“Percy Jackson and the Olympians” is renewed for season two: A look at the first season and the response from fans (2024)

*Spoiler warning: This post might feature spoilers for “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” season one

On Feb. 7, the TV show “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” which is adapted from Rick Riordan’s book series “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” got renewed for its second season. Starring Walker Scobell as Percy Jackson, Leah Jeffries as Annabeth Chase, and Aryan Simhadri as Grover Underwood, the next season will follow the events of the second book of the series, “The Sea of Monsters.”

The author of the book series Rick Riordan is an executive producer on the TV series, greatly contrasting the role he played in the 20th Century Fox Percy Jackson movies in 2010 and 2013 which he did not even watch because of the creative liberties they took with the story. He even took to Twitter before the sixth episode, titled “We Took a Zebra to Vegas,” to call out the movies.

Riordan was involved in the casting of the show. Riordan wrote on his website “I was looking for the best actors to inhabit and bring to life the personalities of these characters, and that physical appearance was secondary for me.”

Thus, in order to increase representation on the screen and to adhere to Disney’s company policy on nondiscrimination, the casted actors do not necessarily have the same outward appearances as of the characters originally written in 2005, but instead embody the personality of the character.

Despite Riordan disliking the movies for being different from the book, the TV show featured changes from the original source material that were approved by Riordan.

Changes included the Nereid giving Percy four pearls from Poseidon instead of three, Grover not going to the amusem*nt park to find Ares’ shield with the rest of the trio, and the absence of the scorpion during Luke’s betrayal in the last episode. The changes were received with mixed reviews from book fans on social media.

Some critics of the show believed that the show was prone to showing not telling and exposition dumping.

For example, after the airing of the episode “We Find Out the Truth, Sort of,” many people on social media were negatively critiquing the scene where Percy called out the god Procrustes for using the water beds to trap and kill his customers, instead of showing the scene in the book where Annabeth and Grover get trapped on the water beds, and Percy has to save them.

They felt like Percy, Annabeth, and Grover were not falling for the traps, which was killing the suspense created in the book.

However, Rick came onto social media to address some of the changes and his reasoning

Contrastingly, some people felt that the changes were better for the characterization and overall plot of the narrative.

While the release date of season two has not been announced, fans on social media are already speculating about who will be cast as the new characters Tyson and Thalia Grace and whether the opening scene will feature Grover in a wedding dress.