SIREN – Season 2 Episode 1 – SPOILERS

Xander (Ian Verdun) is in for a rough time again. Levi, the merman who killed his dad, is back in town. Xander doesn’t know that yet, and he’s just coming to terms with having accidentally killed Ryn’s sister at the end of last season. He apologizes to Ryn and she seems to forgive him (or at least recognize that his regret is genuine). Xander has also come to terms with his roommate Calvin’s relationship with Janine (Hannah Levien). Janine subtly encourages Xander to hook up with Nicole (Natalie Linez) who is new in town and seems to be a bit of a fisherman groupie. But Natalie is a Navy Lieutenant who is likely in town to investigate merfolk, and Xander has yet to find out about that as well.

Levi and several others have returned to land because oil companies are mapping the ocean floor with a sonic cannon, chasing all aquatic life from the area. We see three beached whales and some very upset sea lions. Not all the merfolk escape in time. At least two of them are dead. Helen (Rena Owen) wakes from a nap to find four naked visitors surrounding her. They tell her that more will be coming. Ben takes all the newly arrived fugitives from the sea to his parents cabin in the woods (vacant since his mother’s accident some years ago). We discover that one of them is the daughter of Donna (Ryn’s deceased sister).

Katrina must acknowledge to the others that Ryn is their leader now. Katrina leads the group in a submissive gesture, asking for Ryn’s help. Katrina does not seem at all happy about doing this, and one suspects she might be prepared to resort to underhanded means to regain power.

Dale Bishop (Gil Birmingham) is no longer sheriff. The town council fired him, and Marissa (Tammy Gillis) is in charge, at least temporarily. She tells her former boss that she backed his official account of the events that got him fired (something that Ted Pownall did not do). Bishop tells her that if anything comes up that she can’t handle, she should call him. (Marissa doesn’t know about the mermaids yet.) The former sheriff is pissed off at Pownall for failing to support him, and we find out that Bishop did Pownall a couple of favours as Sheriff, one of them having to do with Pownall’s wife Elaine. It is possible that the accident that paralyzed Elaine was her fault, and that fact was somehow covered up. This probably would make little difference unless someone else was involved in the accident.

Dale’s wife Susan (Garcelle Beauvais) has returned after an unexplained ten-month absence. (Only two days have elapsed since the end of Season One). Susan was once addicted to something (we don’t know what). She says she isn’t anymore, but Maddy doesn’t trust her. One wonders why she was gone, where she might have been, and if either of those things is important to the story.

Before being fired, Sheriff Bishop speaks to the Port Angeles Medical Examiner (Bethany Brown), about Decker’s suicide. He finds out that she had to turn the body over to the military, but had begun her autopsy before they picked it up. Later, Bishop tells Maddy: “I heard something today I think you should know. About Aldon Decker. Some kind of brain damage is the way she explained it. It’s not MS, it’s not tumors. It’s like something she’s never seen before. Do you have any idea what that might mean?” Maddy says no, but she knows Decker was addicted to Siren Song.

Maddy doesn’t know that Ben had a climbing accident because he was thinking about Ryn’s song. He got distracted halfway up a mountain, slipped, and was almost killed. When Maddie informs Ben of the M.E.’s findings, she says that the strangeness in Decker’s brain involved lesions and scarring, but that might not be true. She might be trying to frighten Ben into an awareness of the danger.

Counting Ryn and Helen, there are now eight merfolk in Bristol Cove. None of the newcomers has yet been addressed by name, but all have names in the credits. Katrina (Aylya Marzolf) and Levi (Sedale Threatt Jr.) are back. The four newcomers are — Viv (Alvina August), Cami (Millan Tesfazgi), Sarge (Hugo Ateo), and

Eliza (Georgia Waters). Marzolf may have hinted at a future development on the show when she tweeted: “Katrina doesn’t like how cozy Ryn and Levi are getting…”

From an article in the Huffington Post, 18 July 2014:

“The sonic cannons are already in use in the western Gulf of Mexico, off Alaska and other offshore oil operations around the world. They are towed behind boats, sending strong pulses of sound into the ocean every 10 seconds or so. The pulses reverberate beneath the sea floor and bounce back to the surface, where they are measured by hydrophones. Computers then translate the data into high resolution, three-dimensional images…[they] are often fired continually for weeks or months, and multiple mapping projects are expected to be operating simultaneously as companies gather competitive, secret data. Whale-spotting observers will be required onboard, but the sounds — which water amplifies by orders of magnitude — pose real dangers for whales, fish and sea turtles that also use sound to communicate across hundreds of miles.”

NOTES

Tammy Gillis (Marissa Staub) is Officer Leon in the family adventure A DOG’S WAY HOME, based on the 2017 novel by W. Bruce Cameron. It is the story of Bella, who was happily living with Lucas (Jonah Hauer-King) in Denver until the city outlawed pitbulls. To protect Bella (who is classified as a pitbull even though she is a mixed-breed), she is sent to live with friends in Farmington, New Mexico, but Bella refuses to be separated from Lucas, and embarks on a dangerous two-year journey home. Patrick Gallagher (Dr. Abbott) is also in the cast. Bella is played by a dog named Shelby who was adopted from a Tenessee shelter. Gillis told Jostin Del Rosario of At The Movies: “The connection that Bella makes with Lucas in the beginning when he gets her as a puppy is such a strong connection…There is a scene that is a tough moment between Lucas and Bella being parted from each other. This scene personally was so hard to do. It was heartbreaking to think about taking this beautiful dog from its owner. It was hard to be separate those feelings while playing a police officer.” A DOG’S WAY HOME is currently in US and Canadian theatres.

Fola Evans-Akingbola (Maddy) is Makayla in VS., a film that centers around Adam (Conor Swindells), an angry adolescent who has been in several foster homes, the most recent of which is located in Southend (where his estranged mother is working as a hairdresser) and owned by Fiona (Ruth Sheen). He makes contact with local promoter Makayla, who introduces him to the area’s battle rap scene, where Adam quickly becomes a fan favourite. VS. is now available from Amazon UK. A trailer is available on YouTube.

Morgana Wyllie (curio shop customer) will be Kate in FAMILY PICTURES, which will be based on a novel by Jane Green, and stars Justina Machado and Elizabeth Röhm as Sylvie and Maggie, two strangers in their forties living on opposite coasts, leading very similar lives with husbands that are away from home more than either of them would like. But when their daughters become friends, they discover a secret that threatens to tear both families apart. Directed by Manu Boyer from a screenplay by Ilene Rosenzweig, FAMILY PICTURES will air on Lifetime later this year.







