By the time the credits roll on either The White Episode (which details the heist) or The Pink Episode (which details six months after the heist) it’s quite clear that Kaleidoscope‘s story is definitively finished by just about any metric. Three heist participants are clearly dead. Their leader is also probably dead. The target of their criminal act is in prison. The FBI agent tasked with tracking them all down is off the job. The money itself is back with the billionaires they attempted to take it from and the woman who put it all into motion is living out her happily ever after. Roll credits!
This was all clearly designed to be a one-season experience. The story is over. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Kaleidoscope experiment has to be…
Though everything about Kaleidoscope screams “one season miniseries,” part of me can’t help but wonder whether the nature of its format and the success it led to is too much for Netflix to ignore. And if they decide to do so, there are certainly some routes they could take. Allow me to explain.
Prior to the premiere of Kaleidoscope, Netflix released a brief making-of clip about the series that included some soundbites from creator Eric Garcia.
In one notable quote, Garcia says that “the idea for the series started from a structural place.” This is a refreshingly open and honest bit of insight as many creatives might try to claim that story took precedent over structure in the creation of a TV series. Here, Garcia instead acknowledges the obvious that the “gimmick” at play is kind of the whole point. That’s not to say that he and his team of writers didn’t then go about making a narratively sound television experience but rather that the structure came before story in this particular “chicken or the egg” conversation.
The story of Kaleidoscope isn’t an afterthought but it is secondary to its structure. And that’s alright! The creators of 24, another structure-centric TV success story, once admitted that they almost applied their 24-hour TV show gimmick to a story about a wedding before they settled on a spy thriller format. Kaleidoscope‘s structural focus means that perhaps the show doesn’t necessarily even need to bother with the same story if it wants to craft a second season. If its structure is what makes Kaleidoscope work then why couldn’t the show return for a second season that either tells a completely new story or at least offers a new take on the fringes of its first story?