'Siren' season 2: Does Xander find love this time? Ian Verdun teases his character's fate in Freeform's mermaid thriller
Freeform's hit fantasy series 'Siren' is two episodes away from ending its second run. And despite the show pretty much sounding the alarm for the man-made disaster that is ocean pollution, what fans are really alarmed about is whether the show's local fisherman, Xander McClure, finally finds love this season. Worry not, actor Ian Verdun who plays the role has some teasers to offer. The story of 'Siren' revolves around the town of Bristol Cove which believes in the mermaid legends owing to the vast expanse of the ocean it is surrounded by. But when oil rigs start digging up the water, they accidentally trap some of the still living merpeople around the area leading to an uprising among the sea folk.
At this point in season 2, Xander is slowly evolving from the grief and rage that his father's death had brought upon him. His father was killed at the hands of a merman, leading to his overly vindictive nature, even though he is a pure and wholesome person at heart. Things only get fuelled once Xander starts finding out that his friends in the police are actually siding with the merpeople, but luckily, he soon sees the light of the day and things change. "It's really awesome to see him start to come out of and come through this immense grief that he was just experiencing and that kind of dominated most of the storytelling, at least for Xander's storyline, over the course of like the first one and half season," shared Verdun in an exclusive interview with MEA Worldwide.
He added: "So now it's really cool to get an opportunity to see his personality, and to see who he is as a person when he is not defined by that grief, or by his laws, nor defined by his anger. You really start to see who he is as a 3-dimensional person. It's exciting to see it in contrast to the other characters because his perspective with everything has always been so different, and it's always been so varied and he's gone through so many more traumatic things. So it's great to see a real human perspective in somebody who went through something so horrifying, and then rebuild themselves and forge his own direction. It's exciting as an actor to be part of that."
But what we are more excited about is the prospect of anything that would offer a ray of hope for the good-boy character's love life. "I think it's only recently that Xander's been opening up to that part of himself again with everything that's just happened, so I think there's just a lot of ground to cover in terms of him getting back to a place where he's comfortable and trusting in that," Verdun says speculating about his character's chances at finding love in the show's near future. It has almost been a pattern with Xander, where every time he has a thing with a woman, his closest friends end up dating the said women in future.
But if Verdun's interpretation of the character is to be believed, Xander wouldn't exactly turn against his friends, just because there were unresolved feelings between him and a woman his friend is dating now. "I think clearly he's got some amazing history with Maddie with some unresolved feelings there. But I think he's an incredibly respectful character and a respectful guy and he would never cross that line with his friends. There's a lot of machismo in him, but I think at the end of the day, he can be a bit of a romantic. But the kid has had his heart broken so many times, it's hard to say where his heart will lie at the end of the day."
With just two episodes left for the finale of 'Siren', the tension is building up and how! But even if Xander doesn't find love in this short amount of time, Verdun would like fans to always "expect the unexpected," in terms of the finale. "We always have some good twists and turns and new conflicts that come up all the time, and I think it all manifests itself in pretty interesting ways," Verdun teased about the upcoming finale of season 2, adding: "And I think people just have to watch out for some characters. That's all."
'Siren' airs on Thursdays, at 8 pm, only on Freeform.