What Is the Best Order to Watch Episodes?

Publish date: 2024-07-15

Kaleidoscope offers Netflix subscribers a unique viewing experience that has not been seen before on the streaming platform: It lets the audience choose how they want to watch.

Now, granted, a viewer could watch a show in any order if they really wanted to thanks to Netflix's binge model, but logically most fans will start with the first episode and watch a show in order till the end. Kaleidoscope was designed to be different.

The drama stars Giancarlo Esposito and Rufus Sewell as Leo Pap and Roger Salas, and it follows a bank heist led by Leo decades in the making with the goal of stealing $7 billion in bonds from Roger's "unbreakable" vault. But how viewers come to learn about the characters and the heist will depend entirely on how they choose to watch the show.

Series creator Eric Garcia told Newsweek there are "over 5,000 ways" that the show can be seen by viewers, but every subscriber will have to watch all episodes before starting the show's finale.

With that in mind, viewers may be in need of a handy guide explaining some of the ways they can watch Kaleidoscope.

'Kaleidoscope' Viewing Guide: What Is the Best Order to Watch Episodes?

Kaleidoscope has eight episodes in total, with each episode given a designated color, and they lead onto the finale, titled "White," which explores the events of the aforementioned heist.

There are, as Garcia explained, several ways to watch the show and viewers can choose to go in the order it's shown on Netflix, chronological order, or even something random like basing episode choice on color (as Newsweek did, for fun).

But, even if viewers go via the order Netflix show's the series to them, Garcia explained that the streaming platform will provide different orders for each viewer.

"There's over 5,000 ways if people go in and choose themselves," the creator said. "Some people are also going to get it randomly. Netflix is going to deliver certain orders to them randomly. So, some people can just press play, sit back [and watch] and everybody gets a different order. But I love the idea of people being able to go in and choose."

Each episode is set in a different time either before or after the heist, this ranges from 24 years before ("Violet") to six months after ("Pink"). For clarity the other timelines are seven years before ("Green"), three weeks before ("Orange"), the morning after ("Red"), five days before ("Blue"), and six weeks before ("Yellow").

As such, one way that viewers can decide to watch the series would be in chronological order, not including the finale.

How to Watch 'Kaleidoscope' in Chronological Order:

The cast of "Kaleidoscope" which is a non-linear Netflix event that allows viewers to watch the show in any order.

However, viewers can also just choose to watch the series as it is generated for them, like Garcia said. Newsweek, for example, was given the episodes in the following order:

Despite this, Newsweek chose to watch the series in a completely different order to the one provided, based on this Newsweek reporter's favorite colors, starting out with "Violet," then going onto "Blue," and so on. That choice, Garcia explained, is at the heart of the series and so there is no particular order that viewers have to watch the show.

"Here's the thing, I actually don't know a ton of people who have started with 'Violet' so the interesting thing to me about that is it's such a backstory episode, right?" Garcia said. "Like you know the history between Leo and Roger really early on, whereas others might be waiting, waiting, waiting.

"But what you don't know is a lot of the stuff to come, so then jumping into 'Blue' right after you're like, 'well, things are clear.'"

He added: "That's part of it because when you're done with [the episodes before the finale] then you've got everything, that's sort of the goal.

"In the moment you're putting it all together and you're getting a different viewpoint on everybody, and then when you finally finish it up hopefully it ties it all up and then you can go back. If you went back now and watched 'Pink,' or you watched 'Blue' now, you know so much more than you did before and that's kind of the goal, that it's set up to sort of allow you to do that."

"Ceding the control of that is something that we generally don't do as writers, we're in charge and we tell people 'this is the order you watch these things,'" Garcia went on. "And, so, by allowing it to go out there you cede a certain amount of power and control, which is a little scary."

Kaleidoscope is out on Netflix now.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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