PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS is off to a great start, but its biggest weakness is also its greatest strength – loyalty to its source material. I remember reading and chatting about the series with my friends as it was coming out. We looked up to Percy, Annabeth, Luke, Thalia, and maybe even Grover. They were the cool older kids. Of course, at the time, I was nine years old, and Percy was twelve.
Now, I’m triple the age I was when I first read the series and Percy is still twelve – and it shows; it’s just not really as fun watching a show about preteens when you’re not a preteen. That being said, PERCY JACKSON is such a faithful adaptation that it whisks me back to reading the series for the first time. So many moments of the first half of this season feel directly plucked out of my memory.
Yet nostalgia can only take a show so far. The first season seems to solely be an adaption of the first novel, THE LIGHTNING THIEF, a story that’s essentially a monster-killing road trip and an introduction to the world of the modern Greek gods. While the story beats are all there, unfortunately, the fights are a little too tame, the road-tripping is abbreviated, and the world-building is watered-down (no pun intended).
Any oracle would tell you these three things: the show will get better over time, Aryan Simhadri, who plays Grover, will be a star, and this series will have a more promising future than Fox’s film adaptations.
The first four episodes of PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS are available to stream on Disney+.