Unusually high fishing activity has Ben and Maddie curious and investigating what might be going on, when they get an unexpected visit. Meanwhile Chris returns to town after being tracked down by the mysterious Decker in Alaska, and apparently being of no further interest to the authorities…

It all seemed so neatly tied up at the end of the last episode – Ryn and her sister had been reunited and returned to the sea, Chris had found his buddies again and was going to be alright. And yet, there were other questions lurking – would the military come after Chris again? Would Ben and Maddie ever see Ryn again? Where had Ryn and her sister gone?

Most of that gets answered in fairly short order – the opening dealing with Decker tracking down Chris in Alaska a month after the events of the last instalment and asking him specific questions about who he escaped with, leading Chris to conclude that he’s safe to do what he wants and return home. Meanwhile, Ben and Maddie suddenly see Ryn’s tracker start up again and are soon reunited with her and her sister. So far, so predictable. But that’s all within the first half of the episode – then things get interesting.

As far as Decker goes, he seems to far less sympathetic to the plight of the Mermaids after the one he had in his custody escaped and killed quite a lot of folks. Having burned his old base of operations to the ground, he’s setting up again and taking no chances. His agenda seems fairly clear and not a little sinister.

As for Ryn and her sister – well they have a little disagreement of their own about exactly how much they can trust Ben and Maddie. Ryn’s sister is understandably a little more wary of any humans after her previous experiences with them. Ryn wants to enlist Ben and Maddie’s help as they are literally being starved by the overfishing. Her sister just wants to return to the water and swim far away from humans. Helen gets involved and it’s all about as big an unhappy families situation as you can imagine.

Ben decides to take his father up on the offer of a job with the family business as environmental consultant to see if he can find anything out about the overfishing from the inside, and Maddie gets the sudden and unpleasant surprise of being asked to what turns out to be a very uncomfortable lunch with Ben’s mother. I get the feeling that this next part of the series will show us a lot more of the Pownall family, and it may not be all good.

There’s a surprise in the episode too, although I’ll be honest and say that it isn’t all that much of a surprise, and something I’d suspected since the pilot, but I’ll be intrigued to see how it plays out with audiences generally.

Verdict: As it moves into its next phase, the series is teeing up a lot of shots. Whether it can land them all or not is another matter, but It’s done a decent enough job so far, so for now it gets the benefit of the doubt from me. 7/10

Greg D. Smith