“Percy Jackson and the Olympians” Drops Teaser & Release Date

It’s coming, y’all. At long last, the Disney+ adaptation of Rick Riordan’s best-selling Percy Jackson series will grace our television (or computer… or phone) screens in December. And they released the teaser on Percy’s birthday.

The teaser for the upcoming series Percy Jackson and the Olympians reveals precious little, but that’s ok. I don’t need a lot to get me hyped for this show because I’m basically already there. I’ve been vibrating in anticipation since the news broke three years ago.

There are only two lines of dialogue in the teaser: a woman, presumably Sally (Percy’s mother), telling him that all those stories about Greek gods are true, and Zeus (the late Lance Reddick, RIP) welcoming Percy to what I assume is Mount Olympus. Our three leads, Percy (Walker Scobell), Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries), and Grover (Aryan Simhadri), don’t even speak. And aside from them, and a mysterious shot of a woman’s eyes (Persephone? Medusa?), we only get a shot of Ares (Adam Copeland).

I’ll admit that it’s been ages since I’ve read the books. I didn’t think the series was coming out until 2024 so I thought I had time for a reread but it looks like I’ll have to move that up. How can I offer nuanced commentary of the brief snippets we got in the teaser if I don’t remember what happened?

All I can say is that I presume the shot of helmeted people on the rope plank bridge is from the Capture the Flag game they play when Percy finally reaches Camp Half-Blood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0HytQwrw8&ab_channel=GQ

I am optimistic for this series. Not even cautiously optimistic, I am full on excited. I know that Riordan has been heavily involved with production (including making the open casting, which is fantastic), so I’m fairly positive that it will be, if not a 1:1 adaptation, at least keeping with the spirit of the books. It’s already promising that they went with younger actors and didn’t age Percy and his friends up. Presumably they also won’t fall into any Christian tropes when it comes to representing the pantheon of gods, either.

Something I hope that this series does is introduce some of the characters earlier. A lot of people get name-dropped in later books and are gone before you even have time to care about them. If there’s one thing you can do when making a series as opposed to a film, it’s give characters a chance.

Crossing my fingers that this show is as popular as I’m hoping. This is the opportunity for Disney, and Disney+ in particular, to have long-running diverse content that appeals to a wide audience. The Percy Jackson books are middle grade and targeted at kids, obviously, but there are a lot of adults that love the series as well. Blind casting was a good start, but it’s also important to keep in details such as the fact that all demigods are neurodivergent (Riordan specifically wrote the book for his son, who has ADHD and dyslexia). 

And this show needs to get to season 3 so we can meet Nico di Angelo.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians premieres on Disney+ on December 20, 2023.

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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