over and stop the car before showing it to him. This was something we loved seeing, especially since this show caters to a much younger crowd who might be just getting ready to start driving or are new drivers.
What did you think of the third episode of Siren and do you like where the story is going so far? Leave us a comment in the box below with your thoughts on the show.
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