Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Percy Jackson & the Olympians season 2, episode 4, "Clarisse Blows Up Everything" and The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan.Percy Jackson and the Olympians star Leah Sava Jeffries addresses the Annabeth Chase and Thalia Grace (Tamara Smart) flashbacks and teases how they set up season 3. Jeffries plays Annabeth, and while Thalia's tree has been in the show since season 1, Percy Jackson season 2, episode 4 is the first time the character appears in demigod form.
In an interview with Liam Crowley for ScreenRant's Percy Jackson season 2 cover story, Jeffries breaks down how the flashbacks show Thalia being like a big sister to Annabeth when they were on the run. While Annabeth gets some of her fearlessness from her mother, Athena, the flashbacks reveal how she also learned to be this way from Thalia.
Jeffries also explains that since Thalia has been frozen in time and Annabeth has continued to grow, the daughter of Athena is now more similar to the daughter of Zeus than they used to be. She also hints at how this relationship will evolve beyond the flashbacks in season 2. Check out her comments below:
It used to be big sister, little sister, especially when you see the flashbacks. Now since she stopped in time, it's like we're the exact same.
This kind of has to do with the third season, but basically we're kind of the same now. Coming into the second season and watching the flashbacks of what Annabeth really went through and how she looked at Thalia, you definitely get to see how everything makes sense. It's like doing a math problem. You see the equation, and you see it solved, but you don't see the actual work of how they did it.
The flashbacks have a very big impact on how you get to see Annabeth and how much she's grown, how she works. The fearlessness, she gets it from Athena, but she also gets it from Thalia.
A change from the Percy Jackson books is that audiences get to directly see what happened to young Annabeth (Marissa Winans), Thalia, Luke Castellan (Charlie Bushnell), and Grover Underwood (Aryan Simhadri) instead of just hearing about the events through Percy Jackson's (Walker Scobell) point of view.
As indicated in Jeffries' comments, this allows the audience to better understand Annabeth's history with Thalia, Luke, and Grover. It provides more insight into Annabeth's personality, who Thalia was before her transformation, and why Luke poisoning her tree is such a monumental betrayal. The quest to save Grover and find the Golden Fleece to heal Thalia's tree also takes on further meaning.
In terms of what the flashbacks mean for season 3, Jeffries is hinting at how the second Percy Jackson book sees the Golden Fleece not only healing Thalia's tree, but turning her back into a demigod who is no longer frozen in time. This will presumably happen at the end of season 2, which will set up Thalia to be a main character in the next season.
Annabeth and Thalia will have to grapple with the fact that they are now "kind of the same" in Percy Jackson and the Olympians season 3, meaning that their big and little sister dynamic will be gone. The flashbacks help set up their relationship and this storyline in a way that was not possible in the books and for the third season, which has already been renewed and is still filming.
- Release Date
- December 19, 2023
- Network
- Disney+
- Showrunner
- Jonathan E. Steinberg, Dan Shotz
- Directors
- James Bobin
- Writers
- Joe Tracz, Andrew Miller
Cast
Walker Scobell
Percy Jackson
Leah Sava Jeffries
Annabeth Chase
