Television Review

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Season One — excellent adaption in the ideal format for fantasy

Demigod Percy Jackson leads a quest across America to prevent a war among the Olympian gods.

As a diehard fantasy fan and avid reader of the series, I wasn’t impressed by the big screen adaptation. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) starring Logan Lerman was a disappointment. Not only did the filmmakers alter the ages of the main characters, but they also left out any interesting themes or depth in favour of spectacle that ended up feeling more ridiculous than grand. And don’t even get me started on the film’s sequel, Sea of Monsters (2013).

All that said, when I learned that creator Rick Riordan would be executive producing a new television adaptation for Disney+, I was hopeful. There’s been a recent tradition of young adult fantasy series authors turning to streaming platforms rather than film studios to translate their work. We saw it first with Daniel Handler’s own A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017–19) on Netflix, which received a much better…