The first season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians premiered on Disney+ in late 2023, telling the story of how young Percy (Walker Scobell) finds out he's actually the son of Greek god of the ocean Poseidon. That season covered the first book in author Rick Riordan's epic fantasy series, The Lightning Thief. The upcoming second season will cover the second book, The Sea of Monsters.
There are five books in Riordan's original Percy Jackson series, plus two more than came out later and explore what Percy and his friends are up to after they've grown up a bit. Everyone wants to see this series make it all the way to the end, but when a show has this many special effects, is this expensive, and takes this long to make, that's not guaranteed.
Happily, Rick Riordan has shared that he and the writers are at least laying the foundations for a third season, if and when it gets made. "Excited to meet with the PJO writers' room today to discuss potential plans for season three," he wrote on Blue Sky. "This does NOT mean the third season is green-lighted yet, but we have been cleared to start a room and begin planning scripts, because assuming the show DOES go forward, we have to start now. Optimistic.🤞"
Disney has the money to greenlight five seasons of Percy Jackson and the Olympians right now if it wanted to, but it makes sense that the company wants to wait and make sure the investment is worth it. At least they're starting to plan now, before the second season has even aired; we should expect new episodes sometime this year.
Still, this puts Percy Jackson and shows like it in a tricky position. Shows like this take a long time to make, and if Disney doesn't decide to renew season 3 until it sees that season 2 does well, that means cameras won't start rolling on the third season for a while. After post-production is done, we may not actually see a third season until well over a year following the end of the second; some big genre shows take two years or more to produce a new season. It's not good for audience retention to keep fans waiting so long between new seasons, especially with a show like Percy Jackson when so many of the main characters are young; child actors grow fast.
And yet, that's just kind of the new normal in Hollywood. So until someone figures out this puzzle, we will follow Riordan's lead and stay optimistic.
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