The following review contains spoilers for the entire first season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Looking at the entirety of Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ first season, it’s easy to see the care that was put into its plotting and execution. There’s an obvious effort to keep this second attempt at a screen adaptation of Rick Riordan’s YA novels true to its source material – and, in the process, create a streaming series that could continue beyond Percy Jackson’s (Walker Scobell) initial adventure among the gods and monsters of Greek mythology. It’s an energy that runs through every aspect of season 1, even when the execution is lacking. And most of the time it isn’t.
Much of the love can be seen in the production value. For a Disney+ project, Percy Jackson and the Olympians often punches above its weight class, both visually and sonically. The quality may vary from episode to episode, but overall it’s a really good looking piece of television with an incredible score from Bear McCreary (The Walking Dead, God of War Ragnarök), which is refreshing in an era when TV production is so rampant and budgets are spread so thin that show’s often can’t look or sound good.
Smart directing can improve the appearance of CGI, and that’s often the case here. Such visual effects are used strategically; Grover’s (Aryan Simhadri) satyr legs represent their only week-in, week-out requirement. The more challenging, immersive environments like Hades and Olympus are unevenly rendered on Disney’s Volume stage, but elements like the Minotaur, Medusa, and Waterworld mix CGI and practical effects cleanly. This approach elevates Percy Jackson in a way other shows could learn from.
Riordan’s novels are steeped in family and friendship, and without the right casting, all of that could’ve been lost. Thankfully, almost every member of the cast is pitch-perfect for their role. From the main three of Percy, Grover, and Annabeth (Leah Jeffries) all the way down to the fan-favorite (or at least my favorite) Gabe (Timm Sharp), each character feels lifted directly from the pages of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. They’re embodied in a way that outweighs any of the shortcomings in the younger cast members’ performances or the dialogue.
Writing is the series’ Achilles heel. The dialogue is often overly expositional, stilted, and unnatural, leading to unconvincing line readings. It’s a problem that plagues plot-heavy projects (and specifically literary adaptations) that have a lot of ground to cover and limited time to cover it, and Percy Jackson and the Olympians is no exception. Even with the benefit of a longer runtime, trying to fit all of a book’s finer details into a season of TV can leave things feeling overstuffed. That’s felt in Percy Jackson’s pacing as well, with episodes like “I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom” and “We Take a Zebra to Vegas” squeezing longer Lightning Thief passages into a single episode.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians is strongest when it focuses on the familial and fraternal elements of its story, and lets its young actors play young. There are some truly emotionally adept moments throughout the first season that highlight the love between mothers and sons, and discuss parenting in a way that’s both simple enough for young viewers to grasp and deep enough to satisfy parents and other adult viewers. It’s fun for the whole family! I’m excited for the series to potentially continue and tell more stories in this mythical world. It just needs to do so before Scobell, Simhadri, and Jeffries age out of their characters.
