Warning: This article contains mentions of abuse, violence, and spoilers for Seasons One and Two of Percy Jackson & The Olympians, as well as the book series of the same name.
Last year I published an article critiquing Season One of Percy Jackson & The Olympians, the TV adaptation of the wildly popular book series of the same name. I explained where the show fell flat both as an adaptation and as a TV show, as well as my deep love for the books. At the very end, I explained why I had high hopes for Season Two. And let me tell you, I was so hyped. Sea of Monsters is my second favorite book in the series, so I really wanted to see it done justice on the screen. I decided that I was going to go into this new season with a clean slate, believing that the writers would take the criticism received from Season One into consideration. So, did the show redeem itself with Season Two?
Sigh.
No. No it did not.
Don’t get me wrong, I can tell that the writers listened to some of the criticism, and I can say that there were more parts that I enjoyed from Season Two than from Season One, but not enough to make me feel like it was worth watching. I got my hopes up only to be let down. Again. I’m so tired.
Strap in for a long article, folks, because I have a lot of thoughts, both positive and negative. Starting off with the positive:
What Season Two Got Right
More Comedy & Action
These were two of the biggest audience criticisms from Season One, both of which I discussed in my last article. The PJO books are action and comedy-packed, and a central part of Percy’s character is his sense of humor. Though maybe not as much as I would have liked, Percy was given more humorous lines this season and Walker Scobell was able to flex his comedy chops. We also get more action sequences and even a tiny bit of gore! I know it’s messed up, but I literally jumped for joy when I saw blood in the trailer for Season Two. The first season seemed to avoid this, which didn’t really work for a storyline centered around a war fought with swords and spears that leads to a lot of casualties. It’s very light, but the presence of the blood makes the life-and-death stakes feel more real. Although, like I will discuss further on, the presence of blood is confusingly inconsistent.
More Clarisse
I love Clarisse. Like, so much. And, unlike most of the other characters, I actually think they translated her super well from page to screen. Dior Goodjohn is so unbelievably amazing in this role so it was awesome that they utilized her more this season. I loved the choice to put more of a focus on Clarisse than there was in the book. You get to see a side of her that is compassionate and cares for others while still maintaining her ruffian Ares-kid charm. I also love that they made her more of a friend to the main kids than in the books. It’s really heartwarming to see her be appreciated by the other characters. She deserves it. They may have messed up a lot in this show, but they did my girl Clarisse justice. I really enjoyed the episodes, “We Board The Princess Andromeda” and “Clarisse Blows Up Everything,” which featured her a lot and they had me believing that the rest of the season would be just as good… it was not. I honestly could watch an entire show just about Clarisse. Actually, I think I would prefer that.
Hermes’ Pre-Quest Chat With Percy
I wasn’t a huge fan of how Hermes was portrayed last season, but the way they handled him this season makes up for it. I’ll admit that I had my doubts, but Lin “Manbun” Manuel Miranda really brought it with his performance this time. This version of Hermes is different from the book, but I actually prefer it. In the book, he was a worn-out delivery man and forlorn father longing for his estranged son to stop his path of self-destruction. In the show, he’s much more convincing as the god of thieves and liars. He’s subtly sly, clever, and charismatic, but you can also see the heartbreak in his eyes as he declares that Luke is still his son despite his betrayal of the gods. This was a very powerful, well-done scene. More please.
Tyson
What’s not to love about Tyson? He’s pretty much the same big-hearted cyclops as he was in the books and Daniel Diemer plays him perfectly. My only complaint is that early on in the season the writers go back and forth between having him act childish and having him act like a normal teenager, which he is not. Tyson is canonically around like, eight years old — he just looks like a teenager because he’s a cyclops and they tend to be bigger than humans. I don’t think they ever really mention this in the show. Also, this is nitpicking, but his eye is too close to where the bridge of his nose starts which makes it look edited on (which it is, obviously, but it shouldn’t look that way). Anyway, I love him so much so seeing him on screen was such a treat.
The Gray Sisters, Tantalus, and Mr. D
The taxi scene was such a blast. I loved the practical effects with the smoke, and the use of practical effects in this season in general — more of that please. The actresses who played the Gray Sisters were amazing and you can tell they had a lot of fun in the role.
Tantalus was so much more enjoyable in the show than in the books. His character design is super cool and he’s absolutely hilarious. I also wasn’t a fan of Mr. D’s portrayal in Season One, but in this season he and Tantalus make the best comedic duo and I wish we got more of them.
Thalia
She’s been here for, like, five seconds and I already love her. It just makes sense that she’s British; it adds to her punk-ness. Tamara Smart plays her so charismatically that I wish she was the main character instead of Percy because she’s already more interesting than him. They better keep the showdown between Percy and her from the books and it better be just as action-packed and not just dialogue or I’m gonna scream.
Changes to Luke’s Character
I thought this would be a good transition point because I have mixed feelings about the changes to Luke’s character. I honestly can’t tell yet whether or not the direction they’re taking him in is for better or for worse.
Luke Castellan in the books is pretty ruthless, especially in the first two. My favorite example of this is his first murder attempt on Percy. He unleashes a venomous scorpion on him, telling him the time he has left to live with the iconic line, “60 seconds, Percy” before calmly walking away. Percy was only 12 years old. It’s so cold but also so awesome to witness. Not including his sympathetic backstory until the fifth book was really cool because it allows you to create a villainous idea of him in your head only to realize that he’s not so black-and-white. The full portrait of his character isn’t fully painted until right before the story nears its climax. In the show, however, they have removed his ruthlessness and show us him questioning the morality of what he’s doing early on.
Why The Changes Could be Bad:
Luke is a direct character foil to Percy. As the show very literally (and annoyingly) pointed out, Luke is one side of the same coin as Percy. Luke is what Percy could have been if he had grown up the way Luke did. They have more similarities than either wants to admit, one of these being that both of them have a mean streak and will f*ck you up if you piss them off. However, Percy has the compassion to balance this out and Luke does not. This is a key difference between them.
Also, there’s Luke’s relationship with Annabeth, which I personally think is abusive in nature in the books. He gains her trust only to betray her over and over, he tries to murder her by attempting to feed her and Percy to dracaenae twice in the second book (which people seem to conveniently forget about), he tricks her into holding up the sky, all the while feeding her enough sympathetic words to keep her on the hook, using her faith in him against her, and later confessing his love for her when she was 16 and he was 23 (they met when she was seven and he was 14). Gross.
The books discuss much darker topics than the show, one of them being abuse. The show has shied away from this in the past. In the books, Sally’s husband, Gabe, is revealed to be emotionally and physically abusive. This makes the fact that she murders him using Medusa’s head morally justifiable. In the show, however, he’s just vaguely annoying and rude, but definitely not deserving of being killed off. I understand that this is a kid’s story so it’s tempting to exclude darker topics like this. However, I think that it’s important that kids can recognize what behavior is abusive, whether it’s against them or the people around them, so that they can realize that it is not normal and seek help. In later books, characters view Luke through rose-colored glasses, but if he was treated as the villain that his actions proved him to be, then maybe kids who have experienced similar manipulation will realize what’s happening and do something about it. This is especially important since Luke’s mistreatment of Annabeth is far less obvious and black-and-white than Gabe’s toward Sally.
On a lighter note, I also just think that Luke’s ruthlessness makes him a very entertaining antagonist.
Why The Changes Could be Good:
Making Luke have more morals off the bat makes him a more complex character. It also makes his eventual status as a tragic hero much more believable. I never bought it in the books and I still don’t get why he’s so beloved both within the books and the fandom (especially when compared to Calypso, but that’s whole other possible article). I sympathize with his backstory, but it doesn’t make up for his actions. With Show Luke, on the other hand, I can understand why people would want to join him. Hell, he lowkey has me convinced.
He makes good points about why the gods are problematic and he tries to avoid half-blood casualties as much as possible, and even wants equality amongst mythical creatures instead of monsters and half-bloods senselessly slaughtering each other. The books have examples of “good” monsters, which proves that constantly hunting them indiscriminately is not necessarily the right thing to do. This addition is really interesting and I hope they continue developing it as the show goes on. Villainous Luke is entertaining, but Reasonable Luke is interesting and makes more sense for future events. And his concern for Annabeth in The Titan’s Curse won’t feel so out of nowhere like it did in the books since he hasn’t tried to kill her (at least not yet), even saving her life in Episode 6, showing that he still loves her like his little sister despite them being on different sides of the war. I hope they keep their relationship platonic this time.
Okay, now time for the bad stuff. There’s a lot of it, unfortunately.
What Season Two Got Wrong
Repeated Mistakes From Season One
Two major problems from the first season were that there was too much telling and not enough showing, and that the characters either just know things or figure them out way too quickly. These issues are prominent again in Season Two. To be fair, Percy knows less and Annabeth is still a Greek Mythology Encyclopedia, which is how it is supposed to be and I appreciate that they made this change. Still, every time Percy says the words “I know your story” or “My mom told me about you,” I want to throw myself into Tartarus. And he says them way, way too much. And, like I said last time, it makes no sense for Sally to teach him all these Greek myths because she wanted to shelter him from the mythological world as long as possible, but whatever.
Also, like last time, there is just so much talking. There is a little more action, but not much. Even the big battle scene at the end was underwhelming and too short to feel epic. It seems like the show is indecisive about whether it wants to commit to showing blood or not. We see Percy get his face all bloodied after being absolutely bodied by Luke (although his injuries were not severe enough to make sense after getting punched directly in the face like 15 times), but Annabeth gets shot with an arrow and Katie Gardener gets stabbed in the stomach, but somehow neither of them seem to be bleeding. Also, we get Katie Gardener but not Silena Beauregard? Who actually ends up being important? No hate to Katie, but three seasons in is pretty late to introduce Silena, a character that’s involved in a huge emotional reveal. If they even introduce her next season. Or at all.
Despite there being a little more action, there is still way too much talking. I swear to the gods, all they do is talk. And talk. And talk. And then talk some more because there hasn’t been an exposition dump in fifteen seconds and that just won’t do. And when they blabber on like this, they’re usually overexplaining something or providing background info with unnecessarily long dialogue. It’s exhausting. I’ve heard about execs in the entertainment industry encouraging writers to over-explain with the expectation that audiences are scrolling on their phones, or “second screen viewing,” and I would not be surprised if the PJO writers are doing this.
The Percabeth Problem
This was something I noticed in Season 1 as well, but forgot to include in my last article. They are pushing Percabeth super, super hard in the show. I understand why: Percabeth is a beloved ship among fans and the writers/producers know that people will keep watching and make TikTok edits that promote the show (no shade, I live for those edits) if they write Percabeth content into the script. But the thing about Percabeth that makes it so great is that it is a slow-burn romance that doesn’t come to fruition until the fifth book, Four years after they meet. If you want authentic Percabeth that actually works where they build up romantic chemistry instead of it being forced early on, then you have to be patient. I don’t even buy that Percy and Annabeth like each other as people in the show, much less romantically. They need a solid platonic foundation first, and right now that foundation is non-existent. Let me remind you as well that these characters are children, 12 in Season One and then 13 in Season Two. It’s weird to ship children together. You can argue that it’s normal for child fans to do this, but I am willing to bet that the majority of people who are shipping them this early on are older fans. Don’t get me wrong, I love Percabeth. I usually hate straight romance in the stuff I watch/read, finding it an annoying distraction from the plot, but I think they’re relationship is super compelling and cute. I just get the sense that being fed this much Percabeth in the show this early on will make the evolution of their relationship far less satisfying and also less convincing.
Weird Pacing
Please, please, please, give this show more episodes per season. Confining it to only eight episodes causes them to skip around plot points, requiring annoying exposition dumps, and creating a really odd pacing. It feels like when your video glitches so that it randomly fast forwards, then goes back to normal, then fast forwards, and so on. It also causes stuff from the books to either be entirely taken out or quickly glossed over, which in turn makes the episode titles (chapter titles from the books) make no sense. Like in the beginning of the second book, Percy and Tyson get attacked in their school gym during a dodgeball game by the Laistrygonians who start using fire balls as dodgeballs, hence why the chapter is named “I Play Dodgeball With Cannibals.” In the show, they briefly encounter the giants at camp who throw a few fire balls then get killed quickly. The title doesn’t make much sense here. The scene from the book may not have been important to the plot, but it was fun. Including more scenes like it will help lift the serious tone of the show, which comes off as taking itself way too seriously. Again, if the show was given more episodes per season, then maybe we could get more fun scenes like this that were axed in adaptation.
Who The Hell is Alison Simms?
Alison Simms is a character exclusive to the show who was introduced this season as a daughter of Apollo who was a camper at Camp Half-Blood before she joined Kronos. She seems to have taken Luke’s tendency for violence from him and is much more loyal to Kronos than he is, possibly to make him look more sympathetic by comparison. No hate to the actress who plays Ally, I just don’t think her introduction was necessary. There was a significant amount of screen time dedicated to her that I feel could have been used more productively, like establishing Percy and Annabeth’s friendship. There’s also a part of the show where she plans to attack Luke for betraying Kronos but then that just doesn’t happen? Maybe it’s because Kronos gave him a Vampire-Diaries-witch-style headache and that was deemed enough to keep him in line. I could not take that scene seriously lol.
Random Changes
I’m not a book purist by any means. I established before that I actually prefer some of the changes made in the show. This season, though, there are so many changes that just leave me wondering why they were made in the first place because they don’t seem to add anything.
I’m not going to list all of the changes because there are just so many, a lot of them small but still seemingly unnecessary and leave me scratching my head as to why they were included. One example I will include is the whole drama with Clarisse choosing Annabeth for her quest but then turning down Percy, just for Percy and Annabeth to set off on their own anyway. This was a weird and pointless choice made to replace the tension they had in the book from Percy’s frustration at being Tyson’s brother while still defending him to Annabeth, who had previous trauma with cyclops after being attacked by one when she was little. The conflict in the book is far more engaging and hints at something we later learn about Annabeth’s past and why she still sees good in Luke despite his wrongdoings. In the show, it just seems like a petty disagreement caused by Annabeth hiding a secret prophecy that gets revealed an episode later anyway so their little tiff didn’t even matter. There are many changes like this that just make the show feel shallow compared to the books.
Polyphemus
They made Polyphemus an evil genius and I do not understand why. Did they want to give him more agency and not portray him as the oaf from the book in some sort of Circe/Medusa treatment? He’s not exactly a misunderstood villain in Greek mythology the same way they could be argued to be. Should Odysseus have broken into his home and eaten his food? No. But I would argue that slaughtering and eating Odysseus’s men in response was an overreaction. And I’m pretty sure he would have just done that anyway.
Whatever the reason, I hate this change. Grover’s plan to pretend to be his bride in the books is funny but also clever and he successfully tricks Polyphemus. In the show, Polyphemus sees through the act, which just makes Grover look silly for doing all that for nothing. Grover tricking an ancient Cyclops was impressive, but the ancient cyclops tricking a young satyr is just uninteresting. It also gives Polyphemus the chance to give us a super boring monologue about how he knew all along and how he UNO-reversed Grover and how he’s gonna set a trap and blah blah blah boring boring boring. Because we didn’t have enough talking already. They also didn’t stab his eye out (again) which would have been a cool action sequence, but again the show seems pretty scared of violence for a series whose overarching story is supposed to be about a war. The show made it so boring to follow the Polyphemus/Grover arc. The only interesting thing to come out of it was Percy giving up the fleece to save Annabeth, or it would have been an interesting demonstration of his fatal flaw if we hadn’t already been beaten over the head with it.
Who is Percy Jackson Anyway?
Percy is unrecognizable in the show. He seems a bit more like himself this season, though. I especially love when Kronos was reciting the prophecy to him and Percy cuts him off, grabs the fleece, and just dips. It was a very Percy thing for him to do, more of that please. However, I now realize that if you just watch the show and forget the books, you don’t really get a sense of who the characters are as people. You might get told a few traits over and over, but you rarely get opportunities to construct them in their head both through their dialogue and their actions. The exception to this being Percy’s “fatal flaw” of him saving his friends no matter the cost. This goes to the other extreme where it’s all he does. Over. And Over. And Over. Writers, I promise you we understand that he is like this. We don’t need to see him do it a million times and also have every other character verbalize it. Besides this and that he’s snarky, we really don’t know anything else about Percy. And all we know about Annabeth is that she’s smart and she cares about Luke, Thalia, and allegedly Percy but we don’t see them enjoying each other’s company very much. They seem like they really don’t like each other, actually. I really feel like we don’t know Show Annabeth at all, and I don’t think the writers do either besides as Percy’s love interest, which is a shame because Leah Sava Jeffries could shine in this role if they just gave her decent material to work with.
ZEUS KILLED THALIA????
In the books, Thalia nearly died fighting off the Furies so that Annabeth and Luke could make it safely to camp. Zeus then turned her into a tree just before she died so that she could live on protecting the kids at Camp Half-Blood by creating a magical barrier that kept out monsters. In the show, this is revealed to be the cover story Zeus made up so that no one would know that he turned his own daughter into a tree when she said she wouldn’t fight his war. HELLO??
I will say this is a very Zeus thing for him to do, but it just gives us another reason to side with the antagonists. We’re supposed to be on the side of the gods, but the show keeps giving us reasons not to be. The books do a good job at showing that the gods are messed up, which creates just enough moral ambiguity for the reader to question which side is the “right” side. However, they also show that however bad the gods are, the titans are worse. Right now in the show, it seems like the main characters are blindly defending the gods for no good reason. And this additional detail is not helping. I’m going to give the writers the benefit of the doubt here and say that maybe they’re doing this on purpose and will later show us how much worse the titans are? But I’m not holding my breath on that.
Chris Rodriguez
This one is just a personal grievance. The writers mean to tell me that Clarisse La “Lesbian” Rue is attracted to men. And not only that, but that she had a crush on this mediocre, boring, personality-less, rude ass guy who betrays camp and basically calls her a friendless loser in the last episode…. are you sh*tting me? He can get lost in the labyrinth and lose his mind for all I care, just get this hetero bullsh*t off my dam screen (yes, I spelled that correctly, IFYKY). They had no chemistry in the books, and they still have no chemistry in the show. I know it’s just fanon that she’s gay but you cannot convince me that she likes guys. There is actually no way in Hades. I really hope that they at least make her queer later on. If they don’t, it would be such a missed opportunity for representation purposes and as a way to appeal to fans outside of pushing Percabeth.
Season Three
Disney+ just released a sneak peak of Season Three containing a Percabeth scene (which doesn’t feel earned because their friendship hasn’t been built up properly). In the sneak peak, it was announced that Season 3 will come out this year. I really was not expecting this quick of a turn-around. I need more time to recover my will to watch this show, Disney. They really do hate me (as I mentioned in another article).
At first, I told myself that I would watch every season of this show even if they were all bad because the cast is great and the small glimpses of good would be worth it. Now, after two seasons of this, and reading later books in the Percy Jackson Literary Universe with similar faults, I feel incredibly fatigued.
Will I still watch the next season? …I mean, yeah, probably. And Battle of The Labyrinth is my favorite book in the series so I have to watch that season, even if it kills me. And by that point I might as well finish the show. And you’re probably going to have to hear me complain about it again. By the time the next seasons come out, though, who knows if there will be anything new to say or if it’ll be the same mistakes over and over again.
I was genuinely rooting for this season to be good. I really was. In the words of Tyra Banks, “I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you.”
Anyways, check out The Lighting Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical because it’s really good and it’s usually floating around YouTube somewhere, or if you prefer to listen to the Cast Album, it’s on streaming.