Full spoilers below for Season 2, Episodes 1 (I Play Dodgeball with Cannibals) & 2 (Demon Pigeons Attack) of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
The first thing you notice about Season 2 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians is how much the kids have grown. In the two years since Season 1 streamed on Disney+, series leads Walker Scobell, Leah Sava Jeffries, and Aryan Simhadri have gotten taller, yes, but also matured substantially in both their acting ability and on-screen presence. It’s indicative of the show as a whole, which was fun and whimsical during its first go-round but now exhibits more depth, higher stakes, and a lingering darkness that permeates each episode.
The show is still a ton of fun, but it’s morphed into something that parents might just want to watch with their kids instead of turning it on for them and walking away.
For those unfamiliar, the series follows titular character Percy, a young demigod (his mom is human! His dad is Poseidon, god of the sea!) and his best friends Annabeth and Grover (a satyr) as they navigate a world full of challenges both mythical (creatures, artifacts, and quests galore) and worldly (hormones, drama, and feelings galore). Much of their time is spent at Camp Half-Blood, a summer camp for the myriad human children of Greek gods like Athena, Ares, Zeus, and Poseidon.
Season 1, which was based on Rick Riordan’s bestselling novel The Lightning Thief, saw Percy learning about his true nature and undergoing a quest to return Zeus’s Master Bolt to Mount Olympus (also known as the Empire State Building in the world of the series) in order to avert a war. Season 2 adapts Riordan’s The Sea of Monsters, which has Percy and his friends traveling to the Bermuda Triangle in search of a golden fleece to help protect their camp from impending doom.
As with Season 1, the acting is stellar across the board, particularly among the young leads. Scobell once again shines as Percy, imbuing the principal character with a sense of quiet determination occasionally painted by intense vulnerability. Jeffries plays Annabeth, Percy’s friend-slash-crush, with such strength and loyalty that you have to wonder if she ever had to defend Scobell in a fight. Simhadri, whose Grover is unfortunately separated from the others due to his being captured by Polyhemus while on a quest to find god / fellow satyr Pan, continues to bring a sense of wonder and enthusiasm whenever he shows up on screen.
Season 2 also brings new faces and characters galore. The always-hilarious Timothy Simons (Veep, Nobody Wants This) joins the cast as new Camp Activities Director Tantalus. A scene-stealing Daniel Diemer plays Tyson, Percy’s cyclops half-brother. Sandra Bernhard, Kristen Schaal, and Margaret Cho cameo in the season’s first episode as The Grey Sisters, who ferry the kids to camp in a taxi. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jason Mantzoukas return as Hermes and Dionysus (Mr. D.) respectively, adding some familiar faces to the all-around knockout cast.
Along with the acting, the action, production design, and visual effects for Season 2 are ramped up to 11. Numerous monsters try to invade the camp. A villain flies into the sky on a black pegasus. A prominent character (Tyson) has only one huge, blinking, emotive eye every time he’s on screen. Episode 2’s chariot race (a typical camp activity in the world of Percy Jackson) is a particularly impressive set piece, with loads of action, monsters, and age-appropriate violence.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians is not high art. It’s not even prestige TV. The pacing of the show feels plodding at times and complex, mythology-heavy plot points are often clumsily blown through with a few lines of exposition. But this is not a show trying to be something more than it is. After a few middling attempts to bring the world of Percy Jackson to the big screen, the stories seem to have found their footing as a television series, which is probably the best possible format for an adaptation of Riordan’s novels (whose world has now expanded to games and beyond).
The world here is rich, both visually and story-wise, and the series consistently pulls off the trick of getting its (mostly younger) audience to learn something (in this case, Greek mythology) while remaining delightfully compelling and entertaining throughout. If you’re looking for a dark, moody, and intellectually challenging binge, look elsewhere. But if you want something for the whole family to dive into during your next session of joint family screentime, you could do a lot worse than Percy Jackson.
Season 2, Episodes 1 and 2 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians are streaming now on Disney+. New episodes premiere each Wednesday.
