Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 2 Should Already Be a Guarantee
The streamer should have repeated a trick from Loki.
It’s easy to see the potential a TV show has. From the first moments of shows like Succession, Game of Thrones, or Stranger Things, it was clear that the ideas had legs to turn into TV empires. Disney+ has a project like this on its hands, and the showrunners know it — but the streaming service has yet to give a second season a greenlight.
Why was this mistake made when another Disney+ series so deftly avoided it? The answer may lie in the franchise’s past.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, a Disney+ series based on the hit young adult novels by Rick Riordan, was perfectly poised to become a multi-season tentpole series. The leads were all talented young actors who could carry on their roles for years to come. The showrunners, Jonathan Steinberg and Dan Shotz, had experience with multi-season television after their work on Black Sails. With original author Rick Riordan on board as an executive producer, it didn’t seem like anything could stand in its way.
The trio of leads in Percy Jackson and the Olympians proved they have the talent to carry the series over multiple series.
However, while the Season 1 finale was plenty exciting, fans were waiting to see if the series would get a Season 2 renewal at the end of the series. Unfortunately, no dice — the mid-credits scene just showed Percy’s terrible stepfather accidentally petrifying himself with Medusa’s severed head.
But that didn’t stop Steinberg and Shotz from planning ahead. The two have already opened a writers’ room for Season 2, despite not officially being renewed. “There is an awareness on everyone’s part that the demand for the show seems to suggest we should probably not stop making it,” Steinberg told Variety.
A post-finale renewal wasn’t an impossible hope. Loki became the first Disney+ MCU series to nab a second season with a mid-credits reveal that Loki would return. Considering the response to Percy Jackson and the Olympians so far, it looked like a similar move at the end was inevitable.
With multiple books left to adapt, why hasn’t Disney+ given the show a renewal yet?
So why the hesitation? This series isn’t the first time Percy’s made the jump from page to screen. The books were previously adapted into two movies back in the early 2010s, and while they were moderate successes, they were reviled by fans for various changes to the story. It’s likely that the powers that be are waiting to see how the masses respond to the series before officially renewing it.
Hopefully, Steinberg and Shotz’s optimistic plans won’t be for naught, and a renewal is simply waiting for the success of the series to become evident. But leaving viewers in limbo, not knowing if the series will be the next Harry Potter or the next one-season-wonder, is not a great way to keep goodwill with a fanbase.
Percy Jackson has the legs to become a streamer-defining project. The streamer just has to realize that.
