SIREN – Season 2 Episode 4 – SPOILERS

Xander (Ian Verdun) follows a trail of blood, and finds Katrina (Aylya Marzolf), wounded after her unsuccessful challenge to Ryn’s leadership. He locks the injured mermaid in the hold of his ship. She escapes, but not before Xander has put out to sea, and since Katrina cannot operate the boat, she cannot kill Xander. Doing that would trap her on board since noise pollution prevents her from entering the water. Xander wants to know where to find Levi (Sedale Threatt Jr.), the guy who killed his dad. He suggests to Katrina that he might be able to help her with the noise problem in exchange for that information. (Just how he would be able to help is unclear.) Xander does not know that Katrina was the one who ordered the attack on his father’s boat.

Katrina (Xander gave her that name, comparing her to another ‘force of nature’, Hurricane Katrina) knows that if she could solve the noise pollution problem, she might be able to depose Ryn as leader. She could (one would think) easily control Xander with her song. Either she does not know this, or she is holding that weapon in reserve.

Ryn took her name from a cartoon seahorse. Katrina is named after a hurricane. All the others were assigned names by the guy who made their fake IDs. (Katrina is the only one without such identification.)

Before capturing Katrina, Xander told Nicole (Natalee Linez) something (we don’t know exactly how much) about what actually happened to his father.

Helen (Rena Owen) gets the money from her trust account after Ben tells his mother that she needs it for medical expenses. Ben also quietly confiscates the DNA analysis Elaine had done and learns that Helen has a living relative named Rick Marsden. She contacts her newly discovered relation and eventually he stops by to see her. His exact relationship to Helen is not defined, but he says that his mother was an addict who died young, and his father was never around. Helen tells him that addiction and mental illness are recurring problems in her family as well. Instead of trying to explain mermaids to him, Helen introduces him to Eliza (Georgia Waters) and the the two immediately recognize their connection to one another. “Telling you wouldn’t have worked,” Helen says. “You have to feel it before you can believe.” Helen seems to have kept good track of her immediate family, so it seems reasonable to assume that Rick’s mother was the source of his mermaid DNA and that his father was a Pownall.

Then there’s Maddie’s mom, Susan (Garcelle Beauvais), who feels that people are keeping things from her since her return. (She’s right about that. No one has told her about the mermaids.) Self-conscious, paranoid, and unable to cope, she starts using (heroin?) again. It seems possible that Susan also has some mermaid DNA in her.

Levi watches a Fred Astaire movie on TV for about a minute. Later, Paula (Clair Filipow) asks him to dance, and he imitates some of Astaire’s moves. Paula’s boyfriend Hector (Shaun Omaid) is not happy about this. Fortunately, Ben prevents a confrontation by knocking Hector out with one punch.

Levi explains to Ben how merfolk mate, and it apparently involves the female striking the male repeatedly with her tail. In the water, mermen view sex as a painful necessity. This might explain why merfolk come ashore occasionally to mate with humans, with whom the process is more enjoyable.

It is interesting that no one wonders what happened to Katrina, or seems to be actively searching for her. They know she didn’t go back in the water. Finding her should be an imperative for the other merfolk and those concealing them. If she dies, her corpse will make the local coroner’s day very interesting. If she lives, she will probably get arrested, given her hostility toward humans. And she has no identification.

NOTES

Brendan Fletcher (Rick Marsden) will be camp adjutant Arthur Lambden in BROTHERHOOD, the true story of a 1926 canoe trip organized by a Brotherhood of St. Andrew’s church group in Canada that turned into a fight for survival. A canoe, with fifteen occupants including Lambden, left camp on the night of 20 July and headed for Coboconk, Ontario to pick up food supplies. Three-quarters of a mile offshore, the canoe capsized after being struck by a sudden strong wind. Eleven of the fifteen drowned. BROTHERHOOD recently completed filming on the Michipicoten First Nation reserve in Northern Ontario (about 250 kilometers north of Sault Ste. Marie). There is no word yet on a release date.

Luc Roderique (Ian Sutton in “Natural Order“) is Arca in the first episode of SEE, a ten-episode series described as “an epic, world-building drama set in the future”. It will star Jason Momoa as warrior and guardian Baba Voss. No further details about the series have been released. We do know that the series was filmed in British Columbia, and that Sylvia Hoeks shaved her head to play the part of Queen Kane. Among others in the cast are Sharon Taylor (Rose Sunwind on BAD BLOOD), Alfre Woodard (Lily in STAR TREK 8 ), Millie Davis (Gemma Hendrix on ORPHAN BLACK), Nesta Cooper (Carly on TRAVELERS), and Jordana Blake (the young Aneela on KILLJOYS). The Apple series will be written by Stephen Knight and directed by Francis Lawrence. SEE is currently filming in Vancouver, and will be available later this year on Apple’s new streaming service (set to launch in April or May).







