Rick Riordan is the man behind the original Percy Jackson and the Olympians stories. He is also more involved in the most recent adaptation of his work serving as co-creator and executive producer of the television series. Ahead of the second season release, he spoke with the media to discuss the show.
When we last left off, Percy discovered that Kronos was the puppet master behind the scenes creating strife between the Gods. Not only that, but his friend Luke Castellan has sided with the King of the Titans. This season, Riordan hopes that viewers don’t see Luke necessarily as the bad guy.
“I think that I hope they will be very conflicted about whose side is the right side in this conflict,” he said. “Luke is our antagonist, but he’s not wrong about some of the things he’s saying. And the gods are not necessarily the best leaders or the best parents. So we should at this point be asking ourselves, wow, if I was a demigod, whose side would I chose? And if you’re not sure, if you have mixed feelings, then we’ve done our job, and hopefully you’ll be really chomping at the bit for season three.”
The first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series was published in 2005. Even now, Riordan continues to write books within the universe. Working on the show and interacting with the actors has actually influenced his current approach.
“[I]n some ways it’s just sort of deepened my understanding of who they are. I will say that now when I’m writing books set in Percy Jackson’s world, I have the voices of the actors in my head in a good way, in a way that makes the characters seem more real, more vital, to me than perhaps they even were before.”
He continued, “And it’s difficult to say, you know, what came first, the voice in my head of Percy Jackson or my understanding of his voice now that I’ve gotten to spend so much time watching Walker Scobell as Percy Jackson and doing such a great job. But it’s been fascinating to me to have that experience and to have one form of storytelling cross-pollinate with the other form and I think both are stronger for it.”
Percy Jackson and the Olympians season two arrives Wednesday, December 10, on Disney+.
