Summary
In a largely introductory first episode, Kaos shows off a great sense of style and wit, even if the particulars of the plot haven’t come together yet.
I’ve always imagined Greek mythology as a catty family drama, and if nothing else, Episode 1 of Kaos leans into that very idea. The premiere is a broad introduction to the essential concepts and conflicts that’ll power the remaining seven chapters of the Netflix series, which reimagines Zeus, King of the Gods, as a tracksuit-wearing narcissist and the rest of the pantheon as his neglected children.
There’s a prophecy – isn’t there always? – and a plan to overthrow Zeus and various unanswered mysteries that’ll come up later. But what Episode 1 lacks in coherence it makes up for in snarky attitude and a sense of style. The rest will come along in due time.
Prometheus and the Plan
In Greek myth, Prometheus is the Titan who brought fire to humans, which led to a chain reaction of growth and development that emancipated the people from the rule of Olympus. Zeus, naturally, didn’t like this and had Prometheus chained to a rock as punishment. Every day, an eagle eats his liver, which grows back during the night so the whole process can repeat.
In Kaos, Prometheus is our narrator. He explains to us that there is a plot to bring about Zeus’s downfall involving three humans and a prophecy. We’ll get to the prophecy later. The humans – one of them, anyway – come first.
Eurydice, better known as Riddy, lives in Krete. She does not know the part she’s about to play, which is perhaps just as well since she’s focused on her relationship with Orpheus and the fact she keeps running into a mysterious hobo woman who gives her strange and foreboding prognostications.
The woman is Cassandra, a Trojan princess cursed by Apollo whose warnings about the Trojan horse were accurate but fell on deaf ears. She assures Riddy that today’s the day she’ll leave Orpheus, but it turns out to not quite be in the manner in which she intended.
Daddy Issues
Also of note in Kaos Episode 1 is Dionysus, Zeus’s son from one of many affairs. Despite not being born of Zeus’s wife Hera, he is a fully-fledged God of Pleasure, which he seems to take quite seriously – we first see him in a nightclub.
Dionysus wants more responsibility. But more to the point he wants more love. Zeus, though, seems incapable of providing that. Dionysus gets him a watch as a present, to symbolize how valuable time spent together is, but Zeus already has a watch given to him by Hercules, which he prefers.
After having his head telekinetically banged into the table by Zeus, and being tormented by Hera’s enthusiasm for honey – she turned his mother into a bee – Dionysus leaves in a huff. But he also takes the watch that Hercules bought Zeus as something of a sweetener.
The Prophecy
Billie Piper as Cassandra and Aurora Perrineau as Riddy in Kaos | Image via Netflix
It’s important to understand that Zeus is vain beyond all measure. He’s concerned almost exclusively with whether or not his people like him, which they don’t, and obsesses over his physical appearance to the extent that he believes a new wrinkle on his forehead denotes the much-talked-about prophecy coming to pass. At no point does he consider that a wrinkle is probably the least of his problems.
The prophecy reads thusly:
“A line appears, the order wanes, the family falls and kaos reigns.”
You can kind of see how Zeus might interpret a wrinkle in this way, but when you see how annoyed Dionysus is, how uncertain Riddy is, and make note of all the defiled monuments and public uprisings, it’s easy to see that the problems Zeus is facing are a little bit broader than that.
Interpretation is a powerful thing, which Prometheus points out in his voiceover. Two identical prophecies can be interpreted completely differently depending on who’s reading them, and this is what we see when Riddy receives the same note that Zeus did about lines, order, and kaos.
Riddy Leaves Orpheus
Riddy harbors a lot of resentment for the Gods because her mother left her as a child to become a tacita, a tongue-less priestess whose job is to listen to confessions. Their tongues are kept in a drawer by Hera, who, through them, can hear the confessions being spoken. This is the source of her power.
When Riddy goes to see her mother to rant about having fallen out of love with Orpheus, that’s when she’s given the prophecy. It prompts a bout of rage in her that compels her to defy the gods out loud. Still in this state of fury, she heads outside and spots Cassandra again. When she turns to call after her, she’s hit by a truck and killed.
Cassandra’s warning was correct. Riddy does indeed leave Orpheus. She leaves everyone.
Alignment
Towards the end of Kaos Episode 1, we see how things are coming into alignment for Prometheus, who has been waiting a long time for such a thing to occur. This is also symbolized by the Meander, a structure in Zeus’s water fountain, the eternal, circuitous flow of which denotes things proceeding as they should. A blip in the Meander, as we see emerge towards the end, indicates that things are going badly wrong.
Orpheus, who is genuinely distraught about losing Riddy and had no idea she had fallen out of love with him, buys a gun and plans to end his own life to be reunited with her. But he’s stopped by Dionysus, who tells him there’s another way to get her back.
In a final shot, Riddy wakes up among many other passengers stuffed shoulder-to-shoulder in a boat. They’re all wearing life jackets, presumably being transported to the Underworld.
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