If you know anything about Percy Jackson, you’d know that recently, Rick Riordan partnered with Disney to bring fans a brand new show following the beloved characters. Given the series’ track record with media adaptations, I was very skeptical when I first heard about this. I read the books when I was pretty young, right in the heat of middle school, and continued reading with all the new series Rick has released since then. So I was cautiously hopeful for what this series would bring, but book readers tend to be pretty disappointed with this sort of thing, and I’ve been burned too badly in the past to have high expectations. So, let’s dive into what I thought Disney did well with the show and what I think was lacking.

When it came to casting, and I saw the casting for Percy was Walker Scobell, I got really excited since I had seen him in the Adam Project and knew he was funny and sassy enough to play a good Percy. I unfortunately hadn’t seen anything from Leah Jeffries and Aryan Simhadri. Still, I was interested to see what they would bring to Annabeth and Grover and the dynamic the trio would have. 

My biggest problem with the show, however, was the pacing. Every single episode was extremely short, and the runtime felt really rushed. It felt like they were just trying to hit bullet points from the books and then do their own thing. I’m not upset that they added new scenes to make the story more dramatic for TV viewing because it is its own entity at the end of the day. But it becomes a problem when it starts to take away from the original story.

They also ran into a problem of trying too hard to tell the audience what was happening and not trusting them enough to pick up what was going on subtly. It felt like the kids went into every scenario knowing exactly what was going on and what to be wary of, but that was not the case in the books. Percy, especially, had absolutely no idea what was happening half the time in the books and didn’t even know who he was for very long. However, the writers decided to make Percy well-prepared via Sally and Annabeth. But I felt like it was essential for the characters to mess up, act immaturely, and learn things from their actions, even Annabeth. 

I mostly liked how all of the gods were portrayed, especially Poseidon. He had that same gentleness that Book Poseidon had when talking to Percy, and I loved that they included him and Sally interacting as well. It was very apparent how much he cared for Percy. But I absolutely hated how Hades was depicted. Hades is supposed to be highly intimidating in the books and scare the s*** out of Percy. He is revealed to us in his gigantic form and gives off an air of authority and power. But in the show, he was just a girly pop and was treated like a joke. He needed to be shown as intimidating so that the storyline in the later books with Nico and Bianca had a more significant impact on how caring he was to them compared to how everyone else saw him.

Overall, I know it seems like I didn’t like the show, but it actually wasn’t terrible. I would probably rate it a 7/10 and think it has a lot of room to grow. I appreciate it for what it is, and it can be really enjoyable if you try not to think about the books too much. Walker, Leah, and Aryan are so sweet together and have a great dynamic. Their acting was phenomenal, and the emotions these kids were able to show the audience made me want to cry. It truly felt like Rick picked those kids right off the page, and I am so excited to see them grow up and embody the characters I love so dearly.