For those who’ve truly learn The Iliad, Metamorphoses, The Aeneid, or The Odyssey; devour myth-inspired fiction like Circe; performed each minute of Murderer’s Creed: Odyssey and Hades; and usually quote Disney’s Hercules, you may watch Netflix’s Kaos with severe information (and possibly alone, like me). However should you’ve been elsewhere doing different issues, don’t be concerned. As ill-fated narrator Prometheus (Stephen Dillane) says firstly of the present, “A few of you will have heard of me. Don’t fret if you have not.” 

In Charlie Covell’s Greek mythology-based sequence, Prometheus provides you a one-liner introduction to every determine and placement, however the present’s not Greek Mythology 101 by any means — there’s narrative development afoot and whatnot. So if you would like a bit extra context to get essentially the most out of Kaos, this is a fundamental (and I imply it) information, from the mighty gods to the Earthly human heroes. 

For the report, my sources listed here are Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, Barry B. Powell’s Classical Fable, Stephen Fry’s Mythos, Mary Beard’s Ladies and Energy, Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s The Iliad, Charlotte Higgins’ Greek Myths, Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths, Liv Albert’s Greek Mythology, and David Raeburn’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Yeah, I dug out my uni textbooks for this. 

Reader beware, there are SPOILERS in right here for Kaos.

The gods and legendary beings

Zeus (Jeff Goldblum)

The king of the gods and massive cheese of the climate. The sequence consistently incorporates Zeus’ signature weapon, the lightning bolt. It is sewn into his clothes and linens, and you will spy a large bolt underneath glass in one of many palace rooms on Olympus. Kaos additionally makes quite a lot of references to Zeus’ infidelity and fixed impregnating of human ladies, notably leaving out the fixed assault ingredient for the present (identical goes for Poseidon and Hades).

Hera (Janet McTeer)

The queen of the gods; goddess of ladies’s sexuality, fertility, and marriage; and Zeus’ spouse (and sister, as Kaos reminds us). Hera holds a grudge and can typically search brutal vengeance towards Zeus’ lovers, however she accommodates multitudes. As Fry writes in Mythos, “It’s simple to dismiss Hera as a tyrant and a bore — jealous and suspicious, storming and ranting just like the very image of a scorned harridan spouse (one imagines her hurling china ornaments at feckless minions)…” Fortunately, McTeer provides Hera extra to do than throw decorations at workers.

However what’s with the bees? Fry additionally writes of the Greek delusion about how the bee bought its sting: At Zeus and Hera’s marriage ceremony, a contest for “the most effective and most unique marriage ceremony dish” noticed a small, buzzing, winged attendee, Melissa, current them with honey. For her efforts, Zeus bestowed her with a merciless sting that will kill her if used. Pretty marriage ceremony.

Poseidon (Cliff Curtis)

God of the ocean and earthquakes, Zeus’ brother, additionally Hera’s brother. Guidelines the oceans, typically depicted in artwork with a trident. In Kaos, Hera and Poseidon are lovers, however I imagine it is a inventive addition to their tales separate from the myths; in delusion, he is married to sea nymph Amphitrite. Maybe she’ll flip up in Season 2.

Hades and Persephone (David Thewlis and Rakie Ayola)

The king and queen of the Underworld. Zeus’ brother Hades was assigned to run Hell after the Olympians received a serious battle over the Titans (Zeus bought the sky, Poseidon the ocean, Hades the Underworld). In Classical Fable, Powell writes of Hades: “He commanded legions of demons. A pitiless grasp, he by no means willingly allowed any who got here to him to return to the land of the dwelling.” Persephone, in delusion, was kidnapped by Hades and tricked into being trapped there with a tempting supply of six pomegranate seeds — so she should spend six months of the yr within the Underworld, six months on Earth. In Kaos, Covell rewrites this example as a story of precise love between Hades and Persephone, and the parable as certainly one of unhealthy PR unfold by Hera. “Each child on Earth, once they study in regards to the Underworld, they suppose I am there towards my will,” Ayola’s Persephone says in Kaos, explaining she’s additionally allergic to pomegranates.

Dionysus (Nabhaan Rizwan)

The celebration fiend of Olympus, Dionysus is the god of wine, hedonism, pleasure, and insanity. The title “Dennis” apparently derives from what you name a follower of Dionysus, and it is notably the title of the kitten the god adopts in Kaos.

As Prometheus mentions within the sequence, Dionysus’ mom was mortal, a Theban princess named Semele whose destiny was fairly terrible in Greek delusion. Powell writes that she slept with Zeus showing “in all his glory, burning Semele to a crisp, Hermes saved the fetus and carried it to Zeus, who sewed it into his thigh. Three months later he eliminated the stitches, and Dionysus was born once more.” (Stick with me?) In Kaos, Semele was was a bee offscreen by Hera (the destiny of all Zeus’ human mistresses within the present,) however Semele is certainly burned by an indignant Zeus within the Season 1 finale.

In Greek mythology, Dionysus can be the husband of Ariadne — and within the last episode of Kaos, it turns into clear Dionysus has noticed his future mortal love. We go away him standing exterior the palace at Knossos. So, possibly Season 2? 

Prometheus (Stephen Dillane)

Our humble narrator, a bearded Titan suspended in shackles from a cliff face, is Prometheus (performed by Stephen Dillane). He and Zeus made people out of clay, then he pissed off his stormy pal by giving them hearth, so he is doomed to have his liver pecked out by an eagle every single day. Although it is a legendary transfer by Covell, Prometheus’ love for Charon is just within the present.

Medusa (Debi Mazar)

Regardless of appearances, Medusa has a tragic story in Greek delusion. Generally known as a Gorgon with snake hair, her story is finest instructed by Beard in Ladies and Energy: “There are a lot of historical variations in Medusa’s story. One well-known model has her as a gorgeous lady raped by Poseidon in a temple of Athena, who promptly remodeled her, as punishment for the sacrilege (punishment to her, observe), right into a monstrous creature with a lethal capability to show to stone anybody who checked out her face. It later grew to become the duty of the hero Perseus to kill this lady, and he lower her head off utilizing his shiny protect in order to keep away from having to look immediately at her.”

In Kaos, she’s center administration within the Underworld. Justice for Medusa. 

Charon (Ramon Tikaram) 

Charon is the ferryman to the Underworld, bringing the spirits of the useless throughout the River Styx (named for “Hate”) and Acheron (or “Woe). Fry writes, “There the grim and silent Charon held out his hand to obtain his cost for ferrying the souls throughout the Styx. If the useless had no cost to supply they must wait on the financial institution 100 years earlier than the disobliging Charon consented to take them.” Of us like Eurydice and Caeneus in Kaos haven’t cash to pay Charon (their family members stole the cash they have been buried with), in order that they’re despatched to the Centre for the Unresolved.

Charon’s crew in Kaos has regular-sized sniffer canine variations of the good three-headed canine of the Underworld, Cerberus. Plus, Charon speaks of the Scylla within the sequence, a sea creature that chomps on Orpheus’ fellow Underworld adventurer. In delusion, the Scylla is a beast who was as soon as a sea deity — however pissed off the sorceress Circe in some renditions of the story. Additionally, Charon’s dad and mom are Erebus (personification of darkness) and Nyx (goddess of night time), so his emo tendencies are hereditary. 

Mashable Prime Tales

The Furies (Natalie Klamar, Cathy Tyson, and Donna Banya)

The trio generally known as The Furies (additionally known as The Erinyes) exist to punish evildoers. Known as Tisiphone, Megaera, and Alecto, they cruise round in Kaos exacting justice, although it won’t seem that method. In Mythology, Hamilton writes, “The Greek poets considered them mainly as pursuing sinners on the Earth. They have been inexorable, however simply.” Kaos fortunately leaves out The Furies origin story: They’re stated to have sprung from the blood on the ground after the primordial god of the sky Ouranos was castrated by his personal son Cronos. Yikes.

The Fates (Sam Buttery, Suzy Eddie Izzard, and Ché)

Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, the three prophecy-makers of Kaos, are recognized collectively as The Fates. They seem to be a key trio in Greek mythology, writing prophecies and declaring that “realizing is our complete factor.” As Graves writes in The Greek Myths, Clotho is the “spinner,” Lachesis (or Lachy in Kaos) is the “measurer,” and Atropos is one “who can’t be turned or averted” — yeah, they wield the badass scissors of destiny. As we see in Kaos, Zeus’ relationship with The Fates is tempestuous. Graves writes, “Zeus, who weighs the lives of males and informs the Fates can, it’s stated, change his thoughts and intervene to avoid wasting whom he pleases, when the thread of life, spun on Clotho’s spindle, and measured by the rod of Lachesis, is about to be snipped by Atropos’s shears.” However he additionally writes that “Zeus himself is topic to the Fates.”

Polyphemus (Joe McGann)

The cyclops Polyphemus comes within the type of an eye-patched bar proprietor known as Poly in Kaos. Polyphemus is the son of Poseidon and the Oceanid Thoosa, and his large function is available in The Odyssey, when he captures Odysseus’ crew in his Sicilian cave once they discover it filled with sheep. In Metamorphoses, Ovid describes him as an “inhuman host, who made his bloody feasts / On mangl’d members of his butcher’d company.” Yeah, he eats a few of them, then falls asleep (however not earlier than blocking the exit with a boulder). Odysseus outwits Polyphemus by getting him pissed and blinding him, and the crew tie themselves to the bellies of the sheep within the cave, who then stroll on outta there. None of this occurs in Kaos, which is an actual disgrace.

<u>The people</u>

Eurydice and Orpheus (Aurora Perrineau and Killian Scott)

Preferring “Riddy” within the sequence, Eurydice is the main girl of the artist-beloved Greek delusion by which she dies on her marriage ceremony day. Because the story goes, minor god Aristaeus tried to assault Eurydice; she ran, stepped on a toxic snake who bit her, and died. It is terrible. Her grieving husband Orpheus (a man with musical superpowers and/or a extremely good lyre from solar god Apollo) travels to the Underworld to get her again. Graves writes that Orpheus “not solely charmed the ferryman Charon, the Canine Cerberus, and the three Judges of the Useless together with his plaintive music, however quickly soothed the tortures of the damned.” This man have to be good.

Having received over Hell together with his tunes, Orpheus makes a cope with Hades (Higgins writes that it was Persephone’s concept) to play her out of there so long as he does not look again. Spoiler: he does. Eurydice is a passive soul misplaced endlessly within the delusion, in contrast to within the sequence, the place she’s given her personal company within the Underworld and allowed to return to Earth (because of Persephone).

Caeneus (Misia Butler)

In Kaos, Caeneus is a trans man who needed to go away his dwelling with the feminine warrior group the Amazons, however was then murdered by them, declared a “traitor” to their tribe. It’s an terrible, TERF-driven story of hate. In delusion, Caeneus is certainly a trans man, however not of the Amazons. Graves writes that Caeneus, a nymph, requested to have his intercourse modified by his lover Poseidon. 

Ariadne and Theseus (Leila Farzad and Daniel Lawrence Taylor)

Two figures inherently interlinked in Greek mythology, Ariadne and Theseus are most famously related to the story of the Minotaur — the identical goes for them in Kaos. The daughter of King (not President) Minos, Ariadne does not have a twin in Greek mythology, however her half-brother is the Minotaur — extra on that beneath. (Kaos names her brother Glaucus, for a sea god.) Theseus, typically known as the son of Poseidon, is recruited to slay the Minotaur within the labyrinth beneath Minos’ palace at Knossos. 

In Kaos, Ariadne has a crush on Theseus, however he is in love with Nax (or Astyanax). In Greek mythology, Theseus abandons Ariadne on an island known as Naxos after she helps him slay the Minotaur (impolite). Within the delusion, Ariadne ultimately marries Dionysus — which the present signifies within the last episode is the place subsequent season may head. 

Pasiphaë (Shila Ommi)

Generally known as Pas in Kaos, the First Woman of Krete is King Minos’ spouse in delusion. Pasiphaë is definitely the mom of the Minotaur — one thing Covell cleverly adapts for Kaos. Hamilton describes the Minotaur as “half bull, half human, the offspring of Minos’ spouse Pasiphaë and a splendidly lovely bull. Poseidon had given this bull to Minos so that he ought to sacrifice it to him, however Minos couldn’t bear to slay it and had saved it for himself. To punish him, Poseidon had made Pasiphaë fall head over heels in love with it.” Bing, bang, increase, you have bought a Minotaur — and a king set to imprison the beast with the assistance of an inventor…

Daedalus (Mat Fraser)

The nice inventor, designer, and architect, Daedalus is on the beck and name of King Minos. Hamilton writes in regards to the labyrinth he was commissioned to construct to include the Minotaur as “a spot of confinement for him from which escape was not possible.” Sadly, when Daedalus and his son Icarus have been imprisoned within the labyrinth, Daedalus’ escape plan of constructed wings went awry when Icarus flew too near the solar. That is talked about in Kaos, however within the present, Daedelus says Icarus constructed the wings to flee the palace after realising his father’s function with serving to Minos imprison the Minotaur. Within the delusion, a bunch of younger Athenians have been sacrificed to the Minotaur within the maze on the common, so Theseus known as in to kill the Minotaur (Ariadne helps him, with Daedalus’ help). In Kaos, it is Minos who kills the Minotaur, his personal son, in an effort to thwart his personal prophecy.

Hecuba and Andromache (Gilian Cally and Amanda Douge)

The 2 ladies summoned to President Minos’ palace in episode 3 are Hecuba and Andromache. They’re essentially the most highly effective ladies of the Trojans, each enslaved after the Trojan Warfare — in Kaos, they’re dwelling in the identical abysmal circumstances with out rights as the remainder of the Trojan refugees. Andromache is a Theban princess married to the Trojan prince Hector, who dies by Achilles. Their son, Astyanax, options in Kaos as a Trojan insurgent and Theseus’ lover. In delusion, he is thrown from the partitions of Troy as a child (in Kaos, although he makes it to maturity, he is executed and hung from the Knossos palace wall). Hecuba is the Queen of Troy, married to King Priam, and Hector’s mom.

Nax (Daniel Monks)

In addition to Hecuba and Andromache, there’s a variety of Trojans in Kaos, reeling from the occasions of the Trojan Warfare. They’re branded by the road on their nostril within the sequence and viciously persecuted by the Kretians. Astyanax, a Trojan prince and son of Andromache and Hector, known as Nax within the sequence, compelled to dwell with the Trojans within the crumbling refugee suburb of Krete known as “Troytown,” with no residents rights. He is Theseus’ lover in Kaos and answerable for the literal shit pile on the gods’ statue. He is the chief of the Trojan Seven, as they’re known as within the sequence, a vigilante group demonstrating towards oppression by the Kretians — they usually’re publicly executed by the president. It is a callback to the youngsters thrown from the partitions of Troy by the Greek military through the sacking of the town.

Cassandra (Billie Piper)

A prophet and princess of Troy, Cassandra was given the present of prophecy by a thirsty Apollo — together with visions of the entire Trojan Warfare and horse deal (Billie Piper’s character mentions this in episode 1). Cassandra would not go on a date with the god or one thing (ugh, entitled males), so Apollo made positive nobody would imagine her premonitions. “She shrieked and shouted out by way of all the town,” Homer writes in The Iliad of Cassandra warning the Trojans in regards to the coming violence. Seems the Historic Greeks already knew the agony of ladies not being believed.

Hippolyta and Crixus (Selina Jones and Slavko Sobin)

In Kaos, Ariadne and Theseus attend the Munis, a Mad Max-style cage struggle to the loss of life. The fighters are named Carl Crixus of Sparta (named for the gladiator from Gaul) and Hippolyta (named for the Queen of the feminine warriors generally known as the Amazons, and daughter of Ares’ god of warfare, who’s related to the story of the 12 Labors of Heracles). In Kaos, Hippolyta’s additionally the one who murdered Caeneus.

The areas

Mount Olympus

Residence of the gods. That is all you want.

The Underworld

There is a lot of geography coated in Kaos in the case of the Underworld. When Eurydice first arrives, she’s placed on the big ferry throughout the River Styx (see above on Charon for extra about that). Then, the Asphodel port in Kaos is known as for the Asphodel Fields, meadows of ghostly flowers within the first space of the Underworld, as Graves describes, “the place souls of heroes keep with out goal among the many throngs of much less distinguished useless that twitter like bats.” 

Then there’s the River Lethe, which additionally seems in Kaos because the physique of water individuals swim throughout to get to The Body. In delusion, the Lethe (named for “forgetfulness”) is a river within the Underworld by which individuals can fairly actually wipe their recollections. Hades and Persephone’s palace is one other area of the Underworld, and in Kaos, it is a mid-century fashionable testomony to center administration. 

One factor Kaos does not point out is that the Underworld has a Good Place and a Unhealthy Place: Elysium and Tartarus. Possibly Season 2?

Krete and the Palace of Minos at Knossos

In delusion, King Minos’ nice palace at Knossos on Krete was dwelling to a subterranean labyrinth the place a Minotaur roamed — and it is the place a lot of the motion in Kaos is ready. See above for the story of Ariadne and Theseus.

Villa Thrace

Eurydice and Orpheus’ dwelling in Krete in Kaos is known as for Thrace, a area north of historical Greece related to Orpheus.

Panopeus

The nightclub we meet Dionysus in, seen in episode 1, is known as Panopeus. In keeping with Fry, Panopeus may have been the place the place Zeus and Prometheus determined to supply the clay to construct people: “Historical past doesn’t agree on precisely the place Prometheus and Zeus went to search out the most effective clay for realising the plan. Early sources, just like the traveller Pausanias within the second century AD, claimed that Panopeus in Phonics was the place.”

The Cave

Although it is stated that the doorway to the Underworld was, in truth, a cave, in Kaos, the most important correlation between Greek mythology and this dive bar venue is its proprietor. Test the Polyphemus part above for the story of Odysseus and Poly.

Tyndareus Gasoline

In Kaos, you may see a petroleum station known as Tyndareus Gasoline. It is named for the king of Lacedaemon who married Aetolian princess Leda, who was impregnated by Zeus within the type of a swan, leading to Helen of Troy (artists love Leda). Tyndareus and Leda additionally had Clytemnestra, who married King Agamemnon, the massive Greek commander within the Trojan Warfare. Numerous Trojan connections right here. 

Notable point out: The cereal aisle

Shout-out to the set designers of Kaos, who’ve stocked a whole cereal aisle filled with Greek mythology references:

• Gaea’s Granola: a wholegrain cereal named after the goddess of Earth.

• Achilles’ Heels: foot-shaped cereal for the Greek hero whose mom missed a spot when she dipped him in immortality.

• Spartan Crunch: Made with 10-percent Olympus honey, a cereal named for the traditional enemy of Athens.

watch: Kaos is now streaming on Netflix.