I read The Titan’s Curse approximately four hundred times as a kid, so I have opinions about how this adaptation needs to go…
…and based on everything Disney just revealed, I’m cautiously, very cautiously, letting myself get excited.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians returns for Season 3 on November 20, exclusively on Disney+. This season adapts The Titan’s Curse, the third book in Rick Riordan’s bestselling series, and picks up with Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell) facing arguably his most personal quest yet: Annabeth Chase (Leah Sava Jeffries) has gone missing, a major goddess is in danger, and a batch of new demigods are just now figuring out who (and what) they actually are.
Looming over all of it is the Great Prophecy: a child of the Big Three (Zeus, Poseidon, or Hades) is destined to determine Olympus’s fate, for better or catastrophically worse. According to Scobell, Percy doesn’t spend much time dwelling on the odds; his focus stays locked on getting Annabeth back, full stop, the same single-minded instinct that drove him through Grover’s disappearance last season. Executive producer Jon Steinberg framed the whole series as orbiting the Percy-and-Annabeth relationship, and this season is clearly leaning into what happens when that bond gets tested by distance instead of proximity.
A Much Bigger Cast of Demigods (and Gods)
This is where Season 3 really opens up. Thalia Grace (Tamara Smart) joins the main cast as another child of the Big Three, which puts her directly in the orbit of the same prophecy weighing on Percy; and, according to Smart, the two don’t exactly see eye to eye. She described Thalia as a natural troublemaker, which honestly tracks with everything book readers already know about her.
Grover Underwood (Aryan Simhadri) is also back in a much bigger way after spending most of Season 2 off-screen, and Simhadri specifically pointed to his scenes with Thalia as a highlight, given the guilt Grover’s carried over what happened to her in the past.
Then there’s Nico and Bianca di Angelo, played by newcomers Levi Chrisopulos and Olive Abercrombie, who joined the production within days of each other and apparently built a real off-screen friendship that’s clearly translating to the sibling dynamic on-screen. Rounding out the new demigod additions are the Hunters of Artemis, with Zoë Nightshade (Saara Chaudry) as Artemis’s lieutenant — a character carrying literal centuries of backstory that Chaudry said shaped nearly every scene she filmed.
And then, of course, there’s Artemis herself (Dafne Keen), who Keen (a self-described Greek mythology nerd in real life) teased as fiercely removed from mortal affairs, but not without some genuinely “badass” moments once she does get involved.
Luke Castellan (Charlie Bushnell) remains firmly under Kronos’s thumb this season too, with Bushnell noting the power dynamic the show established at the end of Season 2 is still very much intact…and that Luke’s choices, however manipulated he is, are still ultimately his own.
The Gods Are Getting Involved
Beyond the demigods, Season 3 substantially expands the Olympian side of the story, adding Hera (Disney Legend Ming-Na Wen), Aphrodite (Kate McKinnon), Demeter (Jennifer Beals), and Apollo (Hubert Smielecki) to the roster. Executive producer Dan Shotz promised the full lineup of gods on screen together is going to be a genuine showstopper moment for fans.
Darker, Older, Higher Stakes
Both executive producers were upfront that the show’s tone is shifting to match where the books go. Craig Silverstein pointed out that the source material itself gets progressively darker and higher-stakes as it goes, and that the cast growing up alongside their characters makes a more mature tone feel earned rather than forced. Dan Shotz echoed that, describing this season as bringing “more mature” storytelling, bigger stakes, a larger ensemble, and meaningfully expanded mythology.
For longtime book readers, that tracks exactly with what The Titan’s Curse does to this story; it’s the point where the series stops being purely fun adventure and starts hurting a little. If the show commits to that shift the way the cast and crew are describing, Season 3 could be the moment this adaptation really separates itself.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3 premieres November 20 on Disney+. We’ll have more as Disney releases additional details ahead of the premiere, so keep checking back with Theme Park Scope for the latest.
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