Despite being a core member of the original X-Force team and Peter David’s X-Factor Investigations roster, with hundreds of appearances in Marvel comic books over the last 40 years, Siryn has never had a mass release action figure… until now. Theresa Cassidy’s time has finally come, but is the X-Men Marvel Legends Siryn figure that just started shipping the definitive hit collectors hoped for?

While you could point to a plethora of X-Men characters with dramatic, soap opera-like backstories, most of those characters won’t have teamed up with mutant cyborg lobsters, had sex with a Multiple Man duplicate and given birth to a baby dupe, or been transformed into a Celtic Death Goddess. But such is the life of Theresa Cassidy, daughter of Banshee and longtime X-mainstay.

So wild is Siryn’s life that I spent more time talking about her crazy history in my Siryn Legends unboxing video (above if you deign to suffer through 12 minutes of me babbling) than talking about the figure itself. Indeed, Siryn’s experiences are worth talking about. Is this six inch action figure of her worth talking about as well…?

Hasbro has been slowly building the 6” X-Force roster for over half a decade now, and we almost have the whole iconic lineup. From Shatterstar to Rictor to Cannonball (with and without legs!) to even Boom Boom, the final two holdouts were Feral and Siryn—and here’s Siryn, so X-Force fans will almost certainly be buying her no matter what. And for the most part, I think they’ll be okay with this figure of her.

Hasbro held off on this figure long enough that Theresa benefits from modern female articulation, including both pin-less double-hinged knees and elbows, as well as swivel biceps. Butterfly swivel shoulders would have been nice for more interesting flying poses, but I don’t think Hasbro is ready to go there yet for standard female characters.

Siryn’s full articulation scheme also includes ball-hinged neck and shoulders, ball-jointed hips and upper torso, swivel-hinge wrists, swivel thighs and hinged feet with ankle rockers swivels. Her knees were a bit stiff at first, but all the joints are tight and her plastic quality seems solid.

Likewise, the quality control on the colors is excellent, with all the lining looking clean and even to me and the colors looking bright and vivid.

Unfortunately, this is not a perfect action figure. If you suffered through watching my video review, you already heard me complain about the head sculpt like 75 times, but here’s one more: I don’t like the head sculpt as the singular included head for this figure. At all. It would be a perfectly lovely portrait if this was a Jean Grey Marvel Legends figure, but alas, it is not.

Siryn’s entire power set is dependent on her opening her mouth. This closed mouth, smiling face means you can’t pose the character doing anything Theresa would in the comics: no vocal hypnosis, no flying, no Sonic Scream—she can’t even indulge in a whole bottle of rum. She’s “pretty”, but all that hard work and integrated articulation are a waste when all she can logically be posed doing is standing around smiling and silently flirting with Deadpool.

In addition, I think black stripes (as shown on the box art, even) instead of green on the fabric cape would have looked more iconic. And as much as I love her perfectly colored orange hair, it also precludes her from tilting her head up to look forward while flying (which she cannot do anyway with a closed mouth).
I appreciate the inclusion of two pairs of interchangeable hands (open hands and fists) as accessories to complement the big tank chunk of the Bonebreaker Build-A-Figure, but this is a figure that had a crucial need for a second head. Hopefully we get a proper screaming Siryn head with a future Morrigan version of the character (although I am not holding my breath).

Overall: Siryn is a frustrating figure to review, because Hasbro did this figure mostly right—but with a couple things to nitpick and one glaring omission. Ultimately, there’s very little to pose this figure doing and virtually zero dynamic stances that make sense without an open-mouthed head. This is a reasonably prominent secondary character in the X-Men mythos, so hopefully we can get a make-good second release with a yelling head sculpt, some Sonic Scream effects and a black-striped cape. Because this X-Men Legends Siryn misses the mark just barely as it is.

GRADE: C