“Percy Jackson and the Olympians” season 1 drops 'small seeds of future situations'

Rick Riordan and the series showrunners tease how they were able to include Easter eggs hinting at potential future seasons.

There’s a lot more to this saga than a missing thunderbolt. Season 1 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians will adapt the entirety of The Lightning Thief, the first in Rick Riordan’s series of five novels about the titular demigod and his friends. After learning that he is secretly the child of a Greek god and brought to Camp Half-Blood, Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell) must prove that he is not the one who stole the thunderbolt of Zeus (Lance Reddick). The best way to do so would be to find the actual thief, and so Percy embarks on a quest alongside his friends Grover Underwood (Aryan Simhadri) and Annabeth Chase (Leah Jeffries) to do just that.

But that isn’t the end of Percy’s story. As Riordan’s loyal readers know, The Lightning Thief has four sequels: Sea of Monsters, The Titan’s Curse, Battle for the Labyrinth, and The Last Olympian. Although no future seasons of Percy Jackson and the Olympians have been officially announced yet, the creators are hopeful that they’ll be able to tackle subsequent books as well. They even laid some of the groundwork in season 1 — so eagle-eyed fans should keep their eyes out!

“We liked the idea of each season of the series being a book,” co-showrunner Jonathan E. Steinberg tells EW.

“Rick didn't know exactly what the fifth book would be when he was writing the first book,” adds co-showrunner Dan Shotz. “But we have the benefit of being able to bring in things from the later books to tease what’s to come down the road. There are characters who you maybe didn’t read about in The Lightning Thief, but we could pepper them into season 1 since we know they’re coming later.”

The showrunners aren’t the only people working on Percy Jackson and the Olympians who are deeply familiar with the source material. The young actors also know Riordan’s books inside and out and were able to play certain moments with an eye to the future — sometimes even going beyond what’s written in the script.

James Bobin, who directed the first two episodes and helped set the look of the show, remembers a particular moment between Jeffries and Scobell when Annabeth gently adjusts Percy’s armor during a game of Capture the Flag.

“These things are the small seeds of future situations,” Bobin says. “That’s how you tell a story in a long-form, with these tiny moments that in five years’ time you can look back on and see how they develop. Leah got that straight away. They know where the story’s going to go and could drop these tiny, tiny hints at stuff that’s going to happen in the future.”

Annabeth is the daughter of Athena, but viewers shouldn’t expect to see her pop up in season 1. The goddess of wisdom didn’t appear in The Lightning Thief book either, and Riordan didn’t think it was worth inserting a cameo ahead of time.

“We talked about it,” Riordan tells EW. “We agreed it would be interesting, we batted her around, and we did some versions of scripts where she made an appearance, but we just had so much else going on. We didn't have the real estate, because when you bring her in, you want to do it right. So we're going to save her for, hopefully, a future season.”

Percy Jackson and the Olympians premieres Dec. 20 on Disney+. Read more about it in EW’s new feature on the show.

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