We're predicting that new Netflix TV series Sirens will be your bank holiday weekend watch. And here's why.
Created by Maid's Molly Smith Metzler and starring Julianne Moore, Meghann Fahy and Milly Alcock, it explores trauma, social class and sisterhood as Meghann's Devon journeys to a remote Upper State New York island to track down her sister Simone (Alcock) as she struggles to deal with her father's dementia alone. What she finds is bizarre. Simone is personal assistant to socialite Kiki (Michaela, played by Moore) and they have a rather intense relationship, let's say.
āWe worship money as a society.ā
In no way does Simone want to return with Devon to their old life ā and the trauma she experienced in childhood ā and wants to stay in the wealthy bubble she's entered. Devon becomes convinced that Michaela has constructed some sort of cult that has pulled her younger sister deep under with master manipulation tactics, and vows to set Simone free.
Here's everything you need to know about the ending of Netflix's Sirens, and what it meant for its three leading women.
How does Sirens end?
OK, a lot happens, basically. So we discover that Ethan (Glenn Howerton) drunkenly fell off a cliff (Julianne Moore's Kiki did not push him, as was previously suspected), and he survives albeit with two broken legs. A photographer hands over a picture of Kiki's husband Peter (Kevin Bacon) and Simone kissing. Kiki cooly dismisses Simone, arranging for her āsuiteā to be packed up in a rather detached manner.
In the meantime, Simone makes a run for it while en route to her exile from the island ā unable to deal with going back to Buffalo with Devon, her father and the trauma she left behind. She runs into Peter on the beach and tells him about the fact that Kiki has the picture of them kissing in a safe as an insurance policy for if he tries to divorce her. This bombshell leads Peter to enlist Jose to destroy this picture, along with his wife's leverage.
When Devon realises Simone is missing, she heads to Kiki's gala where she publically accuses the socialite of murdering Peter's first wife Jocelyn. This forces Kiki to reveal that Jocelyn is not in fact dead by her hand, but lives in isolation after suffering disfiguring results after a plastic procedure went wrong in the wake of her divorce from Peter.
Peter then arrives back, revealing Simone to be his new bride. The most insane moment. And most shockingly of all, the gala guests seem to accept this immediately. Devon and Kiki then end up on the same boat back to the mainland, and talk through what has happened to them both that weekend. They both agree that neither is a monster.
Devon is forced to accept that Simone has chosen a new life, that while she loves her that there is a distance between them that she cannot close herself. She accepts her role once more as her father's caretaker and leaves Simone behind on the island, and the end scene sees Simone looking out over her home as the new lady of the house.
What have the Sirens cast said about the ending?
Milly Alcock gave her views on Simone's final choices while chatting to Netflix's TUDUM. āI think that she feels safe with Peter. I don't think she's in love with Peter,ā she said, ābut I think that she sees an ally within him, and so she feels comfortable sharing the information about the photograph, and she feels comfortable saying yes to his proposal.ā
Devon's realisation that her sister isn't leaving the island with her is a strange, cathartic moment. For Meghann, it involves a shift in how she views Julianne's character Michaela/Kiki. āItās really the moment that Devon realises she was blaming the wrong person the whole time,ā she said in an interview with Netflix's TUDUM. āSimone made a choice to stay and Devon didnāt want that to be true, so she was convincing herself that Kiki was some sort of cult-leading mastermind who was manipulating her sister into staying, that the truth couldnāt be that her sister didnāt want to come home or have anything to do with her family. When she realises that, she realises, āWow, Kiki is a woman and a person and not a monster.ā ā
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Molly Smith Metzler was coy when questioned about who the āsirensā of the series are, if any of the three leads ā or all of them ā are meant to be based on the mythical creatures.
She said: āWomen ā especially women like Michaela, Simone, and Devon ā are villainised, or cast as seductresses, or theyāre beautiful, or theyāre cast as monsters, but whoās to say theyāre the sirens? What is a monster?ā
āWe call these women monsters in the myth, but for all we know, theyāre just singing for help. In the original myth, theyāre there because theyāre being punished. Theyāre trapped. Theyāre unhappy. Itās a cry for help. All these sailors crash their own stupid ship. And then theyāre like, āItās because of these beautiful maidens.ā ā
