Category: Books

Season two of Percy Jackson on Disney+ (The Sea ofMonsters) has been confirmed! 🥳 Read more over at The Mary Sue.

8 short episodes later, we’ve reached the end of the line for the first season of Percy Jackson on Disney+. While I loved it, both how it faithfully rendered the books but also evolved them in great ways, I do agree with El Kuiper on The Mary Sue that it demonstrates how limiting current streaming-season lengths are: 

Disney+’s Percy Jackson series boasts a fantastic cast, impressive special effects, and an undeniably gripping emotional narrative. As a long-time fan of Riordan’s books, this series has been a dream come true.

And yet, the finale made it abundantly clear that Percy Jackson, like so many of its peers, has been restricted by its meager episode count. Eight episodes of varying length may seem like a lot to tell this story, but as is so succinctly pointed out in the Percy Jackson making-of documentary that is now available on Disney+, the narrative takes this heroic trio from one end of the U.S. to the other, including a trip down to the Underworld and a brief sojourn to the top of the Empire State building. There is a lot of ground to cover.

As always, ***Spoilers ahead***

Let’s start with the confusing as that’s how the episode opened. Apparently the pearls don’t just return them to the Pacific Ocean off Los Angeles (where they’d entered the Underworld), but to the Atlantic off Montauk beach, where Percy and his mother had stayed in a cabin in the opening episode. They return to the cabin where they heard all flights are grounded. This is a big change from the books, where Percy & Co. actually dare to take a flight home from LA. I guess the audience is supposed to get it from recognizing the cabin from the first episode, but it took me (an adult, observant viewer) quite a bit of time to get it. At first, I just thought they’d glossed over the flights home. I was confused. Then it clicked when later in the episode when he returned to the cabin to look for his mother. But if they were going to do this to help with the compacting of the series, some verbal utterings by the heroes would have helped. Like having Percy say, when he spotted the cabin, “Hey, that’s the cabin Mom and I stayed at. We’re back on Montauk/in NY.” He does hear a mysterious whispering, seemingly from his mother, that draws him to the cabin and calls for her when he enters, but really, it was just confusing at the time.

The good: I really like how they handled Luke. Unlike in the book (where his anger is in part directed at Percy and he tries to kill him outright), he tries to recruit him to Kronos’ side. He declares his friendship. Thus the downplaying of the shoe-betrayal throughout the episodes makes more sense. And I like the more sympathetic Luke. Annabeth observes it all with her invisibility cap and when she reveals herself, we see Luke’s love for her (even if as a sister) which better sets up the much, much later (last book) turning to her as a last resort of fleeing Kronos and the gods. 

Both Percy and Annabeth end up leaving camp early (which is weird – and no bead ceremony) and Grover heads off on his searcher’s quest, indicating he is off to the seas.  Which brings us to the bad: the stupid plug for Walt Disney World. The series has decided to make the smartest human character in the book horribly naive about the world at large and especially pop-culture. Annabeth tells Percy that her father is taking her to Walt Disney World, which she says sounds like Water World only less determined to kill you. Percy laughs and Annabeth asks if she missed something and Percy tells her to just go be a kid, leaving me thinking “Thanks for the advertisement, Disney Channel.”

A few other notes:

The scenes of Percy reunited with his mom were great. The blue pancakes with blueberries were fun, as was Sally telling Percy not to refer to Kronos as granddad. But that brings us back to Stinky Gabe – or rather doesn’t in the episode. Gabe is saved for a mid-credits scene.

I get why they down play this subplot. Having Sally marry a man she despises to help Percy was always a bit uncomfortable. Having her suffer domestic violence was also uncomfortable, especially in a middle grade fiction book. Having her not only kill Gabe in the book, but also sell his petrified corpse as a statue to fund her return to school had its discomforts.

But in the Disney+ series, she is a woman who not only doesn’t need saving, but doesn’t even need to save herself. She is never the victim of Gabe. His obnoxious, but she can quickly put him in his place. I had wondered when they first changed their relationship what they’d do with the Medusa-head killing of him, but as the episode drew to a close, I felt like he didn’t even exist, like an oversight. Until the mid-credits scene, when Gabe kills himself by opening mail addressed to Percy (the Medusa head, returned to sender by the gods). No explanation of what’s done with his petrified corpse.

But this is problematic for the prophecy Percy got. He’s supposed to “fail to save what matters most in the end,” because he recognizes that Sally needs to make the choice to save herself. But there’s no saving of Sally because she doesn’t need to be saved. So what does that mean for the prophecy (explored more here at the Mary Sue)?

The other thing that doesn’t get any play is the great prophecy. Unlike the book, Percy & Co. missed the deadline for getting the bolt back to Zeus. This sets up a very different scene on Mt. Olympus and gives Poseidon an even better chance to play the good god protecting him (by surrendering to Zeus to end a war that was avoided in the books when they make it back by the deadline). But without the great prophecy mentioned, we lack the sense of why Zeus might want to kill a “forbidden child” of the Big Three.

I’ve got to pause here for a shout out. Lance Reddick was fabulous as Zeus. He brought great auctoritas to the role, a perfect King of the Gods (more than the character in the book, where Zeus at times has a bit of a buffoonish aspect).  It’s heartbreaking that we won’t get to see more of this excellent actor’s work after his passing this past March. The whole episode is dedicated to his memory.💔

Back to the Great Prophecy and “Forbidden Children” of the Big Three: Hades, when we met him in the previous episode, had zero resentment over Percy being a forbidden child and both Zeus and Poseidon breaking their oaths after trying to kill his own already existing children (Bianca and Nico) and killing their beloved mother in the attempt. Hades even offers Percy sanctuary when he learns Kronos is back and decides to try and keep the master bolt. 

The only hint of the Great Prophecy is when Kronos, in Percy’s final dream, says, “You are the key to my rise.” Sally asks Percy about his dream, but he changes the subject and then it’s just gone. They repressed that foreshadowing for the future books/episodes.  

I certainly hope that we get more seasons/episodes of the other books. Overall, despite the compacting of material, it was very well done. But season 2 is not yet confirmed (that I’ve seen). 

At last we reach the Underworld. ***Major Spoilers Ahead*** because the episode sort of peeved me. I feel as grouchy as a three-headed guard dog, although the episode definitely had its pluses as well.

Two big things that leap out at me are the flying shoes and the pearls.

First the shoes. Perhaps I’ve overlooked something, but as far as I remember (or can tell by glancing back through critical moments of the episodes) Luke gave Percy the shoes and then that was it for them. When Percy learns about the dangers of him taking to the air (the perfect moment to hand them over to Grover to use – and the moment when he did so in the book), nothing arises (so to speak) about the flying shoes. He never, as far as I can tell, gives them to Grover in the Disney+ series. Grover – before this episode – has never used them, even in places where he did in the book (which worked well as establishing them with Grover and underscoring Luke’s betrayal). But now that they are needed for the major plot point of that betrayal, Grover uses them early in the episode as the only groundwork for the later crucial scene. I assume something in an earlier episode that would have set this up hit the cutting room floor, but still it feels sloppy to me. 

Speaking of Grover and sloppy (or should I say slobbery), Percy distributes the pearls right away in the episode and Grover loses his when briefly eaten by Cerberus (or at least caught in his mouth before emerging covered in slobber). Not Grover’s fault, as Percy assures him when he hands over another pearl to Grover, but still I hated they made Grover the heavy for Percy’s later mom-dilemma. Given how they’ve set up the uncaringness of the gods, this felt at first unnecessary. But then Poseidon showed up in the episode (more on that below). Nevertheless, thus the problem of the fourth pearl was solved. 

So if the stomach acids of Cerberus dissolve the pearl, will he find himself suddenly in the ocean? 

I loved the grove of Asphodel and the soul-trees of regret (very Vergilian Field of Mourning with its myrtle grove), but was sorry to have Annabeth pulled out of the Underground before the big action at Tartarus got going. Actually, I hated it. Having her there for the pit and a witness for what is really going on felt important. Plus she is a fun and central character. And nothing arose that would benefit from her absence. Why?? I’m sort of miffed. 

And having Percy find the master bolt not in the palace of Hades also cut out some great moments from the books when Hades knows it’s there and Percy doesn’t. But in this episode Hades doesn’t want the bolt (at least not until he hears about Kronos and feels the need for a defense).

On the other hand, I love Hades the character in this episode. Very different than in the books, but as with Ares, a real upgrade in personality. And I’ve never liked the whole Hades must be unhappy with his lot bit (and thinking in the book that he wants a war to increase his kingdom never made any sense – 100% of the mortal population will end up down there with or without war). I like a Hades who likes his kingdom. The H gods (Hermes, Hephaestus, and Hades) are really the best of the lot in this series in terms of humaneness. 

Poseidon also gets a H for human-feeling.  The whole flashbacks to Sally taking Percy to a boarding school (fabulous job by Azriel Dalman as young Percy) set up a drawing in of Poseidon as a good guy (good god). How Sally knows so much about the gods’ family is still a question.