There’s something deeply off about Freeform’s Siren. And no, it’s not just the mermaids with predator eyes or the gooey body horror. It’s what’s underneath. The emotional torque. The way it claws at the oldest, hungriest parts of your brain. This isn’t teen drama with fish tails. It’s a show about evolution, dominance, biology… and the quiet way love turns into obsession when you think you’re in control of nature but nature’s really in control of you.
Let’s get into it.
Ben’s Breakdown Isn’t a Plotline.
The main guy, Ben Pownall, he starts off clean. Soft spoken, bright eyed, marine biologist. The golden boy. But then Ryn shows up, and his brain chemistry just rots. Not from love. Not from guilt. From exposure. The siren song isn’t poetic in this world. It’s a weapon. Neurochemical warfare. The show tells you straight: it damages the brain. People who hear it go spiral. We watch it happen in real time to Ben. He doesn’t fall in love with Ryn. He deteriorates into her orbit. There’s a difference. You start to realize he isn’t making choices. He’s adapting. His need for Ryn is chemical. Evolutionary. He’s not falling in love. He’s being reprogrammed. And the messed up part is, he knows it. He likes it. The deeper he goes, the more he believes it’s meaningful. That it’s him. But it isn’t. That’s the tragedy. That’s the show.
Ryn: Not Human, Not Evil, Just… Alien.
Ryn’s not a person. She’s an ecosystem in a body. She doesn’t understand human rules, and the show never tries to fully humanize her. That’s important. A lesser show would make her quirky and soft. But Ryn is other. She touches people without permission. She kills without guilt. She loves, but not in the way we do. Her emotions are not regulated by culture. They’re raw. Territorial. Primal. She learns softness from Maddie and Ben, but she never becomes safe. She doesn’t want to. That’s the psychological terror: we can’t love her into becoming human. The idea that empathy will “fix” the other? Siren burns that to ash. Ryn is still a predator, even when she’s holding your hand.
The Maddie, Ben& Ryn Triad: Symbiosis, Not Romance.
Let’s kill the fantasy idea that this is some romantic love triangle. It’s not romantic. It’s biological. The triad is not about choice, or polyamorous representation (although yeah, it works there too). It’s about dependency. Co-regulation. Ryn is the bridge between them—but also the wedge. Ben becomes obsessed. Maddie starts feeling it too. But it’s not love. It’s neural fusion. The siren song destabilizes their sense of self. All three of them start moving as a unit. One gets hurt, the others feel it. It’s not cute. It’s hive mind stuff. And the worst part is: none of them resist. They lean in. Because there’s comfort in losing yourself to something deeper than thought. And that’s how instinct wins.
The PTSD of an Entire Species
We have to talk about trauma here. The mermaids aren’t just mysterious. They’re wounded. Ripped from the ocean, experimented on, held in tanks. Donna especially. She doesn’t get a redemption arc. She gets revenge. And then there’s Tia. Possibly the most psychologically real villain in the series. She’s not evil. She’s radicalized. Her child died. Humans caused it. What would you do? Her war against the surface is grief turned into ideology. This is generational trauma stuff. The show builds an entire ocean based species with its own PTSD, its own rage, and its own ideas of justice. The merfolk are not monsters. They are survivors. They remember everything. And they’re done playing passive.
Evolution Is a Horror Story
Here’s the thing Siren gets that almost no other supernatural show does: biology doesn’t care about your feelings. It doesn’t care about morals, or society, or empathy. Biology optimizes. And sometimes what’s “best” for survival looks like madness to the modern mind. Ben mutates. Literally. He starts injecting mermaid cells into himself. Not for science. Not even really for Ryn. It’s just instinct. Survival. He wants to become. To close the gap between species. To stop feeling like the weak one. That’s the final form of obsession. Not wanting someone. Wanting to be them. And the show lets him go there. No redemption. No final kiss. Just Ben, staring out at the sea, too far gone to come back to land.
The Ocean Doesn’t Forgive
In Siren, the ocean is not a metaphor. It’s a force. And once you go into it, you don’t come out the same. Everyone in the show who touches the deep comes back twisted. Not because they’re evil. Because they’ve seen something older than human languages. Something that doesn’t need to explain itself. The humans think they’re studying the sea. But the sea is studying them. Testing. Adapting. And maybe, just maybe, replacing.
Siren Is About the Limits of Being Human
This show doesn’t care about plot twists or monster of the week tropes. It’s a quiet, creeping meditation on the edges of identity. On what happens when love is no longer emotional, but chemical. When culture gets outpaced by instinct. When survival changes shape, and we either evolve with it, or vanish.
So no, Siren isn’t “more than a mermaid show.”
It’s not a mermaid show at all.
It’s a psychological autopsy of the human ego, drowned at sea.
