The Covert Narcissist Strikes Again: Why Devon is The Real Villain of Netflix's Sirens

When I'm Away From You, I'm Happier Than Ever

Spoilers: Slight spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen “Sirens” and plan to.
TW: Mentions of self harm, CSA

Crying while you do bad things doesn’t make you any less of a narcissist.

“Sirens” is a story of two estranged sisters who have landed in radically different lives as adults after surviving childhood abuse and neglect. Though its positioned as a quirky story about a woman (Devon) who acts as a full time caretaker for her sick father and who sets out on a selfless quest to rescue her brainwashed sister (Simone) against all odds… for me it wasn’t long before an icky feeling set in during my watch.

And full disclosure… I can admit that I have a biased perspective. I’m sure its obvious to anyone who regularly consumes my writing or Tiktoks/Reels that I have a very specific emotional trigger… And Netflix’s “Sirens” triggered me.

If you’ve read the book from which this Stack gets it’s name, “The Consequence of Girlhood” you probably recall me saying… “It took me a very long time to be able to name that I was an abuse victim”. We’re taught that abuse is apparent through force, violence, and explicit verbal degradation. No one prepares you for the quiet and manipulative abuser who siphons your energy, thoughts, and emotions through forcing you to center their needs and forget your own. This type of vampire instills you with the idea that you’re the monster for having needs.

I have had so many of these types of abusers in my life that sometimes I still break into tears when I need to tell someone I need help. It’s been ingrained in me, since I was a child, that it’s wrong for me to express myself. I can still recall a memory from when I was in elementary school, of one of my parents telling me that I was just crying to manipulate them. A child. A child was crying to manipulate them… into what? Attending to a need???

So when I see Devons of the world on screen, I don’t see the messy but quirky misunderstood ingenue that everyone else does. You cannot trick me just because you know how to bait and switch into a caring maternal figure once you feel closer to getting what you want. I know that’s part of the trap. A play on empathy to create false trust. That lived experience is exactly why I created the “Know Thyself Relationship Boundaries Tracker”. Nothing defeats Satan himself like the hard data of words and actions NOT MATCHING UP. You are not an empath or a healer if your empathy for someone evaporates the minute they are out of your control. You are a narcissist.

That said, today we won’t be quite exploring the lore and mythical themes of Sirens. Today the thesis is…

Devon Dewitt is a narcissist.

Is she a victim as well? Yes. Both sisters, Devon and Simone are victims of their parents poor mental health, which led to their childhood neglect and abuse. Most narcs are. This is common for people with NPD and people who simply have narcissistic traits. In fact, one of my favorite quotes, though I can’t remember who to attribute it to right now, is “Everyone is a narcissist when they’re in pain. Pain has a way of forcing you to pay attention.” And then it loosely goes on to say that in this state of hyper focus you lose some of your ability to tune into the needs of others. It’s one of those miraculous self-preservation functions that makes the human brain such an efficient machine.

Just like your body conserves heat for your most vital organs when you’re cold - leaving your feet, hands, and head to fend for themselves and reduces its use of energy (burning fat) when you’re starving… it conserves emotional empathy and mental focus for yourself when you experience emotional and psychological pain. In that way… Narcissism is a natural response to the experience of being human. We will all go through phases of it at some point in our lives. But what makes us different from people who suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder is that we can change. For us, narcissism is a temporary state meant to streamline healing.

So though I will refer to Devon as a Narcissist for the sake of discussing her story in “Sirens”, the only knowledge of her we have access to, this is not a diagnosis of NPD… for Devon or anyone who sees themselves in Devon.

How The Covert Narcissist Works

The first thing about Devon that raised the hairs on the back of my neck was her showing up at Simone’s job unannounced and making a scene. It immediately gave me flashbacks of [insert relative here] showing up at my apartment unannounced in the middle of my remote work day and beating on the door only yo begin a yelling match when I answered because I didn’t text them back. Knowing damn well why I didn’t text back…

No one that cares about you would seek to derail your day, let alone your job. If they really want to know if you’re okay they’ll find a way to do it without upsetting you. They may show up and knock, but when you answer, they won’t scream and immediately center their feelings about you not texting them back. They won’t knowingly humiliate you in front of your peers. Which is exactly what Devon does. That is some nasty-spirited shit, my friends.

We see this kind of sabotage behavior from Devon throughout the show, even though her words are saying she’s trying to save Simone. This is the most triggering of all… the cognitive dissonance - the GASLIGHTING - of a person’s words saying they want to help while the acts of their hands actively incite the destabilization of your mental health… and financial stability.

It was giving [insert relative here] sending mass texts to the family that they were afraid I was in the midst of a mental break down and in of danger of self harming because I’d gone no-contact again… after they’d done something incredibly harmful to me.

I was unwell… because I seemed better than ever without them and they couldn’t understand how that was possible.

They couldn’t reconcile that my mental illness was a product of being in the sick environment that they facilitated. It was easier to think that my “better life” was a facade that I couldn’t identify as a symptom of me being unwell. This is the same energy as Devon projecting that her sister Simone is in a cult when in reality Simone has gone no-contact with a family that neglected her.

We quickly learn that after a turbulent childhood of her mother attempting to kill Simone and successfully committing suicide in front of her then landing in foster care after her father’s alcoholism resulted in Simone almost starving to death, Simone is finally someone that she’s proud of. But most importantly Simone finally feels safe. She’s the healthiest she’s ever been and even mentions that with the approval of the psychologist who has cared for her since childhood, she’s improved enough to go off her meds.

Devon won’t acknowledge that Simone has the right to go no contact with her abuser and honestly also has the right to go no contact with the person now caring for her abuser (aka Devon). So Devon does what? Tell herself that Simone is… well she actually has two conflicting theories driving her behavior - Simone is brainwashed and/or Simone doesn’t care about her family. But again this is Devon searching for a way to justify staying in the trauma environment and suffering dearly because of it, while Simone left and healed.

Devon is struggling to come to terms with the reality that her life is a product of the choices she made - even if she felt like they were choices she had to make. This anger and frustration is eating her alive, as we see through her struggles with sex addiction, but it’s also seeping out of her and pushing her to destabilize the life of her baby sister, as a form of seeking intimacy and companionship. It’s not enough for Devon, and the people like her, to say “I’m sad and I miss you.” They fear rejection so much that they have to create a reason why you need them. They then get to swoop in from a position of power and save you. Which validates their ego, the belief that their self sacrifice is righteous, and that you were the one in the wrong all along.

But if you don’t need them, they can’t access you without putting themselves in a vulnerable position and this makes them angry.

If you ever become too independent or too stable it threatens their ability to control you so although they say they want the best for you (in the form of you being as dependent on them as possible) they always find something wrong with the independence that you’ve found.

Empathy is a great tool for understanding why the Devons of the world exist. But you shouldn’t let it become a justification of why you deserve to abandon yourself to meet their needs. For most Devons, that’s how they became Devons themselves. They were manipulated into self abandonment and viewing suffering as a form of virtue. So then when they encounter someone who chose to cope with trauma differently (especially if they see this person as a subordinate like a younger sibling or someone who used to be worse off mentally/emotionally) they feel a compulsive need to humble them.

Let us root for the Simones of the world while we pray for and keep a safe distance from the Devons. <3

Author’s note: Thanks for reading! Today marks day 8 of a 30 day challenge to write and publish daily. I’m fighting perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and ADHD freeze one post at a time.

That said, I know everyone may not want a daily Kady essay in their inbox.

I humbly ask that you don’t unsub during this time but to maybe move me to a less disruptive filter if daily contact isn’t your vibe? 😅

But also it would mean a lot to me if you did check in with me daily as a form of accountability. Maybe tell me something you’d like to be held accountability for in the comments and we can check in with each other each day? ~ also I’m using “day” loosely here, like a 24 hour period. I’m more of a midnight publisher than an 8am-er but, ya never know.