Greek Gods Get a Modern Makeover in the Most Inventive Epic Myth of the Year
“A line appears, the order wanes, the family falls and Kaos reigns.”
If you didn’t know a Greek Myth Kid growing up, you were probably the Greek Myth Kid yourself. It doesn’t matter if you learned them using the Usborne Book of Greek Myths, the Dragonology spinoff Mythology, or the good old-fashioned Percy Jackson series, the childhood fascination with the dramas of Mount Olympus is as timeless as the stories themselves.
But even after the phase comes and goes, a Greek Myth Kid never forgets what they learned. And occasionally, they grow up to become storytellers themselves. That tradition is what has kept these stories alive, but in the age of television, it’s also what’s given us countless takes on the same characters.
Thankfully, a seasoned showrunner has delivered a completely fresh take on these legends to Netflix, a show made by a Greek Myth Kid for Greek Myth Kids. The result is deliciously colorful, delightfully queer, and full of heart. The only problem is there isn’t more.
Kaos is a Greek myth retelling set in a modern Crete where the gods never fell out of vogue. Populations worship the gods, and the gods, in turn, help them out from Mount Olympus. However, it isn’t exactly a symbiotic relationship. The entire series is narrated by Prometheus (Stephen Dillane), the human who stole fire from the gods and now lives for eternity getting his liver plucked out by an eagle.
“Power can give a man many things,” he says. “Taste is rarely one of them.” It’s how we’re introduced to Zeus (Jeff Goldblum), a leisure-suit-wearing bloodthirsty megalomaniac who enjoys skeet-shooting his servants (imagine Thor: Ragnarok’s Grandmaster, but on a Greek vacation). Prometheus and Zeus are rivals, that’s for sure, but they’re also each other’s confidants. Zeus often summons Prometheus from his cliffside to ask for advice, and in Kaos, he needs a lot. In a world dictated by prophecy, Zeus is worried that him finding a new wrinkle is the first step to fulfilling a prophecy that will lead to the fall of the gods themselves.
In Crete, things are equally dire. Zeus’s son Dionysus (Nabhaan Rizwan) is looking for a purpose beyond partying. Eurydice aka Riddy (Aurora Perrineau) is looking to leave her rockstar boyfriend Orpheus (Killian Scott), but before she can get up the nerve she finds herself in the Underworld. Meanwhile, President Minos’ daughter Ariadne is trying to live up to her parents’ expectations, but the shadow of her late brother hangs above her.
Showrunner Charlie Covell’s vision for Kaos can’t help but feel like an antidote for the current landscape of TV. The Olympus scenes are shown in lush saturation, while the scenes in Crete are given an almost Succession-style realism with a dose of political satire, and the scenes in the underworld are shown in stark black and white.
Scenes in Kaos’ underworld are shown in Ripley-style black-and-white.
Between these three realms, Kaos bounces back and forth between familiar Greek myths and its modern interpretations. It borrows elements from the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, the story of the Minotaur, and the fall of Troy, projecting all these stories through a modern lens that is still comprehensible to Greek myth newbies. Threaded through the entire series are the classic mythic tropes of self-fulfilling prophecies and the doomed romances.
If that wasn’t impressive enough, Kaos is also one of the most seamlessly diverse series in modern memory. Daedalus has a limb difference, the Fates are non-binary (and one of them is Suzie Eddie Izzard), Riddy meets a trans-masculine Amazon, and there are all sorts of queer relationships.
The only thing that’s really missing is more gods. While the ones we see are brilliantly cast, especially David Thewlis as a world-weary Hades, it’s hard not to imagine what this world’s versions of Aphrodite, Athena, or Ares would look like. Hopefully in a hypothetical Season 2 — which is expertly set up by the end of Season 1 — we’ll see more members of Zeus’ infinitely dysfunctional family.
Kaos is Percy Jackson for the people who have graduated to Good Omens, and a perfect weekend binge for those who love an epic saga but don’t want something too serious. It’s joyful, it’s colorful, and it shows exactly why people have loved Greek myths for millennia: the concept of defying your own destiny, combined with a healthy dose of heavenly egos and petty dramas.
