Ryn, Ben and Maddie hatch a plan to protect Bristol Cove from Tia and her army, but an incident while doing so leaves all three of them shaken. Xander juggles best man duties for Calvin with helping out a couple of friends in need.

There’s honestly been so much going on in Siren lately that I had clean forgotten that Maddie wasn’t fully aware of the extent of Ben’s experimentation on himself with the mermaid stem cells. So of course when he dives into the water after Ryn as they try to recover a weapon that will help fight Tia and then doesn’t surface for a while, Maddie freaks out. But that’s nothing compared to what happens when he gets back – turns out that the rapid pace and number of his injections has had more fundamental impacts than he might have imagined.

While this is all very schlocky and visually arresting, it’s really driving a deeper and more emotional point which has underscored the narrative of the show from its inception – regardless of their feelings for one another, it’s clear that Ryn and Ben are from separate worlds and don’t belong together in the traditional sense. Ryn may think she’s ready to give up her transformation and live on land forever, Ben may think he’s ready to go full mer-person and live in the water, but can either of them really make that sacrifice for the other and would either of them want the other to make that sacrifice for them?

On the Tia front, an incident in Russia provokes her to seek out old acquaintances after a heavy defeat to Robb and his tribe. The issue is that Tia really isn’t that complex of a character. Combined with her extreme capability, she’s not all that interesting as a villain. That may sound odd to say given she’s suffered a defeat, but the fact that defeat occurs off screen, coupled with other things we learn about that she’s done off screen as well, means that all we really have is an antagonist with no apparent flaws and very little motivation beyond killing off everyone who isn’t one of her kind and on her side. It’s arguable that you don’t really need much more than that in a villain with a show that focuses more on the complex emotional narratives of its various protagonists, but it still shows up quite poorly next to those protagonists nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Xander is a busy bunny indeed this episode, dealing with the various duties entailed by being best man for Calvin. As if that weren’t enough, the decision by the military to move their base out of town means that his old buddy Chris (remember him?) needs somewhere to live as he’s being kicked out. This is a rather contrived way to get Xander into said base so he can do a favour for Helen while he’s there, and while I appreciate thoroughly the rehabilitation of the character into ‘good guy Xan’, it stretches credulity rather a lot, even in a show about mermaids.

Verdict: On one level, it’s doing deep character stuff with its leads, on the other it’s making everything else a little simpler and dumber. Time will tell, but the show does seem to be a little off its game at the moment. 7/10

Greg D. Smith