As someone who grew up reading the Percy Jackson book series written by Rick Riordan, I always felt as if these stories following a Greek demigod on a quest to save the world were more than worthy of a solid film or TV adaptation. An adaptation of these books was initially made in the form of the Percy Jackson films that released in the early 2010s. These films weren’t that well received, hence the creation of this TV series that sought to stay loyal to the source material while also captivating audiences who may not be familiar. The first season was pretty solid. While it did gloss over many of the most memorable action set pieces from the source material, the first season still ended up being a faithful retelling of the series’ first book, The Lightning Thief, capturing the novel’s sense of fantastical wonder and being bolstered the performances of the talented young cast. This most recent second season ended up being no different, this time adapting the second book in the series, Sea of Monsters. While the first installment followed our heroes, Percy, Annabeth, and Grover, retrieving the lighting bolt of Zeus, this installment follows their voyage across the Sea of Monsters to retrieve the Golden Fleece, encountering an assortment of monsters and dangers along the way. (I only found out recently that Rick Riordan wrote Sea of Monsters to resemble the same journey Odysseus went on in Homer’s The Odyssey as well.) All of the expected set pieces, such as Circe’s island and Kronos’s cruise ship, and new characters introduced in the second book, such as Tyson the cyclops and Thalia Grace, were all present here. Not only was action much more prevalent this time around, but every character managed to have arc that kept me engaged, whether it was Tyson coming into his own as a son of Poseidon/Percy’s brother or Luke’s motivation for helping Kronos destroy the Greek pantheon. This series as a whole doesn’t do anything groundbreaking besides telling the same stories you’ve probably read or seen before if you’re familiar enough with the Percy Jackson books or Greek mythology in general, but it doesn’t really have to. It succeeds at just being a fun fantasy adventure with an enjoyable plot and cast of characters, and that is one of this show’s greatest strengths. This season did a really good job establishing relationships between certain characters and setting the stage for what’s to come. If the next few seasons of the show continue on this trajectory, this show could quite possibly become one of my favorite book to film adaptations. Score: 8/10
Noah Robinson 