Straight up, I loved Kaos. It hooked me from the start, and then only got better as it went on. I pray to the merciful gods, who only want the best for us, for Season 2.

Jeff Goldblum as Zeus absolutely rocked. I’ve never been a particular fan of his, but this might persuade me to give him another chance. His character development through the episodes was amazing, and by episode 8 I’d pretty much done a complete reversal from 1 (trying not to give too much away here).

Loads of other great characters too. Would so much love to see them return.

The series is a darkly comedic modern retelling of ancient Greek Mythology in which three humans discover they are part of an ancient prophecy to overthrow the gods. One of the three humans is a trans man named Caeneus. Like most of the characters in the show, he exists in Greek Mythology, though his backstory has been substantially altered for the show (they actually merge his story with another element of Greek mythology in a very interesting way).

I’m just going to indulge in a bit of a spiel about why he’s such a big deal, because I’ve been waiting years for something like this, and I need to get it off my chest.

The big deal about Caeneus as a trans character is that he occupies a space that no trans male character (or maybe even trans/non-binary character in general, though I’m less familiar with this) has to date in mainstream media. For a few years now, I’ve been trying to catalogue every single piece of trans male representation in mainstream media around the world (though my ability to do this with non-English language media is still pretty lacking). I currently know of 135 different characters, and have personally seen more than half of those so far. And one thing that has really become clear to me is that though representation of trans men in mainstream media is getting better, there are still spaces we aren’t allowed to exist in (or at least we weren’t).

Specifically, I was not aware of any instance prior to Kaos, of a trans male character existing in such a big, central way in a major piece of media aimed at a general adult audience, as either a heroic or romantic lead (and certainly not both at once), without any kind of qualification. The closest examples I can think of from film and television would be Viktor Hargreeves in The Umbrella Academy – but he crucially was created and written for his first two seasons as a cis woman, and was never intended to be a trans character. Theres’ also Dr Andre Davis in The CW’s reboot of The 4400 (I strongly recommend checking this out as he is a really wonderful character in his own right, completed unrelated to his transness, and one of the best trans male characters I’ve seen to date). He does occupy a role in the series as a central heroic and romantic lead, but this is because the reboot of the show is all about marginalized people and societal change. These are the core themes of the show and all of the main protagonist belong to various minority groups (which I think is a great idea to be clear). The problem is that these kinds of circumstances are the only way trans male characters have ever gotten to exist in a media in these roles – either because they were never meant to be there in the first place, or because the context specifically calls for it. Oh, and there’s also Danny in the film Evil Dead Rise, released last year. But it seems most people who watched the movie aren’t even aware he’s a trans character (he officially is according to GLAAD, but from what I’ve read, this is only implied by a line of dialogue early on in the film).

Caeneus however, is quite explicitly one of the most important characters is a very big show, and has his own very big hero’s journey to fulfill. He is also part of a romance storyline with another lead character which forms part of the emotional core of the first season (and likely the whole show if it gets more seasons). Neither of these things are predicated on him being trans. Even though his transness was always there, and is very much visible in the show. Crucially, his story (to paraphrase his actor Misia Butler) is not drawn from him being trans, but is informed by it. It is an important part of who he is, but is by no means the entirety of him, not even close. His heroic narrative and his romantic narrative aren’t about him being trans, they just factor into it (moreso the heroic narrative than the romantic one) And all of this is to my knowledge, is completely unprecedented for a trans male character in this kind of media.

One other more minor note is that Kaos is the first piece of mainstream English-language media (excluding media aimed at an LGBT audience) to my knowledge to depict a trans male characters’ body and sex scenes in a completely ordinary way (that is to say, in the same manner, and for the same reasons as they would with a cis character). Historically, mainstream media was always very weird with this stuff, now they tend to just avoid it entirely (and on the very rare occasions they don’t, it always exists in some kind of trans-specific context). I never really noticed this until I saw a couple of international shows that were actually really good about this stuff (specifically the character of Daniel on Mexican telenovela The Five Juanas on Netflix and the character of Nico on Spanish series Elite, also on Netflix). I’m not 100% sure, but I believe Nico does quite literally have more sex scenes on Elite than every single trans male character in English-language mainstream media combined (all 106 of them).

Finally, the creator and writer of Kaos is Charlie Covell, who I believe is non-binary themselves (and has also a played a trans male character on TV before, though admittedly a highly problematic one). There are also other trans/non-binary actors in the show. Specifically playing the three Fates Atropos, Lachesis and Clotho. They are played by Sam Buttery, Suzy Eddie Izzard and Ché, respectively.

Covell has a plan for three seasons of the show (which is very clear from the conclusion to the first season, though it does end in a sufficiently satisfying fashion should it not be renewed). Of course this is a Netflix show, and an expensive one at that, so it will probably be an uphill battle to get renewed, so if you’re interested, I strongly encourage you to watch it and get the views up.

And if none of that sounds appealing to you, then there’s also a video of the cast playing with three-headed puppies which might convince you instead.