To kick off the first day of Comic-Con in San Diego, the cast of Percy Jackson and the Olympians joined a panel alongside executive producers Dan Shotz and Craig Silverstein. After showing a 3-minute preview from the third season of the Disney+ original series, the cast made a huge announcement.
Season 3 of Percy Jackson, adapted from The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan, will be released to Disney+ on November 20. Introducing new characters like Nico and Bianca DiAngelo, the new series finds Percy and his friends on a journey to rescue the goddess Artemis.
During the panel, Charlie Bushnell, who plays Luke Castellan, revealed that his character’s antagonistic role will be further explored in this new season.
“Luke is kind of as deep in the darkness as we’ve ever seen in this season,” Bushnell said. “He failed Kronos a couple times at the end of last season. He failed to hold on [to] the Golden Fleece, and ultimately lost the battle on Half-Blood Hill. … I think we see the physical and mental toll that has taken on him as we kick off this new season.”
Tamara Smart, who plays Thalia in Percy Jackson, revealed that the tension between her character and Percy will also be explored.
“The one thing for me that I really thought about is that, yes, I was so excited to be in season 2, but Thalia hasn’t been established as a character yet,” Smart said. “For me, it was building on what Rick [Riordan] created and wrote. So it was building on that and, as you all say, some ‘generational beef.’”
Although Leah Sava Jeffries (Annabeth Chase) was absent from the panel due to filming a new Cheetah Girls movie, Walker Scobell (Percy Jackson) brought a cardboard cutout of her face. The audience laughed as Scobell walked out onto the stage with it, and when the cutout kept falling onto the table.
Shotz revealed that, although the new season stays true to the original book, they expanded Annabeth’s story.
“Annabeth is separated from the group,” Shotz said. “We are gonna open up the world and explore where Annabeth is and give a new look into that. It’s been nice to expand on that.”
But with season 3 being the first book-to-screen adaptation of The Titan’s Curse, Silverstein said that the stakes felt higher.
“I feel like we’ve felt the pressure of doing it right,” Silverstein said. “We were conscious of that, going into it, [knowing] this is the first time we’re going to see everything. I felt the pressure for sure.”
The teaser for season 3 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians is available to watch now on YouTube.