Sirens review: Falcons, fractures, and façades — a brutal dive into human contradictions

Sirens throws us into a world where relationships are messy, intentions are murky, and nothing is obvious at first glance. There’s no hand-holding, no clear roadmap. Just a strange, sharp energy that pulls you in before you even understand where it’s taking you.

By the time the series wraps up, it’s not the solutions or resolutions that stay with you. It’s the sheer mess of it all, the fact that every single person there is carrying something broken, something unresolved, something ugly.

Sirens call and you must follow

Sirens is heavy. On the surface, it carries elements you might expect from a cheesy soap opera or a third-rate drama wrapped in luxury. And yet, somehow, the miniseries elevates all of it into something strikingly new. You cannot stop watching until it ends. It’s just like that. You hear the call of the sirens, and you have no choice but to follow.

Sirens doesn’t care about tying neat bows around its characters. It exposes their cracks, their worst urges, and their quietest hurts. Watching it feels less like solving a puzzle and more like standing in the middle of a storm, just letting it crash over you. And when the final credits roll, you’re not left with clarity. You’re left with weight.

Despite the sheer weight of the characters' flaws, and there are many, deep and deeply human, the choice to end the first episode with that falcon moment hits like a quiet, invisible wound.

Knowing that this kind of thing can and does happen in real life only adds to the heaviness of it. It's not just symbolic, it's raw. A creature returning to the only place it ever felt tethered to, even if it means breaking itself in the process.

That’s when Sirens shows its true hand. It’s not just clever or stylish. It’s cruelly honest, and devastatingly well built.

Entering blind, and recommending the same

I went into Sirens without reading much, without gathering much information. And I recommend you do the same. This review is spoiler-free because the experience of discovering each layer, each fracture, each twist, is part of what makes the series land so hard.

This is more than a mere character study, it's a brutal examination of personalities that, in truth, are just many faces of what it means to be human. Sometimes we look at someone and see a monster, when in fact they’re simply being human, ugly, raw, contradictory, but human.

The men are strong, but the women carry the weight

Sirens features several interesting male supporting characters, with Kevin Bacon’s Peter and Felix Solis’s José standing out in particular. Bacon delivers a performance that moves between controlled menace and quiet vulnerability, making Peter a character you can’t easily categorize. Solis, on the other hand, brings a grounded warmth and understated strength to José, offering rare moments of stability in a world spinning out of control.

While they add depth and tension to the narrative, make no mistake: Sirens belongs to its women. It’s their stories, their conflicts, their haunted silences and explosive confrontations that drive the heart of the show.

Julianne Moore's mesmerizing performance as Michaela is a show-stopper. Milly Alcock's Simone brims with young ferocity and smoldering turmoil, and Meghann Fahy's Devon is bright, layered, and tragically vulnerable.

Their combined energy makes for an unfiltered and riveting dynamic. In what might have been a stylistic jumble, their performances ground the story and make it compelling, genuine, and emotionally impactful. Together, they create a dynamic that’s electric, raw, and impossible to look away from.

The falcon and the human heart

The falcon isn’t just a striking image or a clever symbol. It’s a mirror to every human in this series, and maybe to every one of us. The instinct to return, to go back to what feels like home, even when that home has glass walls and sharp edges. The series asks, again and again, why we go back. Why we don’t stay away. And it never gives a clean answer because there isn’t one.

The illusion of choice and the weight of expectation

Throughout Sirens, characters often appear to be making autonomous decisions, yet their choices are heavily influenced by societal norms and economic pressures.

The series critiques how individuals, especially women, navigate a world where their roles are often predefined by wealth and status. The opulent setting serves as a backdrop to explore how the allure of luxury can mask deeper issues of control and conformity.

By highlighting these dynamics, Sirens invites us to reflect on the subtle ways in which society dictates behavior, questioning the true extent of personal freedom within structured hierarchies.

Sirens is not a comfortable watch. It’s sharp, unsettling, and refuses to offer easy takeaways. But that’s what makes it great. This is a show that lingers, that leaves you heavy, that makes you sit with the fact that people are messy and love is dangerous and safety is often an illusion.

Rating with a touch of flair: Five out of five tethered hearts.