Percy Jackson season 2 review
The long awaited second season of “Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters” premiered on Dec. 10, two years after the first season aired. Since the end of season one Camp Halfblood has faced an onslaught of monsters attacking the camp, as well as Luke Castellan (Charlie Bushnell), who betrayed Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell) in the first season, poisoning the magical tree that defends Camp Halfblood’s barrier. This season is focused on the journey of Percy and his friends to find the golden fleece to heal the tree and find Grover Underwood (Aryan Simhadri) who was captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus (Aleks Paunovic). The team faces challenges and foes and more about the series as a whole is revealed.
Season two introduced a few new lovable characters like Percy’s halfbrother, Tyson (Daniel Diemer), adding more focus on characters who had not previously been spotlighted. While the books and season one were almost entirely focused on Percy’s story, new insight into Clarisse La Rue (Dior Goodjohn) develops. By this point in the books Clarisse remained pretty one dimensional, characterized by being aggressive and a bully. These traits remain present in the show, but more of her humanity, especially her tendency to need to prove herself and push others away, gets introduced through her initial soloquest for the fleece.
While the overarching plot of this season remained faithful to the books, small details change the story significantly. For example, none of these were enough to change anything super important to the story and with the book being 20 years old it made sense that there would be differences. However this season there were a lot, the most bothersome being ones that strayed not just from the book but from Greek mythology as well. Which was something that, aside from being watered down for a younger audience, the books were pretty good at not doing. A major example of this was In the portrayal of the sirens,. iIn mythology and the Percy Jackson books they are described as women with the bodies of birds. In the show however, they are shown as not even resembling the depiction of sirens often used in modern media, but instead women made of rocks. While this was disappointing to see it was easy enough to overlook the changes made while watching the show.
Overall, The newest season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians was an enjoyable watch. It had plenty of suspense and the classic humor of the original series. The show added foreshadowing of later books that are fun to catch as a longtime fan. The season ended with a sneak peek of season three and an announcement that the next season will be coming out later this year.
