Welcome demi-gods to Camp Half-Blood. Follow me into the rabbit hole of the second season of “Percy Jackson: The Sea of Monsters”. The second season of Percy Jackson aired on Dec. 10 which had fans jumping with joy due to anticipation since they were showing bits and pieces of the show for seven months.
The Percy Jackson series is much better than the movies. Most importantly, the second season right now is my favorite in the series. To begin with, the first thing that makes me favor the other is the lead actor of Percy Jackson, Walker Scobell, was the better version of Percy than Logan Lerman, who played him in the movies.
Scobell developed a stronger relationship with his character than Lerman. In the movies, Lerman was a good actor. However, he didn’t have a full understanding of the character and was weak when it came to acting. In the books Percy is a very sassy and young character and Scobell plays that perfectly; however, Lerman plays Percy as a mature young adult which isn’t an interpretation of the character that I like.
Although the TV show did have a lot of changes from the books, they still have similarities and differences in the show such as, in the books, Percy thought Tyson was homeless and unaware that he was a cyclops. He befriended him after he saw Tyson getting bullied. In the show, Sally Jackson, Percy’s mother, finds Tyson and takes him in. They both know he is a cyclop.
In the show I appreciate how they stayed with Percy’s age and cast someone who would grow up with the character, that goes with all the characters and actors, not just Percy. For example Luke Castellan, son of Hermes, is 16 in the books and show.
This contrast in age shows how merciless he is since he fought a 12 year old who has no experience being a demi-god while he has years of experiences and fighting skills. He was a smarter and vigilant villain. I also want to appreciate how they kept the original antagonists, not just Luke such as Ares, god of war and Kronos, the father of all gods.
According to Brennan Klein, a writer at Screen Rant, “Disney+’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians has earned a higher Rotten Tomatoes audience score than the rest of the franchise.”
The show has done much better than the movies due to age accuracy, similarities and better scene writing.
In my opinion, ever since the show came out I have liked it more than the movies. The movies are good, of course. However, there are large differences, such as the claim of Percy, in the books, it shows Percy being claimed by Poseiden, the god of the sea and storms.
In the movie, however, it just skips him getting claimed by Poseidon. He just gets told by Chiron, son of Kronos and camp leader, that he is Poseidon’s son.
There were also random scenes in the movie, such as in the second movie, it starts off with a camp game of Percy and other campers on this large mechanical structure where they had to race to the top, which never happened in the books.
In the show, in the second season, they have a chariot game that gets interrupted by the Stymphalian Birds, a type of monster which happened in the books series.
According to The Arbiter written by Kiryn Willett, “The Percy Jackson and the Olympians Disney+ series has received a much more positive reception than the film adaptations did, which are pretty much universally hated by fans of the books.”
I can’t wait for the third season of Percy Jackson to come out in late December 2026.
