Early in Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ second season, an army of undead soldiers swap war tales. There’s a Viking, a Napoleonic soldier, and… Mitch, an honest-to-God Blockbuster employee. When asked which battle he fought in, he gamely replies, “Oh, the streaming wars.”
Streamers might have spelled doom for poor Mitch, but they have generally delivered when it comes to salvaging beloved middle-grade series onscreen. Much like Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events got a serviceable Netflix remake following a lousy Jim Carrey movie, Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books are finally getting a faithful Disney+ television adaptation after fans spent years bemoaning a pair of ill-received films.
Now in its second season, Percy Jackson has firmly established itself as a solid coming-of-age tale bound to delight longtime fans—but not without some notable stumbles along the way.
Since they were first published in the early aughts, Riordan’s books have endured by inviting contemporary readers to map the thrills of classical Greek mythology onto everyday life. The Greek gods’ half-mortal children, the demigods, deal with prophecies and monsters, but they also have to worry about modern horrors like cab fare and first-period math.
Season 1 already introduced us to our central half-blood, Percy (Walker Scobell), and set up our series’ big bad in Kronos, an ancient Titan hell-bent on rising again to take over the world. This time around, Percy’s trying to find his missing best friend Grover (Aryan Simhadri), a quest that might just hold the key to saving the faltering magical barrier around Camp Half-Blood.
Having Season 1’s initial setup out of the way makes it all the more confounding that Season 2’s first few episodes are so weighed down by exposition. Percy’s mom Sally (Virginia Kull), a character wonderfully fleshed out in the first season, barely gets a word in before the show moves on to other world-ending, supernatural stakes. Likewise, Percy’s Cyclops half-brother Tyson (Daniel Diemer) is hastily introduced via montage, leaving little space for any of his more complicated, resentful feelings about his new sibling to breathe.
That rushed pace mirrors a lingering issue from Season 1, in which showrunner Jonathan E. Steinberg largely did away with the books’ many scenes of its young heroes coming across an unnamed mythological figure in the 21st century and having to figure out who the hell they are. There’s a magical sense of discovery in these moments, inviting readers into the story as they draw on their own knowledge of classic myths.
There’s often an absurdist comedy to their modern preoccupations, too (of course Ares, the god of war, loves ragebaiting on Twitter). In the show, by contrast, the characters almost always know exactly who they’re facing. I don’t mean to suggest that kids these days haven’t read up their fair share of Edith Hamilton, but come on!
This emphasis on exposition over revelation sometimes hampers early episodes’ crucial balance of humor, myth, and heart. Dry witticisms that normally slot into the story seamlessly can come across as awkward, Marvel-esque quips when they’re stranded amid info-dumping and grand declarations of heroism. That’s not to say that there aren’t some winning moments — apart from that aforementioned “streaming wars” line, scenes of the kids saving the day with an “Emotions” needle drop or coming across a monster-filled cruise ship infomercial are genuinely funny gags.
Thankfully, that tricky Percy Jackson alchemy comes across much more effectively in the latter half of the first four episodes provided for review.
Once Percy, his fast-thinking pal Annabeth (Leah Sava Chase), and eager-to-please camp bully Clarisse (Dior Goodjohn) are off on their quest, the lovable pairings and irreverent tonal shifts that the series is known for come into focus. It’s no wonder that some of Season 2’s best moments—from Clarisse’s vulnerability in the face of her domineering father Ares, to a flashback of young Annabeth’s time on the run from monsters with surrogate brother-turned-Kronos traitor Luke (Charlie Bushnell)—use the series’ added runtime to flesh out the gang through quiet, poignant character beats.
On a visual level, Season 2 confidently builds upon its predecessor’s blend of practical set building and “The Volume,” the same real-time visual effects stagecraft that Disney’s Industrial Light & Magic famously introduced for The Mandalorian.
A chariot race set piece within Camp Half Blood is an early series highlight, with editing that breathlessly incorporates snaky tracking shots, practical stunt work, and VFX. The undead soldiers Ares recruits to aid Clarisse on her quest also look great as a gaggle of lads dressed in a hodgepodge of period combat gear and zombie prosthetics. Later scenes set within the Sea of Monsters, where Grover is held captive, occasionally fall prey to the flat, desaturated lighting and awkwardly spliced-in CGI—that’s particularly true when the kids battle the sea monster Scylla in a set piece that bounces back and forth between animated tentacles and an actual ship set.
For all its hiccups, Percy Jackson Season 2 has the cast talent, the source material, and the budget to make for a satisfying sophomore outing when all is said and done—so long as Disney and co have the Oracle of Delphi-esque foresight to get out of their own way.
