Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Toby Stephens Shares His Interpretation of Episode 7’s Poseidon Flashback (Exclusive)

So close, yet so far apart. The penultimate episode of Percy Jackson and the Olympians concluded with an original scene created specifically for the Disney+ series that showcased a meeting between Toby Stephens’s Poseidon and Virginia Kull’s Sally Jackson. Sally struggles with the responsibility of deciding young Percy’s future, unsure of whether to continue looking for boarding schools or to send him off to Camp Half-Blood years before she was expecting to. She ignites a match and puts it out in a bowl of ice cream, a signal for Poseidon. The sea god answers the call, joining Sally at the restaurant counter as Percy remains on the other side of a wall at their booth.

Toby Stephens Analyzes Poseidon’s Flashback With Sally

The sea god left much up for interpretation in Percy Jackson and the Olympians Episode 7.

Throughout their conversation, Sally and Poseidon look straight ahead, never once locking eyes with one another.

“I think they can’t because he’s a god and he’s appearing to her in the mortal world. There’s The Mist,” Poseidon actor Toby Stephens told ComicBook.com. “When you are in the mortal world, you can’t quite see them. I feel that it’s also that he’s a presence to her. He’s a very real presence to her, but she cannot see him at that moment. They connect on a deeper level than just being two people in a room. They connect on a very, very deep level, but that she cannot actually physically perceive him at that time. What this does is it makes the relationship between him and Virginia very real. It is love. They did and they do love one another.”

Beyond that, Sally dictates the flow of their chat, as Poseidon offers to just listen. When she ultimately decides that she wants to keep Percy with her for as long as possible, Poseidon tells her the hard truth, that it will be “torture” but they will both be better off for it in the end.

“It doesn’t happen all the time, but I think it’s one those things where when they need him most, he’s there,” Stephens said of how often Poseidon is that shoulder for Sally to cry on. “With Percy, he intercedes in moments where Percy needs him the most. I think it’s the same for Sally. It can’t be some sort of casual thing, ‘Hey, I’ll meet you at 9:30 tonight, we’re going to go and have some dinner together in the diner around the corner.’ It only happens when it really needs to happen.”

The conversation culminates with Sally declaring that she wants Percy to discover who he is before Poseidon’s family “tell him who they want him to be.”

“I think he wants Percy to be who Percy is going to be,” Stephens said of what Poseidon wants Percy to become. “I don’t want to make Poseidon too much of a squeegee kind of human dad, but I do feel that he wants Percy to be who he’s going to be. That’s why he’s been sort of standing off. I think he’s afraid of becoming one of the other gods that imposes their ego on everything. I think Poseidon is different. All of the gods have different qualities. They’re very different people, but yet their one family. I think Poseidon is different from all of them with the way he treats his son.”

After Sally settles with her decision to keep Percy around longer, she asks Poseidon if he’d like to meet his son. Before he can respond, thunder rumbles in the background. 

“Yes, he is,” Stephens said when asked if that audio cue correlated to Zeus watching on.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians airs its season finale this Tuesday, January 30th at 9 PM ET on Disney+. Tune into ComicBook Nation presents Riptide Radio – A Percy Jackson Aftershow immediately after for an in-depth discussion and exclusive interviews with Adam Copeland and Toby Stephens!