Those who have watched the second season of the Percy Jackson TV series on Disney Plus have seen how violent and bloody scenes can become. This is especially apparent in the battle scene between Camp Half-Blood with Luke’s army. Furthermore, those who have read The Titan’s Curse, The Battle of The Labyrinth, and The Last Olympian know exactly how quickly the later storyline becomes even more violent. Many started reading this series when they were eight-years-old in third grade. Now, with a brutally accurate depiction of what those battles actually looked like, some of those kids could be scared of what their favorite characters have to go through. This fear could possibly lead to nightmares because they might not understand that these events are fiction, and not real retellings of events that happened in a world that we cannot see.

Reading about a character’s death is not the same as seeing someone die on screen, and even though the directors took Silena Beauregard out of the Percy Jackson series’ timeline, they still have Zoë Nightshade and other demigods that will die. The directors have a priority of staying as faithful to the books’ storyline as well as they can, but how will kids react when the camera pans to the faces of the dead characters they admired? Scenes like Zoë’s murder could leave a lasting impact on an eight-year-old’s psychological state if they truly believed in the story and admired her, and especially if they had never experienced death before.

These stories can inspire courage and bravery in kids of all ages, but strength like that can sometimes come with fatal consequences. Parents might have to let their kids wait until they know that they can handle the inevitable fates of the demigods.

By Mimi Naylor ‘29, Contributing Writer

29mnaylor@montroseschool.org‘