There’s a Siren baby on the way! Ryn will be welcoming her baby via surrogate in the third season of the Freeform series and she is going to face motherhood head-on. “It’s been one of my favorite thing about the season,” Eline told HollywoodLife. “Obviously, Ryn is a very primal being. Motherhood is an instinct and it kicks in very, very quickly. In fact, I think she almost feels it. She takes well to motherhood. However, this situation in which she becomes a mother is very unique. On top of that, she spends her life kind of in two worlds, the human world and mermaid world. I think the challenge lies in being a mother and juggling those two elements. I think she’s instinctive about the way to be underwater, but maybe on land, no clue. It’s going to turn out to be an interesting mix.”
Becoming a mother is going to ignite quite the transformation in Ryn. Her love for her child will consume her. “It’s her number one thought,” Eline said. She’s always known how to take care of herself. She can handle herself, but this is on another level. She’s very, very protective. She’s ready to take out anyone who even looks at her baby funny. With that, comes huge sacrifice sometimes to keep the baby safe. I think for that reason, in some sense, you could say that she grows and grows up because you have to make those hard decisions. I think she’s much better at it than she was in previous seasons when there was conflict or doubt. Now she’s very determined. I think it’s also deepened her emotional range because she’s in her human body when the baby’s born. The first rush of motherhood and emotional, whatever you want to call it, happens when she’s in a human form. Therefore, I think emotions erupt that she hadn’t known before. I think this also makes her human side much more evolved. It’s actually really written in the script in a beautiful way. That was one of my favorite moments, and I waited a long time for it. That’s very cryptic, but I just mean it’ll make Ryn both more intense and more loving. That’s what motherhood is, right?”
Eline added that Ryn will have her “biggest growth spurt” yet on an “emotional scale. Sometimes it felt like I wasn’t playing Ryn anymore, at least definitely not the Ryn I started out with, which was wonderful because it really felt like a massive character journey this time around.”
Season 3 will also feature the arrival of a new mermaid, Tia. Brace yourselves for this character. “Tia is an adversary on another level,” Eline teased. “She is a mermaid and is kind of unprecedented because she has an incredible knowledge of the humans. She spent so many years with them in unique circumstances, which you’ll see in the show. Therefore, she speaks fluently. She understands technology. She is unbelievable. In the script, we call her ‘advanced man.’ For that reason, Ryn and other people are kind of in awe of her and taken aback and impressed with her. On top of that, she is a different breed of mermaid. She’s from a different kind of tribe. She’s a very interesting character and she is on a mission. She has an objective. I think what differentiates her from past seasons is that she is, for lack of better word, a villain, but she has an incredibly understanding philosophy and incredibly understanding perspective. I think even in the beginning episode, you’ll see that we all kind of understand where she’s coming from. Like a lot of things in the world, you can have good intentions but it’s your actions that can get skewed along the way and that’s going to be a challenge for the whole of Bristol Cove, Ryn, and the baby.”
Last season ended with Ben making the jaw-dropping season to let Ian Sutton die in order to protect Ryn and the mermaids. That decision is going to have repercussions throughout season 3. “This is one of the very big, big storylines, which I found fascinating to watch with every episode that we got through,” Eline said. “Ben having that massive secret and most people don’t know it, not even Maddie knows at the beginning of the season, and that’s a big, big deal for every character. I think Ben feels inevitably guilty from this and it weighs on him but Ryn is kind of the only one who understands that because that move, letting Ian die came out of protection, it’s almost ocean rules. I kill or you kill. I think she actually understands his way. It’s the water way. So I think she sticks by Ben on that emotional level a little bit. She has more understanding for it, but it has a ripple effect and you’ll see that throughout the season with Ben, Ryn, and Maddie. It’ll be a heavy obstacle that they need to navigate.” Siren will air Thursdays at 9 p.m. on Freeform.