The Percy Jackson and the Olympians T.V. show has come to an end with all eight episodes out on Disney +. For anyone who isn’t familiar with Percy Jackson and the Olympians, it is a show based on the five-book series of the same name written by Rick Riordan. The first book, and season of the Disney + show, follows Percy Jackson, a demigod (half god, half mortal), on a quest with his friends Annabeth and Grover, to find Zeus’ lightning bolt.
Rick Riordan also writes about Roman, Norse, and Egyptian mythology as well in later books which culminate into the “Riordanverse”. In this article, I will be talking about some things I liked and disliked in the Disney + Percy Jackson adaptation.
What I Liked
- Casting
- Rick Riordan having more creative control (…sometimes)
- The splitting of the episodes
- Corrections from the book (we finally know how Percy landed in the Mississippi River)
- The consensus song
Alright, everyone knows where I’m going with the first bullet point. I LOVED the cast for this show (RIP Lance Reddick). When the cast for this show was revealed everyone freaked out about Leah Sava Jeffries playing Annabeth because she is black. Riordan, who has way more creative control than he did in the god-awful movies that we never mention, said he was going based more on vibes than looking for a particular physical fit for Annabeth’s character which I completely agree with.
The argument that I heard being brought up a lot was that “Annabeth’s character was all about being taken seriously and not being a dumb blonde… So why isn’t she blonde?” To which I say: Black women, in our society, are not taken seriously a majority of the time so it makes more sense for Annabeth to be black in the first place. I don’t think that anyone should be judging the casting of Annabeth in the show because one, Jeffries did VERY well at the role, and two, judging how Jeffries looks is exactly the point Annabeth’s character was trying to make in the book (you shouldn’t judge someone based off of their appearance).
Moving on to a few other cast members that I absolutely loved, we have Walker Scobell as Percy Jackson, Aryan Simhadri as Grover Underwood, Charlie Bushnell as Luke Castellan, Dior Goodjohn as Clarisse La Rue, and Virginia Kull as Sally Jackson. All of them were made for these roles! They absolutely blew it out of the park!
Now onto how the episodes were split based on the chapters of the book. If you didn’t know, the titles of each episode of the show correlate to specific chapters in the book. I think they did a good job of setting a pace for the show in that sense but we will talk about pacing later in this article. I did like the idea of having a couple chapters per episode though so I have to give credit where credit is due.
One of the major issues with the movies that were made in the early 2010s is that Rick Riordan had NO creative control over what was being put into the movies so I think Disney + did the right thing in making Riordan a producer to the show and having him heavily involved in the making of it. This made for a much more faithful adaptation of the book and also helped Riordan correct some mistakes he made in the book. One of the biggest mistakes that he corrected in the series was when Percy fell from the St. Louis arch; in the book, Riordan stated that he just fell into the water but in reality that makes no sense because the Mississippi River is next to the arch, not under it (lol!). Fortunately, they changed that detail in the show which got a laugh out of me!
Last, but not least, we have the consensus song! When I say that I laughed when Grover started singing this and when Percy started to do this at Medusa’s place, I mean it! The hit of the year!
What I Disliked
- PACING
- Some of the writing
- Cinematography/Post-production
- Some of the changes made in the show
This show was really frustrating when it came to pacing. The episodes were extremely short (around 35 minutes) which I felt hindered the characters from developing as much as they did in the book. By the end of the book, I felt like I knew these characters but at the end of the show, I felt like I only really knew Percy, and even that was confusing sometimes (we’ll get there). This show felt extremely rushed by the 35-minute runtime that each episode pretty much had so I wish they had episodes that were around 50-55 minutes long so that we had more time to build suspense, bonds, and ideas about the demigod/Greek god world as a whole.
The next thing that I didn’t like was the writing of this show. I, in no way, blame the actors for this but some of their lines fell flat and I think it was due to the writing. In the book (Percy Jackson and the Lightning Theif) we are introduced to Percy Jackson who is a funny but traumatized kid because of his dyslexia, ADHD, his biological father out of the picture, and his mother’s relationship with his dirty, abusive, step-father, Gabe Ugliano. This didn’t change in the show but it feels like we are getting the perspective of a 16-year-old instead of a 12-year-old. This show is just written weirdly because we are specifically following Percy who is a 12-year-old boy but there is this sense of seriousness in the show that I didn’t really get while reading the books because of Percy’s narration as a clueless twelve-year-old kid trying not to die.
This show does a lot of showing instead of telling which I am not a fan of because it makes the characters really flat. The writers wrote Percy, Annabeth, and Grover as more knowledgeable than they were in the books. For example, in the waterbed scene (from the book) where they meet Procrustes, Annabeth and Grover are trapped before the identity of the Crusty is revealed. These kids aren’t supposed to know everything and it sucked in the show because the first scene in an episode of the show was Percy saying that he knew who Procrustes was and then Annabeth and Percy trap him (really writers?). I am not fully convinced about the writing yet but that is what season 2 will hopefully do (plus we get more Clarisse which I love!).
One of my biggest gripes with this show is how it was shot and edited. In many YA (young adult) series that eventually turn into film franchises such as Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Maze Runner, etc. there is dynamic and creative cinematography. An example of good cinematography and editing in young adult film franchises would be the Harry Potter movies. As each movie progresses there is a shift from a lighter tone (reds, golds, anything that has to do with Gryffindor, etc.) in the first couple of movies to a darker tone (black, grey, green) in the last couple of movies. This shift sort of guides the audience into the tone of the situation at hand which is what I was looking for in the Percy Jackson show but did not find. The color tone in this show just felt bland and did not give me a sense of wonder when Camp Half-Blood was introduced, awestruck disbelief when Olympus was shown, or anything else. It was bland as hell which is super disappointing in a show that I like. Another thing that I disliked was the fight scenes because they were ridiculously short and did not have any shots that made me feel like Percy was actually fighting a monster or the literal god of WAR (Ares!). Give me some cool camera shots and make it feel intense like it was in the book!
The last issue I had with the show was that I did not like some of the changes made to the show adaptation. First, the decision that the trio would miss the deadline of the summer solstice was stupid and pointless because Zeus didn’t do anything to Percy after that deadline had apparently passed. The only reason I think this detail was added would be so that Percy can have a heart-to-heart with Poseidon (his biological father). I also don’t like how the last scene where Luke betrays Percy is played out. I do not think Annabeth should have been in that scene, let alone throw her dagger at Luke because throughout the series she is in denial that Luke is a bad guy due to her absence in the scene when Luke betrayed Percy in the last scene of the first book. Some of these changes don’t make a lot of sense to me but hopefully, they will in season 2.
Last Thoughts
I really wanted to enjoy this show 100% but I’m more at 70%. This show definitely was good in some aspects but I think it had a bit of a weird execution due to the pacing, writing, and filmmaking. I understand that this show was made for kids but I think the majority of the people watching this show are Percy Jackson fans who read the books in the late 2010s in the 4th grade-early high school. Seeing as the original fanbase ranges from 18-25 year-olds (I’m estimating here), I think that the filmmakers, writers, and actors have their work cut out for them because they are trying to appease older fans like myself while also keeping it PG for the new generation who is introduced to Percy Jackson because of this show. Overall, this show was good but there are definitely things that can be improved upon next season which I am looking forward to!