Percy Jackson & the Olympians Review: A Slumberous and Somber Adaptation

Author Rick Riordan once candidly described the 2010 film adaptation of his novel The Lightning Thief as “my life’s work going through a meat grinder.” Indeed, that early attempt at adapting the first book in Riordan’s kid-lit series Percy Jackson & the Olympians is a cheesily generic fantasy film that deviates from the book’s blueprint to an extent that fans (and, apparently, the author) can’t forgive. What, then, to make of the new Disney+ series, which has the imprimatur of Riordan as executive producer and co-writer, and yet feels even further away from the spirit of the books?

If fans are seeking nothing but fidelity, they’ll find a faithful outline here. While Chris Columbus’s 2010 film aged up its heroes, the show’s version of Percy (Walker Scobell) and his companions all seem like real middle schoolers. And the plot points, at least based on the four episodes made available to press for review, map neatly onto the novel.

Largely missing from this new adaptation, though, are Percy’s whip-smart, sassy narrative voice, the coherent world-building of the novels, and, most importantly, Riordan’s quicksilver pacing. The story of Percy, a struggling sixth grader who discovers that he’s a demigod—half-mortal, half-Olympian—nearly scampers across the page as Riordan unfolds a hidden world of Greek monsters and deities living alongside our ordinary American reality.

The central subversive conceit of Riordan’s books—that ADHD and dyslexia should be celebrated as signs of godliness—animates his heroes’ quests with a rebellious underdog spirit. But where the novels are spry and whimsical, the series is slumberous and somber. The dreary pilot launches with a voiceover from Percy but quickly abandons his essential sardonic perspective, ceding much of the storytelling to Percy’s mother (Virginia Kull), who delivers a monsoon of breathless exposition that will be inscrutable to anyone unfamiliar with the premise.

The writers don’t seem settled into the rhythms of what’s essentially an eight-episode miniseries. There’s a simultaneous sense of frantically cramming content and stalling for time. Even the monsters seem to move in slow motion to help stretch every episode out, effectively downgrading the books’ lively battles into low-tension standoffs. The show’s frequent cut-to-black transitions also unnecessarily interrupt what little momentum has been established.

But even if the scripts seldom lend Percy and his friends the witty repartee they deserve, the lead trio—including Aryan Simhadri as Percy’s satyr protector and bestie Grover, and Leah Jeffries as Annabeth, the saltily tenacious daughter of Athena—are all charming travel companions. Scobell best channels the Percy of the books in his devastatingly skeptical side-eye reactions and self-deprecating one-liners: When Percy, still unsure of which deity is his dad, arrives at Camp Half-Blood, where the demigods are sorted by immortal parents, he muses, “Is there a Greek god of disappointment? Maybe you should ask him if he’s missing a kid.”

Even though that Greek god of disappointment seems unwilling to lift his curse on Percy Jackson adaptations—the 2019 Broadway musical, whose co-writer, Joe Tracz, also co-penned a couple of these episodes, may come closest to capturing the book’s quickwittedness—there’s still a glimmer of what might have been in the final minute of the second episode. Poseidon sends a message rippling thrillingly through Camp Half-Blood’s lake to claim Percy as his own son. As a crucial part of Percy’s identity suddenly clicks into place, it’s a rare moment in the series worthy of a unique hero’s mythic journey.