Taking A Look At Everything Percy Jackson In Anticipation Of The New Series
This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s senior fall editorial intern Maggie Lardie. Find her on Instagram at @maggielardie. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
If you’ve been paying attention to the internet lately (or if you’re a Zillennial,) you’ve probably come across the Percy Jackson trailer that was released earlier this week. The trailer is the product of years of anticipation from fans, who grew up reading the books and inevitably loving all things Greek mythology because of them. The Disney+ series is set to come out December 20th, much to the internet’s anticipation. The Percy Jackson franchise has some questionable history with Hollywood already, leaving many fans apprehensive about how the television show will do in adapting the story they love. If you grew up as a Percy Jackson fan and are interested in learning more about the show, grab something blue to eat and come back! We’re diving into some Percy Jackson show fan theories.
The Books
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief was published in 2005 by Rick Riordan and was a very strong start to the series. A new book was published every year following, ending in 2009 with The Last Olympian. If you think Riordan stopped there, you’d be incorrect. In 2010, Riordan began publishing Percy Jackson’s spinoff series, starting with The Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero. Four years (and four books) later brought us to The Blood of Olympus, the concluding installment in the series. Riordan is the author of many other children’s books, most of which have mythology at their center. The Percy Jackson series is still the most popular by far, however, and has inspired many godly parent quizzes, a musical and even a real life Camp Half-Blood that’s located in Austin, Texas.
The Films
Now that we got the stats out of the way, let’s talk plot in terms of The Lightning Thief. In the novel, twelve year old Percy Jackson learns he’s a demigod. This leads him to discover the Greek gods are real and there’s a camp for other young demigods. To make things short, Percy and his friends go on a cross-country quest to retrieve Zeus’s missing lightning bolt before the summer solstice in an effort to stop a war between the gods. Quite a few mythological figures try to stop Percy’s quest, including (but not limited to) Medusa, Echidna and even the god Ares. The kids are also responsible for proving Percy’s innocence, as Zeus believes that Percy is the lightning thief.
The 2010 film made a couple changes, to say the least. In the movie, sixteen year old Percy Jackson has the same discovery, but goes on a very different quest. Many essential characters, plot points and monsters were scrapped by Hollywood in an effort to make the film more generally enticing. It was clear the studio failed to consider how aging up the main characters and scrapping the accompanying ones would be counterproductive to any long-term franchise goal they had in mind. The second film, The Sea of Monsters, strayed even further from its origin material and earned itself some very poor ratings. The bad reviews prevented the studio from continuing the franchise and they were forced to abandon the project. The news was devastating for some fans, who’d hoped the film series might be able to stick the landing.
The Series
Talk of a Percy Jackson Disney+ series began in 2019 after Rick Riordan pitched the idea to Disney. The news was made official in May of 2020, when the show was officially confirmed to be in production. Fans were delighted when casting announcements were made, especially when it was confirmed the characters of Percy, Annabeth and Grover would be played by Walker Scobell, Leah Jeffries and Aryan Simhadri, respectively. Not only are these actors beyond talented, but they’re the right age! That alone is making the Disney+ series seem pretty promising. Rick Riordan will also have a much larger role in the series’ production than he did for the production of the movies. He’s spoken in a few interviews about how upsetting the films were for him (and fans), since the writers at Fox altered many elements of his story that he thought were integral to the overall storyline and development of his characters. Luckily, it’s confirmed that Riordan was a co writer on the series’ pilot episode, so hopefully the remake will ease everyone’s frustrations.
What are your favorite Percy Jackson show fan theories? Do you have something from the books that you’re hoping to see in the series? Let us know in the comments!