At last: Percy’s back in the gods’ domain

It’s not easy to fight gods and monsters, you know. It takes time and trouble.
And it takes time to be a fan of the demigods: “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” (shown here) finally starts its second season Wednesday (Dec. 10) on Disney+ and Hulu … a full two years after the first season arrived.
Consider one of the show’s young heroes. “Annabeth was very patient with trying to go on a quest,” said Leah Sava Jeffries (left), who plays her. She’d been training for five years, before getting her chance.
That same patience has been required of the fans and the people involved. Walker Scobell (center) had just turned 13 when he was cast as Percy; his 17th birthday (Jan. 5) will arrive while this second season is airing.
Why the slow pace? You could point to the time it takes to create godly special effects … Or to the perfectionism of streaming networks and Disney … Or to an early reluctance, due to the failure of two movies.
Rick Riordan, a former middle-school teacher, wrote his first Percy Jackson novel about a 12-year-old who learns he’s a demigod, the son of Poseiden. Four more books followed, totaling 30 million sales.
He sold the rights to Fox … which changed Percy to 16 and cast a 17-year-old actor. “The script as a whole is terrible …. Fans of the book will be angry and disappointed,” Riordan wrote in one e-mail.
Some were. The 2010 film and its 2013 sequel each did so-so at the box office and with critics. This seemed dead … until Disney bought Fox and was convinced by Riordan to try again, this time as a series with a younger hero.
Even then, things moved slowly. It was another 14 months before two writer-producers were announced … and 10 months later before filming began with:
— Scobell, then 13 (now 16), as Percy. Growing up in a military family, he easily fit into the mobile world of an actor (or a demigod on a quest). “I think that helped with being an actor in general,” he said in a Zoom press conference at the time. “My dad is so used to moving a lot and our whole family is. So it wasn’t a big change.”
— Aryan Simhadri (right), then 16 (now 19) as Grover, a satyr disguised as a boy. He arrived well-versed on Riordan’s novels. “I grew up reading them,” he told the Television Critics Association last year. “I read them in like 3rd or 4th grade. It was the second book series I read, after ‘Magic Tree House.'”
— And Jeffries, then 12 (now 16), Her key moment, she recalled last year, came when she asked Riordan how he wanted her to play Annabeth:
“He was like, ‘Just be yourself.” And I’m like, ‘Really?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, whatever you think Annabeth should be, there you go.’ And when he told me that, my whole face lit up.”
The Percy character had been a somber middle-schooler with a mom and step-dad. In a sudden swirl, he learned that gods and monsters are real … and that his classmate Grover is a satyr. He killed a minotaur, arrived at Camp Half-Blood … and learned that his father is Poseiden.
Soon, the young trio was on a quest to find Zeus’ stolen lightning bolt. By the end of the season, they had succeeded; they went in separate directions, vowing to return to the camp a year later.
Then came the long lull. The younger actors retreated to school lives for almost two years, while post-production was finished for the first year and scripts were written for the second. On a Thursday morning, Scobell’s teachers would tell him what they thought of the previous night’s episode.
During that time, Lance Reddick, who had played Zeus, died at 60 of heart trouble. Writer-producer Jonathan Steinberg marveled at “this presence that he created. I do not envy whoever ends up having to step in his shoes.”
That turns out to be Courtney B. Vance, who has won Emmys for “Lovecraft Country” and for playing Johnnie Cochran in the O.J. Simpson mini-series. Now he’s playing the mightiest of all gods.
As the new season starts, Percy and Annabeth do return, but Grover is missing. The camp is in danger; the only solution is to capture the golden fleece … which has never been easy.
A fresh adventure begins, with Disney+ airing two episodes on Dec. 10 and new ones on the next six Wednesdays, including Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.
And then? The show already has the go-ahead for a third season. It will be back … well, sometime. Be patient.