KAOS Ending Explained: Zeus’ Prophecy & Revolution in the City of the Dead

Warning: contains spoilers for the Kaos finale.

Zeus clearly hasn’t read his Sophocles. If Kaos’ king of the gods were familiar with the story of Oedipus Rex, he’d have known that any attempt to defy a prophecy only helps it to come true. And so it was for Jeff Goldblum’s Zeus, whose obsession with his prophesied fall from power brought about the very thing he feared. In short: Zeus is now mortal again, sucks to be him.

As stage-managed by The Fates (unkillable personifications of destiny) and Prometheus (a descendant of the Titans whose name means “forethought” so, you know, Zeus probably should have listened to him instead of chaining him to a cliff and having an eagle chow down on his liver for eternity), in the Kaos finale, Zeus’ prophecy came to pass: “A line appears, the order wains, the family falls and kaos reigns”.

How exactly did it happen, and where does that leave things for a future second season? Read on.

How Zeus Lost His Power

Zeus’ cruel and monomaniacal behaviour over eight episodes was a masterclass of how to royally alienate your nearest and dearest. The result? Everybody hates him. His brothers Hades and Poseidon both attempted to defy him, his wife Hera is planning a coup, and his sweet son Dionysus has given his heart (and possibly next, his bottle of immortality-making Meander water) to Ari, a human who’s very much done with worshipping the gods.

Worst of all: the source of Zeus’ immortal power has collapsed, and he’s now human and vulnerable again, with no control over Prometheus. Once upon a time, Zeus hacked the natural passage of dead human souls through the underworld and stopped humans from ‘renewing’ so that he and his family could feed on those souls to maintain their immortality. That constantly revolving circle of Meander Water in the grounds of Olympus was basically a soul smoothie and chock-full of immortal goodness. Bad for humans but good for Zeus.

Now, since Caeneus’ mother took him through Hades’ Frame and he awoke in the Nothing with the mysterious power to renew human souls, the Underworld is no longer providing Zeus with a running tap of fresh people-juice. Prometheus is unbound, the Fates survived Zeus’ firebomb attack, and kaos is coming. Good for humans but bad for Zeus.

Ari, Glaucus, Minos and the Minotaur

Ari is one of the three humans instrumental in bringing about Zeus’ change of fortune, and like Caeneus and Riddy, she shared his prophecy. Ari’s father Minos lied that her prophecy foretold that she would kill her brother Glaucus, but really, she didn’t kill her brother – Minos faked Glaucus’ death as an infant and trapped him in an underground labyrinth where he would become a savage masked killer known as ‘The Minotaur’, all in an attempt to deny his own prophecy.

Minos’ prophecy foretold that his first child to draw breath would kill him and presumed it referred to the older of his and Pas’ twins, Glaucus. As Glaucus was born blue and not breathing and Ari was born screaming though, she was technically the first to draw breath despite being born second.

A puppet of the gods, Minos was pressured by Poseidon and Hera to defy his prophecy and kill his son before his son could kill him (they were invested in calming down Zeus’ paranoia by proving that prophecies were avoidable). Minos entered the labyrinth and did the deed, but thanks to the Fates having told Ari the truth about her father’s prophecy, what he’d done to her twin brother, and the lies she told, she went down there too and killed her father in revenge.

Ari dragged her brother’s corpse out into the palace, showed her mother that they’d both been lied to about Glaucus’ childhood death and confessed to having murdered her father. Her mother Pas, previously lost in grief for her dead son and resentful of the child she thought had killed him, forgave Ari, showed her love, and told her that she was now the ruler of Krete.

Ari’s first act as ruler was to declare that she would no longer serve the gods, and to make an alliance with Andromache, the widow of Trojan prince Hector to restore Troy (Kaos takes place in the aftermath of the Siege of Troy, which has destroyed the city and made its citizens into refugees and political prisoners) and destroy Olympus.

Caeneus, the Nothing and Hades

Caeneus was born to the Amazons (a mythic race of warrior women who expel male children at adolescence) as a female named Caenis, but his mother recognised his male identity and sent him away from the Amazon compound for his safety, and told him that Caeneus would have been his male name. He’d lived happily as his true self until 10 years ago, when the Amazons tracked him down and murdered him, leaving him as an unresolved soul in the underworld, waiting for his mother’s arrival.

Caeneus’ mother had been told by one of Hera’s tongueless priestesses the Tacita that her son was destined to change the world. She waited years, and when prompted to by the Tacita, took her own life, united with Caeneus in the underworld and dragged him through the Frame, knowing that it was predestined. Usually, unresolved souls aren’t able to enter the water and swim through the Frame, but Caeneus could, and when he awoke in the Nothing (because the Frame is a lie and no human souls are renewed any longer, they’re all just imbibed by the gods to shore up their power) he restored his mother’s soul. Hades witnessed it and will now be able to team up with Caeneus to defy his brother and restore the human souls Zeus had been stealing for his own profit.

Riddy Back on Earth

After Riddy and Orpheus made it back to Earth, they broke up and hugged it out. On the road to Heraklion, Riddy ran into Cassandra, the Trojan seer who was doomed never to be believed. “I’m a prophet, so are you now,” Cassandra told Riddy, “You must go to Ari and set the living free. Caeneus will do the same with the dead.”

So that’s Riddy’s next mission for a potential second season: to team up with Ari and continue to bring about the prophecy in which Olympus will fall and kaos will reign. Caeneus is doing the same with the dead (see above), and between the three of them, they’re going to change everything – and the next time Riddy dies, she’ll reunite with her man.

Dionysus in Love

A sweet boy/god who’d grown tired of the hedonism he was worshipped for and instead coveted true love, Dionysus was left very much on the ‘f**k dad’ side of things by the Kaos finale. Zeus had killed his kitten, his mother/bee had gone up in smoke, and Dionysus was left with nothing but a half bottle of Meander water and a lot of grief. Where next for him? Minos’ palace, where he’ll find Ari, the woman he thinks he’s in love with since he watched her murder her father in the labyrinth, and perhaps aid her in her quest to destroy Olympus.

Who Did Hera Call?

From a payphone outside of Olympus, queen of the gods Hera uses a payphone to call an anonymous child. “Darling, it’s Mummy,” she says, “gather the troops and make up a spare bed.” Then she marches down the road surrounded by her tongueless priestesses, readying for war. Which child could this be?

Earlier in Kaos, we saw Zeus phone his children Ares, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, Artemis and Hermes for help, but none of them answer. If Kaos sticks to the myths (which it may not) then the “troops” reference make it seem likely that Hera is calling her and Zeus’ son Ares, the god of war – a potential new character for season two.

Kaos is out now on Netflix.