Percy Jackson: First Look at Iconic The Lightning Thief Chapter’s Disney+ Adaptation

While Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) took significant liberties with its source material, the Logan Lerman-led adaptation did bring plenty of iconic elements from the page to the big screen. Act 1 sequences like Percy’s battle with the Minotaur en route to Camp Half-Blood to the game of capture the flag at the aforementioned demigod sanctuary did good by the book, and the Lotus Casino scene is still championed by fans to this day. That said, Percy Jackson (2010) did leave plenty of The Lightning Thief‘s chapters on the cutting room floor, both due to storyline changes and runtime constraints. Fortunately for Disney+’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians, neither of those two aspects will be an issue.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is set to tell the events of The Lightning Thief over the course of eight streaming episodes, giving it enough leg room to spend quality time with essentially every chapter. Beyond that, author Rick Riordan is serving as an executive producer on the series and has emphasized every step of the way that Percy Jackson Season 1 will do justice to his critically-acclaimed novels. That will mean retellings of events already faithfully brought to live-action life in Percy Jackson (2010) but also first-time-ever adaptations of big chapters not touched by the theatrical version.

Percy Jackson Brings Tunnel of Love to Live-Action

One of Percy’s most iconic side quests is coming to Disney+.

As revealed in a batch of Entertainment Weekly images, Percy (Walker Scobell) and Annabeth (Leah Jeffries) take a row boat through a waterway tunnel.

This image comes during the events of The Lightning Thief Chapter 15: A God Buys Us Cheeseburgers. In that 23-page sequence, Percy, Annabeth and Grover (Aryan Simhadri) are sent on a side quest by Ares (Adam “Edge” Copeland) to retrieve the god of war’s shield at an abandoned water park in Denver, Colorado in exchange for transportation towards the Underworld entrance in Hollywood, California.

At this abandoned water park, Percy and Annabeth are instructed to take the “Tunnel of Love” ride in order to get to Ares’s shield. Little do they realize that this ride is actually rigged with traps by Hephaestus (Timothy Omundson), the god of the forge, in an effort to catch his wife Aphrodite cheating on him with Ares. Despite not appearing in the flesh during The Lightning Thief book, Hephaestus has been confirmed to be showing face in Percy Jackson Season 1. 

Percy Jackson and the Olympians premieres on Disney+ on December 20th.