Chris manages to escape the clutches of the military, but he doesn’t come out alone. Xander and Calvin get Ben and Maddie involved in their vigil at the mysterious Donna’s house, and Ryn is getting sicker by the minute as she lingers on land.

Siren is an oddity, as I’ve remarked before and this episode is no different. Having lulled us into a slow-paced search for answers for various parties, it plays a two-step game in this episode, on the one hand drawing things out even further and on the other accelerating things to a conclusion that’s actually nothing of the sort.

So Chris escapes the military base he’s been being held in, with company, and grabs a car and hotfoots it out of there. Of course the slight issue is that he’s still injured and very ill, so it’s rather a gamble as to whether he will make it anywhere useful.

Meanwhile, Xander and Calvin, with the aid of Ben and Maddie, break into Donna’s house to see if they can find further clues, only to have to vacate very quickly. After another journey together introduces even more questions than it answers, the two groups decide to go their separate ways again, Xander and Calvin following the new lead, Ben and Maddie back home to try to find some answers there.

What this means is you have the setup for one of those interminable fiction tropes where the people looking for someone and the someone they are looking for are travelling in potentially randomly opposite directions from one another, lessening the chance that they will ever find one another. We even get the tired old ‘Oh and the guy being searched for has a phone but can’t get a signal’ chestnut and you start to think that maybe the show is going to disappoint after all.

Except that it then goes in a different direction again, and suddenly all bets are completely off. What feels like it might have been a natural conclusion to the story so far occurs, yet here we are at only episode four of a ten episode run. For a moment, I wondered what the show was playing at, but then I remembered how much it had played with initial expectations and sure enough, I wasn’t disappointed. Indeed, ‘phase one’ of this story may be over, but it’s clear that phase two is only just beginning. I’ve been sat watching this show expecting a self-contained one-season show. Now, I’m seriously contemplating the possibility of an ongoing franchise.

Once again, the performances are what really help things here. Some of the plot points are a little ropey, and there’s a few too many instances of narrative convenience but as usual, commitment to their roles by a superb cast means that all can be forgiven.

Elsewhere, there’s the slight issue of Sheriff Bishop still slowly and patiently tracking down Ryn (because that can’t end well) and more secrets, lies and revelations going on in various places. All told, its clear that there’s mileage in this one for quite some time yet.

Verdict: Keeps getting better and better. With the way this episode ends, I’m genuinely excited to see where the writers take it next, and I’m starting to wonder just how redundant some of the things which cropped up in the pilot and haven’t been mentioned since actually are. 8/10

Greg D. Smith