Ryn, Ben and Maddie go on a journey to recruit new allies in the fight against Tia. Helen is being haunted by perhaps more than just the memory of Donna. Tia steps up the next phase in her campaign.

So Robb is a Mer-person, huh? Who’d have thought? Well, for all the drama of his reveal at the end of the last episode, it all gets sorted pretty quickly here. Even Maddie, who you’d think would be the one feeling most betrayed, seems to get over it pretty quickly. In fact, if there’s one word to describe the general feeling of this whole episode, it would be ‘rushed’.

From the reveal of Robb’s heritage to him agreeing to introduce the gang to ‘his people’ in the Cold North takes all of about five minutes, and then when they get there they’re confronted by an enormous problem that they just science their way around in the space of one conversation in a diner.

And then there’s the dark secret that Ben’s been hiding from Ryn, which she promptly reveals she had already half-figured out and then just forgoes to ask the actual important question which I would have thought would devastate her. So there’s that.

Back in Bristol Cove, Helen goes from vague visions to a total understanding of what’s happening in the space of one conversation, and is then further able to call on the sort of help that only one episode ago would have taken serious effort and some herbal assistance by just lighting a candle and asking, and then the answer just basically falls into her lap.

Everything moves at a million miles an hour, with so much getting covered in the space of an hour that your head will spin. Gone is the usual patient pacing and in its place just a breathless rush to shove a load of plot points in place, and not all convincingly.

We don’t even get to see much of Tia, although she does get the final shot for an act that seems almost deliberately to be seeding her eventual downfall. Siren has been many things over the course of the last two and a half seasons, but predictable has seldom been one of them – I hope that’s not about to change.

Verdict: Suddenly falling over itself in haste to rush through some important plot stuff, and suffers for it – hopefully this is a blip, not the new norm. 6/10

Greg D.Smith