What’s important, though, is that the show makes sure Ryn has agency. The “little mermaid” is actually a ruthless predator, older than she seems. As Siren progresses, you realize she’s very much the alpha. She may look delicate and child-like, but she decides Ben and Maddie are her people, part of her colony, and that’s that. She chooses to climb into bed between them when they’ve stashed her on their couch in the third episode. “I am FLAILING. Are y’all seriously giving me a f/f/m trio on Freeform?” I tweeted after that scene. At the time, I couldn’t have imagined that the answer was a resounding YES, but Siren quickly proved they were following through. A curious Ryn kisses Maddie in the fifth episode. Then, one episode later, when Ben kisses Maddie and says “love you!” Ryn automatically kisses Ben and repeats “love you!” Bemused, Ben and Maddie assume she’s copying the behavior they’re modeling…but what’s actually happening is that Ryn is working out for herself what this “love” thing is.
“Ben is love,” she eventually declares. “Maddie is love, too.” As the series flits through its second season, they’ve continued to deep-dive into what exactly that means. And introducing more merfolks has only helped expand the conversation. For instance, when a handsome merman—newly dubbed Levi—kisses Ben, Ben doesn’t have some sort of gross homophobic crisis. He instead assures Levi that there’s nothing wrong with men kissing, but “You don’t kiss a person unless they want to be kissed.” That Valentine’s Day 2019 episode covers consent and desire across multiple levels, from how mermaid sex and human sex differ to how important it is to voice what you want—and it ends on the loveliest note: Maddie, Ryn, and Ben all on the same page, kissing each other.