'Kaleidoscope' Season 2 May Be Coming to Netflix
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Netflix and Matchstick Men author Eric Garcia took a big gamble on its heist drama Kaleidoscope. Inspired loosely by the true story of $70 billion of bonds being flooded in a downtown Manhattan basement during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the miniseries complicated the hands-off convenience of binge-watching by imploring viewers to watch the episodes in whatever order they desired to see the same story through different lenses…like looking through a kaleidoscope. People could’ve been turned off by having to watch the episodes in a custom order manually, or they could’ve assumed watching every possible order would be the only way to understand the full story truly and skipped it once they realized how many hours that would drain from their lives.
Luckily for Netflix, intrigue won the day. Viewers latched onto the drama about master thief and terrible father Ray Vernon/Leo Pap’s (Giancarlo Esposito) intricate plot to steal $7 billion in bonds owned by a nefarious group known as “The Triplets” from the vault of Roger Salas (Rufus Sewell), the former friend he blames for his wife’s death, Roger Salas. Even though he follows the typical trope of all heists by assembling a team of criminals with specialized skills necessary to pull off each part of the heist, the actual robbery is arguably the least interesting part of the series. Instead, the episodes focus more on the nature of each character in the heist crew and their relationship with one another, hence why the standard Netflix order of episodes isn’t a linear jaunt towards the multi-billion dollar caper.
The actual heist is not only the final episode in the Netflix standard order, but the story’s epilogue precedes it and practically wraps up everyone’s storyline. As anti-climactic as this structure may be, there is still room for this show to expand even further in a second season.
Will there be a Season 2 of Kaleidoscope?
Officially, Netflix hasn’t announced a second season for Kaleidoscope, but all signs indicate a possible return to Garcia’s twisted heist world. As of this publishing date, Kaleidoscope is one of the streamer's Top 10 most popular titles. Esposito even celebrated the series being the #1 show on Netflix the day after its New Years' release. While none of the nebulous viewership data Netflix conveniently releases around mega-popular shows have been publicly provided about Kaleidoscope, Netflix always likes to keep a good (and profitable) thing going.
What will Season 2 of Kaleidoscope be about?
The ending of Kaleidoscope’s timeline left a lot unanswered that could be explored in Season 2, but none are more pressing than the fate of our Parkinson’s riddled leader Leo/Ray. The “Pink” epilogue episode ends with a hobbled Leo/Ray lugging a suitcase through an underpass before a mysterious figure following him pulls out a gun, and we hear a gunshot as the screen fills with pink. His presumed death will surely complicate the FBI’s investigation into the heist and possibly inspire his staunchly independent daughter Hannah Kim (Tati Gabrielle) to avenge her father's death after their touching farewell FaceTime chat before his passing.
Speaking of Kim, she would prove key to any second season, even beyond a possible revenge plot. After her father tried to use her as his inside man in Salas’s company for the heist, she revealed to him she was surreptitiously running her own scheme to return the stolen bonds to The Triplets, who would also be getting reimbursed for the missing assets by their insurance company. She also revealed to him that she has a child but offered no insight into who the father is.
Finding out how her father’s death will impact her, who the mystery father of her child is, and how long she can keep her illegal entanglement with The Triplets a secret from the FBI could prove to be intriguing enough to carry a new season. The FBI is still looking for the crew who robbed the bonds, and only tech wiz and con artist Judy Goodwin (Rosaline Elbay) and lovestruck smuggler Stan Loomis (Peter Mark Kendall) remain. Unfortunately, the whereabouts of those two are a bit vague after Goodwin discovered the money Salas gave her verbally abusive ex Bob Goodwin in his car after the FBI gunned him down on the beach. The last image of Judy sees her holding the bag while glancing at Loomis scarfing down Lengua tacos before staring into the camera with opportunity painted on her face. She was growing tired of Loomis’s unrealistic idealism and lack of action.
In Season 2, we could find out if she left him and how this ongoing FBI investigation and Vernon/Pap’s death might bring her back to a life she’s ready to leave.
Who Will Be In Kaleidoscope Season 2?
Salas, Judy Goodwin, Loomis, and Kim are the remaining major living characters. There are also The Triplets—Stefan Thiele (John Hans Tester), Suzanne Grosvenor (Delphi Harrington), and Cho-Young Woo—who existed mostly as the shadowy rich overlords over Salas. We don't truly know the extent of their influence, but Season 2 can help bring that to light.
Death may remove a character from a traditional show, but not one told in the way Kaleidoscope is told. With its non-linear storytelling, flashback episodes proved essential to Season 1's story. So, even though the group's fearless leader was possibly murdered at the end of the first season's story, flashback episodes of Vernon/Pap are not out of the question in Season 2. Those become guaranteed if Kim's relationship with her father fuels a possible scheme of hers to avenge his death. Lawyer and weapons specialist Ava Mercer (Paz Vega) took pre-teen Hannah into her care after her father was arrested by the police, opening the door for Mercer to return in a Season 2 flashback after her own gruesome death in Season 1.
When is Kaleidoscope Season 2 Coming Out?
There hasn’t been any official renewal, so there’s no telling when we’ll get a second season. It took the wildly popular Wednesday roughly six weeks to get a renewal; the same was true for the similarly popular Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. If Kaleidoscope follows the same trend, we could hear about a renewal sometime in mid-February or early March, putting a second season potentially on track for a 2024 release.
But don’t worry; there are numerous episode orders of Kaleidoscope to watch and obsess over while you wait.
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