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It depends. Do you want total alignment reversals, or are the people the PCs have to fight along the way evil too?
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What level is this for?
Sebastion, the crab, is her reluctant Familiar? Constantly telling her what she is doing is wrong. Flounder, the guppy, has abandoned her... seeing her intentions. Maybe a guide to the party?
Ariel could be a Merfolk Ocean Echo Oracle, possibly inspiring her minions? Doesn't get a Familiar, but VMC Wizard does. Transmutation, maybe? At 19th level you get the 8th level Change Shape School Power.
I don't know. But Merfolk focused on Transmutation. Probably going to want it Charisma-based for Bluff if she is lying to the party this whole time... but traits can switch what Bluff is keyed off of, possibly switch which skill you use to lie in the first place... it's an NPC, so you can just rule of cool her skills and stats to be whatever they need to be anyways.
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Oracle is a spontaneous 9th level divine caster, first and foremost. It is going to play like a full caster if you want it to. Being divine, it has 3/4 BAB and some weapons/armor to play with, too.
The Ocean Echo Oracle is specifically for Merfolk and gives up some Revelations for Bardic Performance. Since Ariel is the BBEG for this installment, I figured she could use Inspire Courage for her minions... she has to have minions, right? Plus, Bardic Performance is easy to boost with hats and flags hanging from spears.
I don't really know how to work in the Tansmutation stuff with the Ocean Echo Oracle, though. Haven't looked through their spell list enough to know if an Oracle could pull it off. But you really only need the Flagbearer feat, a +1 Impervious Whipwood Longspear with the Bannner of Ancient Kings, and a Dervish Sikke for the Bard stuffs. Might want to grab Discordant Voice, since you are using Sing.
Point is, there is still plenty of room to use feats, even VMC, to give her something else to do. I would make her a minimum of 13th level, so her Bardic Performance is a swift action. That way she is free to do pretty much whatever else you may want her to do, whilst still Inspiring Courage.
At 13 Inspire Courage is normally a +3, but the Banner of Ancient Kings gives 4 virtual levels, and Inspire Courage jumps to +4 at 17... so there we are. The Dervish Sikke increases that bonus by 1, for a total of +5/+5 attack/damage... and Discordant Voice adds 1D6 sonic damages on top of that...
Remember, she doesn't necessarily have to be doing all the damage herself. It can be a memorable encounter with her buffing some terrifying sea creatures to fight on her behalf. All that extra damage they do, is technically damage she did via her buffs.
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Next question (should have thought of this before): Are the PCs evil, or are they misguided into trying to help somebody they think is good? If the latter, you should have her be very good at hiding her true intentions, and in particular at reliably coming up with plausible alibis, even when sending sea creatures to do bad things (or better yet, tricking somebody else into sending sea creatures to do bad things -- maybe she has even thoroughly hoodwinked Ursula, and -- taking inspiration from recent history in our world -- may even have such cognitive dissonance as to render such measures as Abadar's Zone of Truthtelling completely useless). To make it more plausible, have the good people against the PCs have checkered pasts themselves.
As to the question of class, you can build all sorts of things out of Oracle, but Bard is pretty good for somebody specializing in trickery.