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Disney Plus’ Percy Jackson series has found its Thalia Grace — punk-rock daughter of Zeus who doesn’t take shit from anyone, god or mortal.
Tamara Smart (Netflix’s Resident Evil) will play Thalia, joining Walker Scobell’s Percy, Leah Jeffries’ Annabeth, and Aryan Simhadri’s Grover. She’s the second new cast member announced for this season, after Daniel Diemer (The Half of It) was announced as Percy’s Cyclops half brother Tyson.
This casting is bittersweet, because Smart previously played the late Lance Reddick’s daughter in Netflix’s Resident Evil series (well, the younger version of that character). Reddick portrayed Zeus in season 1 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
“Lance Reddick and I always spoke about working together again, so it’s that much more special and important to me to play his daughter once more as Thalia, and to keep his memory alive,” said Smart in a news release. “I feel his presence all around me and strive to make him proud on this exciting journey.”
The funny thing is that even though Thalia is a hugely instrumental character in the books, in The Sea of Monsters — the second book, which season 2 is set to follow — she’s actually a tree for most of it.
[Ed. note: Spoilers for the Percy Jackson books below!]
TL,DR: Years before the series began, Thalia made a last stand on the outskirts of Camp Half-Blood in order to get her friends to safety. Instead of letting her die, Zeus turned her into a pine tree. That pine tree anchors the magical force field that protects the camp. The second book kicks off when the pine tree is poisoned, and a few demigods set off on a quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece, which has healing properties.
Thalia doesn’t actually make an appearance till the last few pages. As it turns out, the Golden Fleece’s healing powers not only heal the poison in her tree… but also break the spell that turned her into a tree in the first place. It’s great that she’s not a pine tree anymore, but because she’s a child of the Big Three (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades), she could be instrumental in a major prophecy that hints that one of the children of the Big Three will greatly affect the fate of Olympus and the gods.
Thalia plays a bigger role going forward. But for now, we’re curious to see if her tiny little role at the end of the second book will be augmented into something more significant for the second season.
