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Percy Jackson and the Olympians Review

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is fantasy television series created by Rick Riordan and starring Walker Scobell. The first season of eight episodes premiered on Disney+ in 2023.

The idea to adapt the entire book series in television form with each season adapting one book is a sound one. I am all up for it as we never saw the entire series on screen due to the second movie flopping and effectively ending that franchise. But the problem here is that I actually quite liked that first movie, so I wasn’t in desperate need to see this first season that ended up not being that much better in comparison.

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My main issue with this first season is its apparent lack of energy or enthusiasm in its overall approach and execution. This is a fantasy story for God’s sake, so it needs to feel epic and exciting, but it simply did not feel like that at any point in time unfortunately. Yes, the dialogue-heavy approach favoring characterization more than story worked to a degree as it obviously led to well developed characters, but the dialogue wasn’t sophisticated enough to warrant that approach that also significantly impacted its pacing that was way too slow with most episodes failing to garner momentum.

The cast is excellent. For once, we get children in these roles, which was fantastic. Walker Scobell was initially not particularly memorable, but he grew on me as the season progressed. He’s a pretty good Percy for now and quite similar to the one that was described in the book that this season adapts. Annabeth was obviously racebent, but Leah Sava Jeffries still ended up being my favorite child actor of the bunch as she was excellent.

The season focused extensively on their friendship, which resulted in many heartwarming scenes between the two. Aryan Simhadri as Grover is also quite likable and effective. The older actors fared worse in my opinion as some are excellent with Jason Mantzoukas and Megan Mullally being particularly well cast, but others were disappointing with Jay Duplass being horribly miscast as Hades and Adam Copeland being quite weak as Eres with his acting skills lacking.

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Percy Jackson and the Olympians has strong visual effects. They are not the best that television has to offer now, but they are still polished and quite good. The overall score, cinematography and production design are also fine and the show’s action scenes are very well executed, but also too short in a season that favored way too much dialogue instead of spectacle.