TL;DR – Percy Jackson sticks the landing while making a significant change that intrigues me.

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this series.

Post-Credit Scene – There are mid-credit scenes.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Review –

Well, we have reached the end of season two, the part when loyalties are defined, battles are fought, and futures are determined. The series has been good at building up to this point, but shows have failed in the final execution before; indeed, that has been the very fate of a previous adaptation. Well, will a second chance work for this story? Let’s find out.

So, to set the scene, as Percy (Walker Scobell), Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries), Grover (Aryan Simhadri), and Tyson (Daniel Diemer) make their way back to camp, they find out that Clarisse (Dior Goodjohn) never made it to Camp Half-Blood and now monsters and enemy demigods surround. It looks like things are about to fall apart, but never underestimate a Jackson when he is backed into a corner. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode and season as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

The War

One of the main features of this final episode of the season is the conflagration of all the battles this season. I was interested to see how this would play out, given how these things tend to be abstracted in shows like this. Indeed, this is a show that has an inbuilt mechanism of removing but not killing monsters. However, this episode does not hold back; kids get stabbed, sliced and maimed. It is a level of maturity that we see throughout the episode, which was interesting to see and a good touch in helping make the stakes feel real.

The Prophecy

One of my main issues this season, as I mentioned last week, is how they have been forwarding the central premise of the show, namely The Prophecy, also this season the lower case prophecies as well. Well, I am glad to say that we finally get it in all its grandeur this week, as a lot of the ossifications are removed. I just hope that we can use this to bring The Prophecy into the light to use as a proper springboard into season three later this year, including the reveal around Talia (Tamara Smart) and Zeus (Courtney B. Vance). On a side note, can I say that replacing Lance Reddick was always going to be a difficult job, but Courtney B. Vance is absolutely the right choice. Though I think they fundamentally shifted the reason why Talia was in a tree, and that intrigues me to see where they are going.

The Heart

There were a lot of emotional beats this week. For example, we had Percy and his mum (Virginia Kull) have a proper heart-to-heart, we get Clarisse discovering the power of community and team, and we also got Luke stepping past the point of no return and trying to straight-up murder Percy. However, for me, the heart of this episode was Tyson. Daniel Diemer brought such an impact this season, and we see it on full display in this final episode. You feel that care, that strength, that camaraderie, and that brotherhood, and that all comes from his performance.       

The Leader

The other main through point in this episode is Percy finally taking up the mantle of leadership. He has always been the core member of the group, I mean, his name is in the title of the show for a reason. However, that leadership will need to be more than just how he supports his core trio. He has a similar journey to Clarisse, which was interesting to see juxtaposed here. I also like that he gets to give Dionysus (Jason Mantzoukas) a piece of his mind, an absolute delight. Walker Scobell has always been the right person for this role, but it was good to see him be able to take that mantle today.  

Full Season

The final question we have now that we have watched the finale: how does the season work as a whole? While I do think it came together stronger than the first season, which you would expect now that everyone is more comfortable in the world. There are still some consistency issues sneaking through. For example, if you read the books or knew about some of the background information, you would have known something was up with the character of Chris Rodriguez (Kevin Chacon). But it is positioned as this grand betrayal, which doesn’t land because the season didn’t set him up really as an interesting character, bar some side bits at the start.

There are a lot of changes from the books, and on the whole, I did think they were either not important enough issues in the books that it does not matter if an event happens in Miami or Long Beach. Or some have improved on the books because there have been many years to work through some of those issues and reinterpret them into something better. We saw that with the changing of the crew of the ironclad in Clarisse Blows Everything Up, and making the cyclops not be a fool to be easily tricked in Nobody Gets the Fleece. However, some changes or omissions from the series felt more because of a budgetary special effects situation than a narrative. Also, I think it is time in season three that we get to know more of the campers at Half-Blood.   

Recommendation   

In the end, do we recommend Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Fleece Works Its Magic Too Well? Yes, we do. I feel that they stuck the landing with the season finale, undertaking twin duties of tying up the season and making you ready for more in season three, because we have yet to see The Titan’s Curse adapted, and that is when some wild events happen. Have you watched Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Fleece Works Its Magic Too Well? Let us know what you thought of the episode in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and producers of Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Directed by – Catriona McKenzie, James Bobin, Jason Ensler, & Jason Ensler
Written by – Craig Silverstein, Rick Riordan, Shae Worthy, Sarah Watson, Albert Kim & Tamara Becher-Wilkinson
Created by – Rick Riordan & Jonathan E. Steinberg
Based On – Percy Jackson and The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
Production/Distribution Companies – 20^th Television, Co-Lab 21, The Gotham Group, Mythomagic, Quaker Moving Pictures & Disney+ 
Starring – Walker Scobell, Leah Sava Jeffries, Aryan Simhadri, Charlie Bushnell, Dior Goodjohn & Daniel Diemer
With – Courtney B. Vance, Rosemarie DeWitt, Timothy Simons, Toby Stephens, Jason Mantzoukas, Tamara Smart, Kevin Chacon, Beatrice Kitsos, Marissa Lior Winans, Virginia Kull, Glynn Turman, Aleks Paunovic, Andra Day, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Adam Copeland, Kristen Schaal, Margaret Cho, & Sandra Bernhard
And – Sage Linder, Viola Abley, Adam Swain, Marlo Marolle, Mathew Yanagiya, Cassandra Ebner, Andrew Alvarez, Olly Atkins, Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg, Mark Gibbon, Dan Payne, Daniel Cudmore, Kyle Strauts, Paul Cheng, Jasmine Vega, Camille Mitchell, Aiden Howard, Nick Boraine, Andrew Kavadas, Ryan Handley, Adrian Hough, Kurt Ostlund, Sean Yves Lessard, Miles Merry, Shota Tsuji, Andre Roshkov, Emmanuel Akpoviroro, Heather Feeney, & Threnody Tsai
Episodes Covered – I Play Dodgeball with Cannibals, Demon Pigeons Attack, We Board the Princess Andromeda, Clarisse Blows Everything Up, We Check In to C.C.’s Spa & Resort, Nobody Gets the Fleece, I Go Down With the Ship & The Fleece Works Its Magic Too Well