NINA BANKS
managing editor
nina.banks@my.tccd.edu
When I was in fourth grade, I was best friends with a girl named Anna. She was exceptionally smart, and everyone knew it.
“You know, Anna has read all the Harry Potter books,” my mom remarked while on a weekly trip to the library.
“Those books are so big too. What a smart girl.”
I took that as a challenge. My Twinkle Toe clad feet and stomped over to the shelf that housed the books and whipped open the cover. I got to page four and was severely underwhelmed and decided that the books were highly overrated. So now, I am a Percy Jackson fan and Anna is at Columbia University.
I was obsessed with the Percy Jackson series. I read the books, I had a Pinterest board of fanart and begged my mom to send me to a camp — which was basically glorified roleplaying. So, like the rest of the fanbase, I was tickled pink — or should I say blue — when I heard Disney+ was adapting the books into a show.
Here’s a controversial take that may have me in a ditch with trident prong holes: I liked the movies. The rest of the fandom disagrees, emphatically. Yes, they weren’t accurate and Rick Riordan, the author of Percy Jackson, didn’t like the movie, calling it a “bad idea” in a letter to the producers of the film. But you cannot deny the iconic Lotus Casino montage shifted tectonic plates from its sheer brilliance.
This time, Riordan was fully involved in the creation of the show. And it shows.
Percy, Annabeth and Grover were each selected by Riordan himself. The TikTok comments under edits of the trio couldn’t say it better myself, “It’s like they shook the book hard and the three of them fell out.”
The chemistry of the entire cast with one another is palpable on and offscreen. Walker Scobell, who plays Percy, and Leah Sava Jeffries, who plays Annabeth, are able to serve the perfect amount of witty comebacks without coming off as forced or bitter. Aryan Simhadri plays Grover, the satyr protector of Percy, and mediates their verbal back and forth with the correct amount of awkward attempts to keep the peace.
Perhaps the biggest error of the movie was that Percy and Annabeth were aged up to 17. Which is wrong, give or take five years. In the books, Percy and Annabeth are 12 years old. The show did right by casting actors their age.
The show deviates from the book towards the end of the season. However, all the changes felt seamless and added to the suspense. It kept the book fanatics and newbies on their feet alike.
I cannot commend the cast’s performances enough. Scobell presents the perfect amount of dry wit and sassiness while delivering angst in the heavier scenes. I can’t be that surprised, he did play a young Ryan Reynolds after all. Jeffries delivers as well, playing into Annabeth’s guarded personality. Virginia Kull plays Percy’s mom Sally and if you told me they cast Scobell’s actual mother, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Their mother-son relationship was so visceral. and you could feel the weight of the world — literally — resting on Sally’s shoulders.
The show was brilliant, and I’ll be tuning in for every season, no matter how long it takes to get through the books. Hold fast Perseus.
