What's With Our Obsession With Billionaires?

A Romance Author and Political Scientist Weighs In

There’s something about billionaires that keeps us coming back for more. Maybe it’s the fantasy—the idea that wealth, influence, and prestige can buy not only comfort but control. But as a romance author who also happens to be a political scientist, I’ve found myself increasingly interested in who is allowed to control the fantasy. And Netflix’s new series Sirens, starring Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon, offers a haunting lens through which to explore that question—not because it empowers its female characters, but because it so deftly shows us how even when women appear to be in control, they’re often trapped in beautifully gilded cages.

Take Michaela Kell, Moore’s character—the glamorous billionaire philanthropist who hosts exclusive dinners and wears legacy wealth like perfume. She’s powerful, yes. Poised, absolutely. But she is also brittle in the way only a woman haunted by infertility and the specter of perceived inadequacy can be. Her entire identity is wrapped in appearances, charitable clout, and a hollow marriage. And the show—like society at large—treats her infertility not just as a loss, but as a quiet, corrosive failure. She’s the woman who has everything except motherhood, and therefore, we’re told, something essential is missing. She becomes not just a cautionary tale but a caricature—another reminder of how unforgiving our cultural narratives are to women who do not, cannot, or choose not to mother.

Juxtaposed against her is Simone, played by Milly Alcock—a young woman whose beauty is both her shield and her sentence. Simone is infantilized from the moment we meet her: first by her sister Devon (Meghann Fahy), then by Michaela herself, and ultimately by Peter Kell, the billionaire husband whose affections determine her fate. Simone never drives her own story; she is driven by the ambitions and insecurities of others. Even when she orchestrates a so-called “coup” by stepping into Michaela’s role—both socially and sexually—it rings hollow. She has not claimed power so much as inherited it at Peter’s discretion. She doesn’t rise. She’s chosen. And that distinction matters, because her arc isn’t one of transformation—it’s one of commodification. She becomes the latest in a long line of interchangeable, ornamental wives. Another polished gem in a rich man’s trophy case.

Now Devon—ah, Devon. She is perhaps the most fascinating of the trio because she feels the most real. Fiercely intelligent, fiercely self-destructive. Her sexuality isn’t romanticized, nor is it punished—it’s compulsive, tangled up in her alcohol addiction and her desperate attempts to feel something outside of pain. And yet, unlike the other women, she holds her own. Even in her messy entanglement with her married boss, she exerts quiet dominance. She knows what she’s doing. The tragedy is, Devon could be the story’s heroine—if only the show allowed her to escape her own savior complex. But Sirens doesn’t interrogate that enough. Instead, it casts her compulsions as noble, her codependency as care, never fully grappling with the emotional labor women are conditioned to perform in order to feel worthy.

At its core, Sirens is a darkly seductive parable about women who want power, possess power, or pretend they never wanted it at all. It’s not a story of female empowerment—it’s a cautionary tale. And that’s what makes it so compelling. Because the final twist isn’t Simone’s ascension or Devon’s unraveling. It’s the revelation that power, when filtered through the lens of wealth and patriarchy, remains a ghost. An illusion. A myth.

Just like the sirens themselves.