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The actor and executive producer Craig Silverstein share what fans can expect from season 3, which will adapt Rick Riordan’s novel “The Titan’s Curse.”
Key Points
- Walker Scobell and Percy Jackson and the Olympians executive producer Craig Silverstein tell Entertainment Weekly all about the Disney+ series’ upcoming third season.
- The show is set to adapt author Rick Riordan’s third novel, The Titan’s Curse, for the screen for the very first time.
- It will also introduce a collection of frightening monsters, legendary locations, and fan-favorite characters.
Over the last two seasons of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the titular demigod (Walker Scobell) has faced off against a minotaur, sailed to the sea of monsters, been chased by Cerberus, and even magically transformed into a guinea pig. And yet, nothing has properly prepared the son of Poseidon for the daunting quest that lies ahead in season 3.
The Disney+ series, which is based on Rick Riordan’s beloved Greek mythology books, is set to chart a brand new course as it brings the author’s third novel, The Titan’s Curse, to the screen for the very first time. (Riordan’s first two books previously received film adaptations in 2010 and 2013, respectively.) With it, fans of the franchise will finally get the chance to meet a whole host of new heroes, villains, monsters, and gods as Percy and his pals embark on their greatest — and most dangerous — adventure thus far.
“It’s definitely our darkest season yet,” Scobell tells Entertainment Weekly. “When you’re reading the books, the first [The Lightning Thief] gets you into it, and then The Titan’s Curse is when it really hooks into the meat of the story.”
Taking a page from the novel, Scobell confirms that season 3 begins with a “tiny time skip” that will shed light on how Percy is handling the return of Thalia (Tamara Smart) after the daughter of Zeus (Courtney B. Vance) was revived using the Golden Fleece last season. Spoiler alert: not well.
“It’s difficult because I think Percy and Thalia are so similar they fill the same spot in a team in a way,” the 17-year-old actor explains. “Whether it’s Grover (Aryan Simhadri), Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries), or Tyson (Daniel Diemer), they fill that same area, so they’re constantly fighting.”
Percy has his reasons for being wary of Thalia. After all, not only is she close friends with turncoat demigod Luke (Charlie Bushnell), but she is the only other child of the gods he knows who is involved in the Great Prophecy that could make or break Olympus. Executive producer Craig Silverstein describes Percy and Thalia’s contentious relationship as the “central dynamic” of the season — especially after a mission to rescue fan-favorite demigod siblings Nico (Levi Chrisopulos) and Bianca Di Angelo (Olive Abercrombie) from Westover Hall lands Annabeth in serious peril.
“They are both, as far as they know, the only children of the Great Prophecy, and therefore now it’s a question of not just who is going to be the hero of prophecy and going to save or destroy Olympus, but is it going to be me or you?” he says of the duo. “And you throw into that mix that they don’t really know each other, and that the one person who connects them is Annabeth, and Annabeth is taken away… They both care about her, they’re both not sure about each other, but they have to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and figure out how to work with each other.”
It’s on that very same mission that Percy also learns of the “Bane of Olympus,” a creature thought to hold the power to bring down the home of the gods. When he informs Artemis (Dafne Keen) of the beast, the goddess of the hunt sets out in search of it and leaves her trusted lieutenant Zoë Nightshade (Saara Chaudry) in charge of her highly skilled team of immortal hunters. Along the way, Artemis is similarly captured, prompting Zoë to launch a cross-country quest to rescue the goddess and Annabeth.
The adventure will see Percy confront his fatal flaw and step into Annabeth’s role as the voice of reason in her absence.
“He’s trying to figure out how to be the person who’s responsible and who does care, and that is clashing with his natural personality, which is to be impulsive,” Silverstein explains. “Annabeth is usually the person saying, ‘Percy, you’ve got to take this seriously.’ With her not there, he’s saying, ‘I have to take this seriously.’”
Along the way, the team — composed of Zoë, Percy, Grover, Bianca, and Thalia — will visit a large swath of legendary locations pulled straight from The Titan’s Curse, including the Garden of the Hesperides, the Junkyard of the Gods, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, and the Hoover Dam. (When asked if there will be dam jokes, Silverstein replies, “Dam right.”)
“There’s a lot of magical worlds in this season, as there were in the second season, but it’s got a fun mix because then you’re out on the Colorado River, which is very real world,” the executive producer continues. “It’s a bit of a mix of seasons 1 and 2, where it’s a road trip, but you’re also going into these pocket universes that are fantastic.”
But it’s not all smooth sailing. The team will go toe-to-toe with several dangerous foes on their journey, including the manticore, Nemean lion, and the gigantic automaton Talos. Scobell believes the “big” and “aggressive” fight sequences in season 3 really highlight just how much Percy has improved as a fighter.
“This time, I’m not just totally getting thrown around, I’m fighting back,” he says. “All the fights, we would take the most fun direction we could with them, and it was just so fun to shoot because we went for it every time. It feels like a really realistic action movie and a fantasy [with] awesome, big, unrealistic fight at the same time. And it works, so I’m really happy about that.”
Silverstein adds that the overall tone of the third season has matured alongside its cast, from its plot to its fight sequences to its creature designs. “We had a lot more blood in season 2 than we had in season 1, and now the next step is death, right? People are dying, and the stakes just keep dialing up, and getting more real,” he says. “We’re always trying to calibrate how scary a certain monster looks for young viewers. And what’s scary? What can they tolerate right from the very first episode? I mean, our manticore is pretty scary.”
The Gods are also set to play a much larger role in season 3, with Artemis, Apollo (Hubert Smielecki), Hera (Ming-Na Wen), and Aphrodite (Kate McKinnon) joining in on the action. Silverstein teases that they even shot the Olympian Council scenes with the show’s entire cast of deities “all in one room” together.
The executive producer also shares that Nico and Bianca’s rare bond as demigod siblings will be explored. “Their stories are really impactful in the season, and I think we did a really good job about managing and adapting how Bianca joins the Hunters,” he says. “There’s some surprises with the Nico character that’ll make sense to fans who’ve read the whole series, and so I’m excited for people to see that.”
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Percy’s relationship with the gods, however, still isn’t “going well,” Scobell admits. “It just continues to get worse,” he continues. “He started off on the wrong foot, and it’s just… It’s not getting better for him.”
To be fair, the actor notes that “the gods are pretty awful people in general” and dislike Percy because he doesn’t tolerate their constant trickery and disloyalty. “I think, slowly but surely, everyone’s kind of coming over his side,” he adds.
He’s not the only one with a complicated relationship to the gods. In a surprising departure from the source material, the season 2 finale revealed that Zeus turned Thalia into a tree after she learned about the Great Prophecy and refused to become the gods’ weapon in the fight against the villainous Kronos. The impact of that decision helps to further raise the stakes that Thalia might make “a different choice” on whose side she’s on rather than simply swearing “blind loyalty to Olympus” this season, Silverstein says.
“What it does is dial up terrific, really powerful, memorable scenes in the book, like when she has to pray to her father,” he explains. “Praying to her father when she isn’t on best terms with him just makes the scene that much more powerful. So that’s what we’re trying to do is just activate the dynamics that are in the book and push them even harder.”
And, after season 3, it’s safe to say that nothing will ever be the same. “[The Titan’s Curse is] really where all the final pieces come onto the board related to Great Prophecy and Kronos. The Titans make their appearance. It’s the book and the season where the larger saga really comes into focus,” Silverstein says. “It’s always been there in the background. We’ve brought it forward more in the show, and this is where the conflict — the war — really starts to kick off.”
Percy Jackson fans can find out more about season 3 when the series hosts its very own panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday, July 23, at 10 a.m. PT in Hall H. The season will then premiere Nov. 20 on Disney+.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
