“I was right! I saw her! We’re gonna go get her.”
Powerful words from Xander McClure to his marine biologist friend, Ben Pownall, in the “Showdown” episode of Freeform’s Siren. For a brief refresher, the sea creature was taken from Xander and his crew from the military along with Chris, who had been badly injured, in the series opener. Now, the young fisherman is dead set on getting Donna back and enlists his friends for the hunt.
For Xander, who comes from a long line of fisherman, actor Ian Verdun explains that capturing the mermaid could be very beneficial to his character’s family. “I think it’s more of an opportunity of what this can mean for his family and what this can mean for their life moving forward by making such a discovery,” Verdun tells OMFGTV in an exclusive interview.
“For him, it lays into the kind of opportunity that could bring money, it could bring notoriety, it could bring any number of things that change from his normal day-to-day life. For him, I think it’s the possibility of changing that cycle of doing what his father does, and what his father did before him, and what his father did before him. It’s the opportunity to change his life, really.”
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The motivation to get the Siren sister back is even greater, now that he saw with his own eyes Donna transform into a mermaid near the end of “Showdown.” And just moments before, when Xander cornered Aldon Decker (Ron Yuan) at a fundraising gala, Decker kept assuring him that mermaids aren’t real. “There’s no mermaid,” he told Xander. “There never was. In fact, there’s no evidence of their existence whatsoever.”
Chris (Chad Rook) spotted Donna walking on the dock towards the ocean and pointed her out to Xander. And like any crazy person would do, he ran after her. We, like everyone else, screamed at the TV, fearing she would turn around and straight up slaughter him. Instead, she dove into the water and transformed right before his very eyes. The look on Xander’s face after seeing that and finally getting that validation almost brought tears to our eyes!
“Unfortunately, he’s been lied to [by some of his friends] for most of the entire season,” Verdun says. “From his perspective, there hasn’t been confirmation. There hasn’t been all this mystery and all this intrigue that’s been going on with Ben, Maddie and Ryn, because nobody’s been telling him the truth. For him, it’s just been a month of searching and questions and absolute mystery and no answers.
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“To finally actually see this confirmation that it’s real, it’s tangible, he’s not insane, he’s not crazy, and he did it all by himself, I think there’s vindication, there’s validation,” he continues. “There’s a little bit of pride in the fact that he figured it out. That’s what’s so great about [“Showdown”] is in spite of the fact that everybody is gaslighting him all around, he still puts it together and he still is there for the moment to see it happen himself, which is something I love about the character. He’s just very, very tenacious and he’s whip smart. He’s way smarter than everybody gives him credit for.”
Going out to sea in search for Donna may prove to be very dangerous. As the promos have revealed for tonight’s all new episode, “Dead in the Water,” Xander and his crew of friends aboard the North Star are met by an uninvited guest. Yes, we finally get to meet Levi, a merman played by Sedale Threatt Jr. (“Hap and Leonard”), whose casting was announced in October of last year.
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“OOOOoooOoOOooooooohhhhhh. It’s really good!” Verdun says of their encounter with the new sea creature. “Let’s just say he is the most pure — at this point — form.
“He’s straight out of the ocean a mermaid. I think there’s a more intense connection between what they are all like in the ocean. There’s this warrior quality; he’s an absolute warrior. He’s strong and he’s quick.”
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Tonight’s episode also features the series’ first significant death. Who is in the body bag that Xander throws into the ocean? Our lips are sealed, but Ian does say that for all the characters involved, it really brings home how real the situation is. Helen’s warning is true: You don’t know what you’re dealing with.
“Up until now, as far as the season, as far as the show and story is concerned, we get the sense of danger,” Verdun explains. “People have died, but they’ve all been auxiliary characters, and they’ve all been in terms of this wonder that’s been set up around these creatures.
“[The death is] really going to change and shift the energy for everybody because it makes things so much more real,” he adds. “It makes things so much more consequential and that much more dangerous because it lends credibility to how dangerous these creatures really are and what that really means and the consequences of dragging them all up.”
Who do you think is in the body bag? Let us know in the comments below, and DO NOT MISS an all-new Siren airing tonight at 8pm on Freeform.