No Ordinary Girl: Why H2O: Just Add Water Still Has Us Hooked

Some shows give you a theme song. H2O: Just Add Water gave an entire generation a reflex. One drop of water hits Cleo, Rikki, or Emma and suddenly you're internally counting down: ten seconds. Throw in Mako Island, the Moon Pool, and one suspiciously bright full moon, and congratulations, we're all back in Australia worrying about three teenage girls accidentally growing tails in public.

But the mermaids were only part of the magic. The Australian teen series took the regular YA problems of friendship drama, crushes, embarrassing families, school, figuring out who you are, and added the extremely inconvenient possibility that a spilled drink could expose your supernatural identity. Cleo, Rikki, and Emma weren't interchangeable mermaids either; their personalities, powers, and completely different approaches to keeping the secret gave the friendship its chemistry. Twenty years later, H2O still has a devoted fandom, from millennials and Gen Z viewers who grew up with the series (and turned “Cleo, naur!” into internet vocabulary) to younger fans discovering Mako Island now.

Tubi currently has Season 1 ready to take you back to where the Moon Pool started everything. You'll also find the mermaid coming-of-age series swimming around Tubi's Coming of Age collection alongside plenty of other stories about the already complicated business of growing up.