You Can’t Resist the Call of ‘Sirens’

I love a title that works on multiple levels and involves Greek mythology! Sirens, at its core, is about a woman sending out a cry for help to her sister—but it’s also a nod to the mythological sirens: seductive, dangerous figures who lured sailors to their deaths. The show itself is a bit of a siren too, promising a juicy Netflix melodrama full of cults, murder, and rich people behaving badly. If you sat through A Perfect Couple, Sirens, created by Molly Smith Metzler (Maid), based on her play “Elemeno Pea” will definitely appear in your queue. But instead, it delivers something quieter, sharper: a dark comedy about class, power, and the strange rituals of female relationships and familial obligations.

Set over a single Labor Day weekend on the fictional island of Port Haven, the five-episode limited series follows Devon DeWitt (Meghann Fahy), a grounded-but-trashy woman from Buffalo who crashes the luxurious life of her younger, wide-eyed sister Simone (Milly Alcock). Simone now works—and lives in—the orbit of billionaire Michaela “Kiki” Kell (Julianne Moore), an unsettlingly polished philanthropist with a fondness for platitudes, Lilly Pulitzer separates, and control.

Devon, fresh from a night in jail, arrives with an Edible Arrangements bouquet resting on her hip (a gift from Simone she plans to regift as a vengeful statement) and immediately suspects her sister has joined some kind of cult. When Simone brushes off concerns about their dying, demented father and insists she’s “not in a cult” (as cult members often do), Devon decides to stay. She dons gifted gowns (which she doesn’t want to wear—but looks amazing in), infiltrates the Kell estate, and plays the role of Trojan horse, determined to extract her sister from Michaela’s web. But is Simone actually in a cult—or is she just doing her job as the personal assistant to a billionaire’s trophy wife?

And who is really the siren here? Michaela is clearly one: full of catchphrases, platitudes, and an ambivalence toward the bespoke smoothies her personal chef prepares. She constantly blurs the line between employer, galpal, mentor, and captor. She calls Simone her “rock” and sometimes shares a bed with her. Simone, a recent Yale grad, seems inexplicably drawn to Michaela—and not just for the glamour, influence, and career opportunities she wields. Halfway through the series, I predicted it would reveal that Michaela is actually Simone’s mother. That’s not how things turn out, but it feels like that kind of show.

Yet Simone is a bit of a siren herself. Devon endures a ferry ride, a $75 cab, and even jail time just to hand her back that Edible Arrangements bouquet. Ethan Corbin II (Glenn Howerton), a wealthy playboy, wants to lock Simone down romantically. And Peter Kell (Kevin Bacon), Michaela’s aloof husband—and her real source of power—seems curiously drawn to Simone as well. One of them even ends up dashed on the rocks, quite literally—a nod to the myth the series toys with.

And then there’s Devon. She’s a siren in her own right: brash, disruptive, and impossible to shake. She has two men doing her bidding—her married boss Raymond (a gloriously underrated Josh Segarra) and Jordan (Trevor Salter), Ethan’s yacht captain and, fittingly, the only actual sailor in the story. Both men trail her at various points, despite her telling them to get lost, and end up fighting each other tooth and nail to possess her.

By the final episode, it seems Simone has displaced Michaela and is now the new mistress of Cliff House. Michaela—who seemed impenetrable at the beginning—is last seen on a ferry back to the mainland, her future unclear. Are any of these women really that powerful, or was it the men all along who held the cards? Ultimately, it’s Peter Kell—born into his wealth—who sends Michaela packing and installs Simone as the new matriarch of the Kell clan.  Simone may bewitch him now, but how long is that spell going to last?

In the end, Sirens is less about cults and more about the seductive pull of class, power, sisterhood, and dudes that act helpless but are really pulling the strings. It’s smart, strange, and not at all what the trailer promised—and that might be its most seductive trick of all.