‘Sirens’: All Sparkle, No Bite

How could anyone resist when Julianne Moore (Still Alice), Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus), Milly Alcock (House of the Dragon), and Kevin Bacon (City on a Hill) can be seen on one screen? That is my initial reaction to Netflix’s Sirens. But after watching the entire season, I am left with a frustrating verdict: the show squandered both its exceptional cast—and my Sunday afternoon (though, to be fair, Sundays are made for wasting time).

Sirens is adapted from the play Elemeno Pea by Molly Smith Metzler (Maid), who also serve as the series’ writer. The story begins when Devon DeWitt (Fahy) visits her emotionally distant sister, Simone (Alcock), now working for the impossibly glamorous socialite Michaela Kell (Moore). Devon suspects Michaela has manipulated and changed her sister, and she’s determined to “rescue” her from Michaela’s grip. But what unfolds is far more complicated than she anticipated.

The series largely takes place in a lavish beachfront villa owned by Michaela’s husband, Peter Kell (Bacon). There, a revered socialite, an ambitious young woman, and an outsider who refuses to play by society’s rules all face critical life decisions over one explosive weekend.

At first glance, the premise seems promising. But if you’re expecting Sirens to be a sharp satire of the upper class à la The White Lotus, or a layered female ensemble piece like Big Little Lies or Why Women Kill, you’re in for disappointment. Sirens lacks the biting critique of The White Lotus, the emotional nuance of Big Little Lies, and the iconic flair and style of Why Women Kill. It lands in an unsatisfying middle ground—neither clever enough to be a satire nor dramatic enough to leave an impression. It’s not a disaster, but it’s forgettable—just enough to pass the time on a lazy weekend.

That’s a shame, because the initial setup is undeniably compelling. Michaela is insulated from reality, and ambitious Simone is eager for upward mobility. Devon sacrifices her future for her family, and Simone is still haunted by their mother’s suicide. Michaela bends over backward to please her husband, and laid-back Peter passively enforces her will. Simone falls deeply in love with Ethan (Glenn Howerton), a middle-aged bachelor who lives for fleeting affairs. Each pairing is laced with tension and ripe for exploration.

And yet, Sirens lacks the patience—or perhaps the ambition—to probe these relationships in any meaningful way. Instead, it skims the surface, letting unresolved dynamics linger in shallow conversations and suggestive glances. As the series unfolds, it flirts with themes like family trauma, class divides, and heterosexual marriage politics, before settling into an ironic parable about women using marriage as a vehicle for social mobility. But even this familiar idea—of women trading emotional investment for status—feels stale. In essence, nothing Sirens says hasn’t been said before.

The show’s boldest strokes come in its portrayal of upper-class men, particularly Peter. In a moment of self-reflection, he tells Michaela, “It’s about me wanting love and light in my life, about me needing to feel like my journey on this planet has been rich and worthwhile and full of goodness.” But his version of a meaningful life is darkly parasitic: he lures women in with wealth and charm, coaxing them into devotion, only to discard them when the novelty fades. He makes women the scapegoats for his discontent. In his pursuit of a perfect life, women become disposable tools. Even someone as accomplished as Michaela—a former top lawyer—is reduced to following his whims, and trapped in a gilded cage of power and emotional dependency.

While Sirens deserves credit for its raw depiction of contemptible men wielding wealth and power like Peter, its portrayal of women under this patriarchal structure is far less satisfying—another reason it occupies that awkward middle ground. Michaela is portrayed as either the scheming socialite or the tragic cast-off wife. Simone oscillates between wounded innocence and social-climbing calculation. These women are painted in broad strokes, leaning on tired archetypes rather than nuanced characterization. Devon, meanwhile, is positioned as the moral compass—a woman who scoffs at wealth and can’t seem to form meaningful relationships with men. Burdened with caring for a father suffering from dementia, Devon is on survival mode, and her personal life is reduced to fleeting, utilitarian interactions. Her inability to secure intimacy with men becomes a symbol of her inability to escape her socioeconomic trap.

To its credit, Sirens is aware of the emotional and structural binds many women living in patriarchal societies find themselves in. But that awareness doesn’t translate into depth. The show dramatizes their pain without fully inhabiting it. It observes these women’s struggles from a distance and fails to dig deep enough to capture the raw, contradictory human vitality at its core. It tries to comment on how the world categorizes women—only to get trapped in those very categories. Its female characters remain caught in a fog of pain, stuck between tropes and clichés.

Sirens could have been wild, vicious, and wrathful. Instead, it settles for safety. It touches on significant themes—gendered power, class mobility, emotional labor—but ultimately offers only surface-level takes. The show sees the rot within society, but lacks the courage to excavate it.

In the end, Sirens is a missed opportunity. It begins with a tantalizing premise and a powerhouse cast but ultimately succumbs to creative timidity. It neither honors its promises nor breathes life into its women. The result is a story that plays it safe when it could’ve gone deep—and that, perhaps, is its biggest disappointment.