The landscape of YA adaptations is littered with unfulfilled franchises. For every The Hunger Games and Twilight there is an axed Artemis Fowl, Eragon or City of Ember. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series was off to a promising start, with Home Alone and Harry Potter director Chris Columbus taking the wheel for 2010’s Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, but its follow-up, 2013’s Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, was underwhelming at the box office and to critics, and the franchise came to a sudden halt, despite four additional books being unadapted.
But all hope is not lost for fans of the teenage demigods story. Disney+ is rebooting the series, tentatively planning on adapting one book a season, and this new adaptation is an encouraging start. The delightful newcomer Walker Scobell takes the role of Perseus “Percy” Jackson, an awkward and unpopular 12-year-old who discovers he is a demigod. We first meet him while he is being bullied at school, but finding some respite in the tales of Greek mythology his mother encourages him to explore. He eventually makes a friend in the form of Grover (an equally delightful Aryan Simhadri), who shares his interests in the ancient world. The bond between the two is adorable, with Percy earnestly explaining: “Something changed when I met Grover. We had a lot in common, and not just because we were both at the bottom of the food chain.”
