Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Rick Riordan co-created this series after rejecting the earlier films, and it shows: the show follows his books far more closely. Even so, the books hold something the screen can only approximate. That is Percy's own voice, narrating in the first person with a sardonic, twelve-year-old wit. It makes the gods feel petty and the monsters both absurd and frightening. His chapter titles alone are a running joke that television has no way to reproduce. The novels also keep what the show softens or reshapes. Percy is a rougher, more impulsive hero, and Medusa is simply a monster. The Sea of Monsters builds to a climax the show has deliberately rewritten. Reading them lets you see where each version made its choices. The books also go further than the show. It has so far adapted only the first two of Riordan's five novels. The Titan's Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth and The Last Olympian carry the story to its war and its conclusion. Anyone hooked by the series can reach the ending years before the show does.

The Season 2 finale changes the ending of The Sea of Monsters most. Reports say it takes major liberties with how the book's climax plays out, including Thalia's return and Luke's role. The show also plants that turn earlier with a new dream in which Percy sees Thalia's face under the hood of a cloaked figure, a moment the book does not have. The fight for the Golden Fleece is rebuilt as well. On screen, Luke arrives on Polyphemus' island through a portal, and Percy wrestles Clarisse and hands the Fleece to Luke so he can heal Annabeth. It is a completely different sequence from the novel. The escape changes too: Tyson's hippocampi friends carry the group away. In the book they run for the ship while Polyphemus hurls rocks after Clarisse taunts him. This Polyphemus is also far sharper than the dim, easily fooled Cyclops Riordan wrote. Season 2 also opens with Grover in the wilderness searching for Pan, following on from Season 1, rather than where the book begins. The Lightning Thief season stays closer to its book, with a few changes. Percy, Annabeth and Grover walk into Aunty Em's knowing she is Medusa because they are fleeing the Furies. In the book they stumble in dazed and under her spell. The show also recasts Medusa as a tragic, misjudged figure. Percy gives her a chance because Sally taught him she was wronged, and her past with Poseidon is framed as a romance. Across both seasons, Percy is written as more of a strategist and somewhat softer than the book's version. Some comic scenes and songs were created for the show, and the open casting gives Annabeth and Grover actors of color, where many readers had pictured them as white.