It turns out falling into the Arctic Ocean while seal hunting with her clueless husband, Ting, was just the beginning for Siaja, the plucky protagonist of the new comedy series North of North.
Over the course of eight episodes, Siaja (Anna Lambe) meets her long-lost dad and watches him (maybe) rekindle things with her mom, Neevee (Maika Harper), deals with her walking HR violation of a boss, Helen (Mary Lynn Rajskub), navigates a love triangle between her now-ex husband and work crush, and puts out more than one ill-timed dumpster fire. It seems blowing up her life was the most straightforward part of starting over.
“When we see Siaja in the beginning of the season … we see her make some large and life-changing decisions that cause her to fall flat on her face in front of her entire community and force her to reevaluate her life and try to make it better,” Lambe told Netflix.
Set in Ice Cove, a fictional amalgamation of many Arctic towns, North of North is created by Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, who are both Inuit and live in the Canadian Arctic.
“While these stories are all fictional, a lot of them come from grains of truth in our lives,” said Aglok MacDonald. “It feels like we’re opening up our diary to the world.” And yet much of what Siaja contends with in North of North — workplace antics, small-town drama, complex family dynamics, and the overpowering desire to change one’s life — is universal. Throughout all the ups and downs of Season 1, the community of Ice Cove remains the show’s lovable, nuanced center, with Siaja as its beating heart. Keep scrolling to find out what happens to Siaja; her daughter, Bun (Keira Belle Cooper); her mom, Neevee; and their friends in North of North.
Siaja and Neevee’s push-and-pull mother-daughter relationship comes to a head in the show’s later episodes. Just before Helen and Siaja are set to present a big pitch for a research station to make its home in Ice Cove, Siaja finds out her mom’s store has flooded, and rushes to help. Neevee finally opens up about some of their family’s secrets — including another daughter Siaja never knew, who was taken away from Ice Cove by her father — and the two reconcile just in time for Siaja to make it back in time for her presentation. “One of Siaja’s challenges is that she has so much history with her mother and so much of that hurt from when she was a child stops her from moving forward. Neevee’s own trauma stops her from opening up to Siaja and letting them heal together,” said Lambe of her character’s entrenched dynamic. But the end of North of North Season 1 finds the two finally confronting their past.
“The producers and I talked a lot about the family dynamic and how the relationship from Neevee to Siaja to Bun works. It’s representative of how intergenerational trauma is passed down, how we work on ourselves to create better futures for our children,” said Lambe. “We see so much hurt, coldness, and almost a resentment between Neevee and Siaja because so much of Neevee’s trauma was passed down to Siaja.”
The show’s creators found inspiration for Neevee close to home. “Neevee is such a complicated character that we love so dearly because she’s modeled off of our own mothers, residential school survivors who went through the worst part of our colonial history,” said Aglok MacDonald. “Our mothers are so incredibly tough.”
Harper and Lambe leaned on each other for these difficult scenes. “Anna is such a generous partner to work with in a scene,” Harper told Netflix. “We have had some pretty intense scenes that can be hard to swallow, but she’s handled them so well and made herself so vulnerable, which I really admire.”
Alistair (Jay Ryan), Siaja’s father and Neevee’s first love, returns to Ice Cove after years away, resurfacing memories from their decades-long history and forcing Neevee to confront her past. “Her relationship with Alistair is very hard and tumultuous, and the relationship she has with Siaja is so guarded from that life, so it’s cool to see the more personal part of her open up,” said Harper. “When Alistair returns to Ice Cove, it’s the first time that Neevee’s had to really be accountable.”
Ryan told Netflix: “Neevee and Alistair are first loves, with that storybook attraction and love for one another. But Alistair has a wounded soul from being kicked out of Ice Cove all those years ago as a young man. He knows Neevee’s backstory, and he’s sensitive to what she’s been through. But he’s also quite sensitive himself, which creates a clash between them.”
What Alistair finds when he returns to town takes him completely by surprise. “Alistair’s internal struggle is that he’s never really understood why Neevee broke up with him in the first place. He’s wondering if he’ll be accepted, thinking about what he did wrong back then and wondering if he can make amends for it,” said Ryan. “When he arrives, he finds out something he wasn’t expecting — and maybe something that he’s pined for his whole life — which is to have a family, become a father. He’s got a lot of catching up to do.”
Alistair catches up quickly though, becoming a source of comfort for his daughter and granddaughter. “He becomes a rock for Siaja to lean on, talk to, and learn from,” said Lambe. “It’s such a beautiful relationship, and he creates space for Siaja and Bun to grow and feel held.”
At first, he and Neevee enjoy a flirty first few weeks, but Neevee, haunted by her past trauma, isn’t ready for a full reconciliation. She pushes Alistair away, even taking another man home from the bar. The end of Season 1 finds Alistair staying in Ice Cove, but he tells Neevee that he’s sticking around for “them,” meaning his daughter and granddaughter — not for her. Based on their history and chemistry, though, who knows how long their tenuous peace will last.
In Episode 1, Siaja leaves her high school sweetheart and husband, Ting (Kelly William), very spontaneously (not to mention very publicly).
And Siaja’s moving on. Countless chess games, plenty of electric eye contact, and one brief-yet-hilarious rendezvous with a smooth Québécois photographer later, she finally makes a move on new arrival Kuuk in Episode 6. “There are some sparks, some butterflies in his basket. There’s some friction there,” said Braeden Clarke, who plays Kuuk. “He recognizes that she’s a genuine, down-to-earth individual, and he’s craving that connection.”
Their long-awaited union is cut short when Kuuk’s “sort of girlfriend” Alexis (Taylor Hickson) flies into town to try and reconcile. As if that wasn’t enough breaking news, a local tells Siaja that her “sort of ex-husband” didn’t return from a hunting expedition and has been reported missing. Their relationship may be on the rocks, but Siaja still knows Ting well enough to help locate him, and bring him back to Ice Cove safe and sound. Despite his best efforts to win her back — which include listening to Taylor Swift, reading up on love languages, and learning to make Bun’s favorite soup — Ting proves to be just as narcissistic and jealous as before, and he fails to regain her affection.
With Alexis’ arrival and Siaja closing the door on Ting forever, Siaja ends Season 1 single, but with renewed purpose in her community and a newfound bond with her mom.
Siaja makes it back from her mom’s flooded store just in time to deliver a rousing call for Ice Cove’s sovereignty to the committee of “suits.” “If you want to study the real Arctic, you need to be here,” she ad-libs, speaking from the heart per Alistair’s fatherly advice. “For too long, people have been coming to the Arctic to try and change us, but I’m asking you to let this place change you. We’ve been doing our own research for the past 20,000 years.”
Despite Siaja’s moving words, the competing town, Tutuekalick, gets the money for the research station — apparently it has better infrastructure, internet, and a new sushi place. Ice Cove, however, does get a satellite office and Alistair raises his hand to run it — meaning he’ll be sticking around town after all.
“We touch on a lot this season, and the nice thing about this being a comedy is how we get to talk about so many difficult issues within our community while doing so with humor,” said Lambe about the show’s narrative resonance beyond the screen. “It exposes an audience to many issues they haven’t experienced but that are so common in the North, from the housing crisis to substance abuse or residential schools and difficult family dynamics. I hope that talking about these things openly — yet in a way that can be silly at times and full of joy and love — brings them to a wider audience.”
In many ways, Siaja’s presentation is the culmination of her character’s evolution and how she’s finding her own voice outside the orbit of her ex-husband and family. “At the start of the season, Siaja is isolated in her home life. She got married and started a family very young,” said Aglok MacDonald. “She challenges herself to get out there and be a bigger part of the community. By the end, her world expands in the most beautiful way.”
