SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians.”
The Disney+ adaptation of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” just took a major step away from the books.
Or at least it looks that way at first. If you ask executive producer Craig Silverstein, though, that big twist in the Season 2 finale was just a way to truthfully advance what “Percy Jackson” — both on the page and the screen — has always been about: kids (or in this case, demigods) standing up for themselves when they’re neglected by their parents (all-powerful Olympians).
Throughout Season 2, based on Rick Riordan’s book “The Sea of Monsters,” Thalia Grace (Tamara Smart) is introduced in a series of flashbacks. A daughter of Zeus (Courtney B. Vance), it was Thalia who first led Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries) and Luke (Charlie Bushnell) to safety at Camp Half-Blood after a difficult journey plagued by constant monster fights. It’s revealed in the books that Thalia never became a camper herself because the Furies attacked before she could enter. She saved her companions, but almost lost her life in the process — until Zeus stepped in, transforming her dying body into a magical pine tree with the power to protect the camp from monsters. In the TV series, however, that story turns out to be a lie: The Furies never touched Thalia. Sent by Hades (Jay Duplass) to turn her against her father, they told her of the Great Prophecy, which decrees that a child of the “big three” (Zeus, Hades and Poseidon) will make a decision that either saves the gods or destroys them, and explain that Zeus plans to use her as a weapon. Thalia is enraged, since Zeus has never been a present parent, and she tells him as much when he spontaneously shows up to sway her. So he turns her into the tree as punishment, and to prevent her from ruining the reign of Olympus. It’s not exactly an act of fatherly love.
“Zeus is saying, ‘There’s this thing I was going to tell you about. Now I have to,’” Silverstein says. “‘You’re on the cusp of becoming super relevant to it. You’re going to turn 16 really, really soon. But good news: You’re going to be the princess of Olympus! I’m going to elevate you to be over everybody else.’ He just hasn’t been paying attention to her, and does not know that that’s not how you sell Thalia.”
Tamara Smart as Thalia
Silverstein says the “Percy Jackson” writers had the idea for that twist about halfway through writing Season 2, but initially “held it at arm’s length.” By the time they were writing the finale, however, they realized those earlier flashbacks of Thalia lent themselves to a darker version of her final conversation with Zeus. “You see her and how she was the leader of this group that didn’t want anything to do with her father’s world,” Silverstein says. “Even before she got turned into a tree, she had a grudge against Zeus, the flames of which are fanned by Luke, who’s got issues with his dad, Hermes.”
Silverstein adds, “At the same time, these characters are heroes who care about each other. ‘We take care of our own’ is that trio’s motto.” In other words, Thalia’s feud with Zeus doesn’t mean she’s on the same path as Luke, who betrayed Annabeth and other campers by joining Kronos’ fight to overthrow the gods. “All of this is in service of activating the last line of Rick’s book, which is Percy looking at Thalia Grace and saying, ‘I had a feeling that this person could be my best friend or my worst enemy.’”
Vance was cast as Zeus following the death of Lance Reddick, who played the sky god in Season 1. Like the writers, he approaches “Percy Jackson” first and foremost as a family story. Calling Reddick a “dear friend,” Vance started his time on the show by addressing the painful elephant in the room. “People didn’t want to impact my experience by talking about Lance, so they didn’t quite know what to do or say,” he says. “So I asked for a moment of silence for folks to honor him. I can’t Bogart my way in — transitions take time. I said I’m grateful that I’m here, and acknowledged that Lance was the man. Folks were appreciative of the time to breathe.”
From there, Vance zoned in on the interpersonal dynamics between Zeus and Thalia. He says he wasn’t thinking about Greek mythology “at all. The focus was a father and a daughter falling out.” So he pulled from his own experience; with his wife, Angela Bassett, he has 19-year-old twins. When he and his children disagree, he says, sometimes “you go, ‘OK, let me see if I can just switch some things around.’ But every now and then, it ain’t happening. ‘But I don’t understand why!’ ‘You don’t have to understand why on this one. It ain’t happening.‘”
That’s the kind of stubborn, unresolvable conflict Thalia and Zeus were having, and it allows “Percy Jackson” to put Zeus’ poor parenting on screen in a way it hasn’t been before. “She called him out, and he made a decision to Zeus her instead of to father her,” Vance says. Yes, in this show, that means weaponizing his godly powers to essentially paralyze her for years — but Vance focused on Zeus’ actions as a manifestation of an adult’s unfair rage toward a child who simply expressed their feelings. “And what does that mean when you Zeus your daughter? What does that mean about your relationship and her life?”
It means “existential stakes” are coming, Silverstein says, explaining that the shift in Thalia’s backstory is intended to “bring the Great Prophecy forward in the show. The gods are being jerks — who are immortal, so they don’t care. But the Prophecy means that the Olympians can fall the way the Titans did before them. They can no longer rely on just being immortal.”
Toby Stephens as Poseidon, left, Walker Scobell as Percy Jackson
It all goes back to the show’s aim to bring Mount Olympus down to a more grounded place, making it possible to explore fraught, messy familial relationships. “Poseidon [Toby Stephens] says the greatest fear the gods ever had was that their fate would rest in the hands of their children. That means the Olympians are feeling a little more human,” Silverstein says. “Because at some point, we get old. Unlike the gods, we have to depend on our family and kids to take care of us. That’s a scary thing for immortals.”
In Season 3, which Disney+ announced on Wednesday will premiere later this year, Percy will have to work alongside Thalia while worrying that she could be the subject of the Great Prophecy — and that she’ll make the wrong decision. That tension already existed in Riordan’s third “Percy Jackson” book, “The Titan’s Curse,” so adding the twist to the Season 2 finale helps set up what’s coming next. “Rick understood how it made the stakes for the next season real. Thalia has real beef with Zeus. It’s not theoretical, like, ‘Oh, maybe something will happen to make her [turn against the gods].’ Because otherwise, her father saved her, right? Then she’d be kind of a brat for being angry.”
The twist also sets new stakes for camp director Chiron (Glynn Turman) heading into Season 3. He originally lied to the campers to protect Zeus’ image, but he’s the one who reveals the truth in the Season 2 finale. “If you look closely at the books, Chiron’s kind of shady. He does a lot of things where he’s like, ‘Oh, I would go myself, but that’s risking me.’ There’s some questionable stuff,” Silverstein says. “Our Chiron is a rule follower, and the rules that he has to follow are very tough. He’s bonding with these kids, but he’s preparing them to die fighting monsters for the glory of the gods. There’s a bit of a conflict there.”
In the finale, Chiron says to Percy, Annabeth and Grover (Aryan Simhadri): “I’ve always tried to heed the will of the gods, and to be an example for the demigods I train and care for. I can no longer do both.” With that line, Silverstein says, Chiron is realizing he can’t focus anymore on the consequences he may face for defying the gods: “Because he’s already dealt with consequences. In Zeus’ paranoia, he was dismissed [from camp earlier in the season]. You can follow all the rules and still get fired from your job. Everything’s changing. The primacy of Olympus is in question. Everyone who is unchanging because they’re immortal, now, at the time of the Great Prophecy, is going through all kinds of changes. That opens up some good stuff for Chiron.”
Glynn Turman as Chiron
Disney/David Bukach
“Percy Jackson” fans are notoriously protective of Riordan’s original text. But with the new ending for “The Sea of Monsters,” Silverstein says, “Hopefully they’ll see that what seems like a humongous departure is actually not that big of a departure. I’ve always said this change is not as big as the change in Episode 3, where Percy learns about the Great Prophecy, the stakes of the Great Prophecy now get balanced against — and are maybe in conflict with — whatever the season prophecy is. That thing that’s just in the background while waiting for the fifth book is now very active.”
Vance, who is not only part of the twist but working to fill the Olympian shoes Reddick left behind, laughs as he wonders how the finale will be received. “I’m just trying to be mindful and gentle with with respect to the fandom, because they they don’t play. I hear they’re the Real Deal Holyfield. So I’m just saying, ‘Let me in, y’all. Give me a little time.’”