For nearly two decades, fans of the “Percy Jackson” book series have been waiting in anticipation for a good screen adaptation. Sure, there were the two movies that were released in the 2010s, but they were poorly received. When the show was announced back in 2020, fans of Rick Riordan’s series went wild. “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” premiered in Dec. 2023 on Disney+.
Season one of the show goes along with the first book in the series, “The Lighting Thief.” After Percy is kicked out of his sixth school in six years and finds out that he’s a demigod, he manages to make it to Camp Halfblood. He struggles to get used to the new world around him, especially when he is accused of stealing Zeus’s lightning bolt. He is then forced to embark on a quest to not only find the bolt but to get his mother back.
The changes that the show decides to make are refreshing. An example of this is how they manage to flesh out the character of Medusa. In the book, she’s just a monster. In the show, however, they go with a more sympathetic approach and empower her as a victim. She is the catalyst for one of the conflicts that Percy has to face on his journey. He has to decide to either accept her help to find his mother and throw his friends under the bus, or defeat her and continue with his quest. The involvement of the gods was really great. Alongside Aries, the trio encounters Hephestaus and Hermes on the journey, along with interventions from Poseidon and Athena.
One issue with the series is the pacing issues. Some plotlines from the book were either skipped over, unnecessarily elongated, or skimmed through. For example, “The Lotus Casino” gets an entire episode whereas it only lasts eight pages in the book. On the other hand, Crusty’s Water Bed Palace only gets a short scene that completely contradicts the scene in the book. In the show, Percy already knows who Crusty is, and he manages to trick the monster with Annabeth’s help. In the book, the trio is on the run from a group of street kids and escapes into his store. It isn’t until after Grover and Annabeth are trapped that Percy realizes who Crusty is and manages to defeat him on his own.
With all of these in mind, the series is an exponential upgrade from the aforementioned movies. From the casting to the actual story, the show does a much better job of adapting the series. This is mainly chalked up to the eight-episode format that they are given compared to the two hours that the movie gets, but it’s also because it’s evident that the people working on the show are more passionate about the series than the people who worked on the film. The sheer effort put into the casting of the characters and the set designs alone shined brightly.
