Disney’s upcoming Percy Jackson and The Olympians show could correct the demigod mistakes made in the movie adaptation. Rick Riordan's best-selling YA fantasy novels of the same name were first turned into a moderately successful yet short-lived movie franchise, kicking things off with 2010's Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. The television series reboot is now currently in development for streaming on Disney+, with Walker Scobell cast as Percy Jackson and Riordan on board as a consultant, and it has the chance to fix a number of problems with the previous adaptation, including its misdirected priorities.
One of the issues with the Percy Jackson movies was their disregard for some of the core ideas of Riordan's books. On the page, the interactions between other demigods at Camp Half-Blood contextualized the story and introduced the series' key themes of found family and the gods' neglectful parenting. The Greek Pantheon is intrinsically linked with family drama, and the demigods all come from single-parent homes as a result of their birth. The majority of them have had difficult childhoods, and this was reflected in the Percy Jackson novels. The problem with the Percy Jackson movies is they overlook these themes in favor of setting up a romance subplot as early as possible, focusing on the love-interest character Annabeth immediately — even having Percy longingly gaze at her in slow-motion in the midst of combat — and mostly ignoring the other demigods.
The Disney+ series should make up for this major mistake of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief and firstly explore the themes of parental responsibility and found family. This can be achieved by providing more background on the other demigod characters and deepening their relationship with Percy and one another. The greater setup of these characters and their bonds in the improved Percy Jackson adaptation will also create a foundation for viewers to care about other demigods when they do get more screentime, as Clarisse did in the movie sequel Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters after her being absent in the first film. And building these community interactions and focusing on the characters' new found-family at Camp Half-Blood ought to be more easily done due to the show’s book-accurate age of the characters. Unlike in the movies, which aged up Percy, Annabeth, and the rest of the demigods, forcing an immediate romance instead of developing the ensemble of characters would make little sense.
By including the other demigods' difficulties at the camp, particularly the feeling of neglect experienced by the children of Hermes, the Percy Jackson TV show could also more properly establish these characters' motivations. In the novels, Luke Castellan's cabin had the worst living conditions. His father, Hermes, had the most children of all the gods, and he also took in all the offspring of minor gods who didn't have their own cabin. This created cramped quarters for the lot of them, which emphasized Luke’s feelings of abandonment and became a significant factor in him turning to Kronos and becoming the story's antagonist. In the Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief movie, Luke’s room appears luxurious, stocked with videogames and an arsenal of magical weaponry, so he didn't have the same reasonable motivation to rebel against the gods.
To fix the demigod mistakes of the Percy Jackson movies, cutting the romance might be a necessary sacrifice. At least from the start. But that decision would be more faithful to the novels anyway. In Riordan's source material, Percy and Annabeth's romance does not even appear until the third book, so it should not be relevant to the first episodes of the Percy Jackson TV series. By focusing on this relationship, the movies sacrificed valuable screen time that could have been devoted to the other demigods and the community at Camp Half-Blood, which is essential in Riordan’s universe. Fortunately, the increase in screen time that Percy Jackson and the Olympians will have, as a TV show, should allow it to suitably explore other demigods' stories.