Thank the Gods for a Hera Who F*cks

Some thoughts on the best character in KAOS

Janet McTeer in Kaos, looking flawless as always

(Spoilers for KAOS follow, although if you’re a myth nerd, none of the biggest plot beats in the show will be much of a surprise.)

Netflix’s KAOS is an absolute delight for fans of Greek myth. There’s so much to love here — a Eurydice who recognizes that being Orpheus’ muse is kind of a drag, actually! Suzy Izzard as Lachesis, one of the Fates (who all seem to be British, older, and extremely genderqueer)! An extremely true-to-myth trans Caeneus! Prophecies that only come true because people try to avoid them! Jeff Goldblum!

But I want to focus here on what was, for me, the biggest surprise of all: Hera fucks. Specifically, Hera repeatedly receives oral sex from Poseidon on his enormous megayacht.

In ancient sources, Hera’s sexuality only ever comes up with her husband/brother Zeus. The most famous example is probably an episode in Iliad 14 called the dios apate (because I think it’s mildly amusing to translate all the named episodes in the Iliad like they’re episodes of Friends, let’s call this one “The One Where Zeus Gets Tricked”). Hera is trying to help out the Greeks, who Zeus has been assisting in the massacre of at the request of Achilles’ mother Thetis. But Hera is only able to help her side in the most indirect way possible: by borrowing Aphrodite’s sexiest bustier—

You know what, I’m actually going to pause there for a moment. Have we decided on a garment that maps to what in ancient Greek literature is usually translated as a “girdle”? I know girdles still exist, but they’re pretty unsexy, even if the Kardashians have tried to rebrand them as “waist trainers”. I don’t think Hera is borrowing Aphrodite’s Spanx here. Here’s how Emily Wilson translates Aphrodite removing the garment:

Then she unfastened the embroidered strap
she kept between her breasts, on which was worked
every seductive spell. It had lovemaking,
intimacy, desire, and flirty talk—
flirtation makes the wisest lose their minds.

So… a bra, I guess? It’s not super clear. Reading this kind of made me feel like when I’m reading a scene where they’re describing something with sailing, and I have just no frame of reference to visualize what they’re describing. Except that, as a person who has worn bras, I feel like I should know what is being described here. It sounds uncomfortable?

Whatever is going on with Aphrodite’s breasts here, it’s clearly meant to be a sexy lingerie item of some sort, so I think “bustier” works. Ok, moving on.

Hera then convinces the sleep god Hypnos to agree that if Zeus falls asleep he’ll stay that way for a while, then seduces Zeus so he takes a little postcoital afternoon nap, and the other gods help the Greeks while he’s not paying attention. Not the most elegant of plans, but it works. Although Zeus does say this right before they do it (trans. Wilson):

Such strong desire has never
suffused my senses or subdued my heart
for any goddess or for any woman
as I feel now for you. Not even when
I lusted for the wife of Ixion,
and got her pregnant with Pirithous,
a councillor as wise as any god.
Not even when I wanted Danae,
the daughter of Acrisius, a woman
with pretty ankles, and I got her pregnant
with Perseus, the best of warriors.
Not even when I lusted for the famous
Europa, child, of Phoenix, and I fathered
Minos and her, and godlike Rhadamanthus.
Not even when I wanted Semele,
or when in Thebes I lusted for Alcmene,
who birthed heroic Heracles, my son—
and Semele gave birth to Dionysus,
the joy of mortals. And not even when
I lusted for the goddess, Queen Demeter,
who has such beautiful, well-braided hair—
not even when I wanted famous Leto,
not even when I wanted you yourself—
I never wanted anyone before
as much as I want you right now.”

What a sweet-talker. It’s a wonder Hera’s divine panties didn’t hit the floor so hard they left a crater, right? Also, considering that the Iliad begins with a declaration that the point of the Trojan War is that Zeus wants to lighten the world because it’s overburdened with heroes… has he considered, you know, keeping his immortal junk in his skirt? (As one of my college professors once said, the Persians wore effeminate pants, unlike the manly Greek skirts.) It seems like he might be single-handedly responsible for the hero overpopulation problem. Anyway, it’s a testament to her force of will that even after that little speech she still goes through with her plan and wears him out. If you want to learn more about this scene, I recommend

Joel Christensen

’s much less flippant newsletter about it.

Maybe it’s no wonder that there aren’t a lot of stories told about Hera — a goddess closely associated with marriage — screwing around on her husband. But I love that KAOS threw out the book on that.

Hera deserves to get some. Zeus has been screwing around on her forever! It’s even part of his pillow talk! In the show, she makes a habit of turning his human partners into bees and keeping them in what seems to be a truly staggeringly large collection of beehives. That’s completely consonant with Hera’s vibe in myth, sort of a take on how she treated Io.

But the double standard is still very much in play, and Hera knows that this is not a what’s-good-for-the-gander situation. She’s fastidiously careful to keep her affair with Poseidon secret — to his chagrin, because he’s in love with her and keeps telling her that he wants her to leave Zeus and be with him. But Hera’s motive isn’t love. In one particularly telling scene, Poseidon says, “You should have married me,” and she responds, “If I had, I’d be doing this with him.” The point for her is, explicitly, to be screwing around on her husband.

I love KAOS’s bad bitch Hera, with her extremely covetable Fendi sunglasses and sequined kaftans. She knows her power, and when Zeus oversteps and transgresses into her domain, you know she’s immediately going to seek retribution. I wish it didn’t feel so revolutionary to have a goddess portrayed by a woman in her sixties being desired and finding pleasure in sex. But here we are.

Look, she’s just as much of a monster as all the other gods in this show (except for softboi, kitten-loving Dionysus). She seems completely unbothered by Zeus’s cruelty and flagrant disregard for human life. She’s not a feminist icon in any sense of the word. We’re definitely rooting for her downfall, along with the rest of the Olympians.

I do kind of want her sunglasses, though.