The arrival of the third season of Disney’s biggest Harry Potter competitor could not come at a better time, since HBO’s reboot of the Wizarding World franchise is just around the corner. To hear some online commentators speak about the upcoming series, one would assume that HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter reboot was set to irretrievably alter the course of human history.
The show is undoubtedly an expensive effort from the streamer, as befits a show that marks an attempt to make a fantasy series to match the ambition and scope of Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings prequel The Rings of Power or HBO’s earlier George R.R. Martin adaptation Game of Thrones. However, HBO’s eight-episode remake of the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, is currently being touted as a uniquely massive event in TV history.
For a lot of more sedate readers, the arrival of the new take on the children’s book series doesn’t seem like any more of a major cultural moment than Wednesday season 3’s hotly anticipated release. Luckily, Disney’s greatest Harry Potter competitor, Percy Jackson & the Olympians season 3, is arriving just in time to remind viewers that there are other fantasy franchises on the small screen, and even other magical school franchises with plucky protagonists based on bestselling books.
After Percy Jackson & the Olympians seasons 1 and 3 both broke numerous streaming records for Disney, the show is set to return for season 3 on November 20. This means the series will be back on the streaming service only one week after the premiere of The Rings of Power season 3, a month before the arrival of HBO’s Harry Potter reboot, and some three months before Barbie director Greta Gerwig’s ambitious CS Lewis re-imagining Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew.
With the arrival of Percy Jackson & the Olympians season 3, the fantasy adaptation streaming wars will be starting in earnest, so Disney’s animated Artemis Fowl series would do well to wait a while before gracing the screen with its arrival. Of course, Percy Jackson & the Olympians season 3 has an existing fan base, meaning the show won’t have as hard a time winning over viewers as a genre newcomer would.
That said, one could also argue that Percy Jackson & the Olympians season 3’s arrival comes burdened with higher expectations, and the show could potentially have a hard time matching the relative novelty of a new project. Fortunately, this shouldn’t be a problem for the Disney series when compared to HBO’s reboot, since a re-imagining of an existing movie franchise doesn’t have too much in the way of novelty value.
Furthermore, as The Rings of Power season 3’s release approaches, the more predictable elements of Percy Jackson & the Olympians are beginning to seem like a strength for the show, rather than a shortcoming. Where the Lord of the Rings prequel has needed to merge many storylines to make Tolkien’s source material add up, Percy Jackson & the Olympians has been able to stick closer to author Rick Riordan’s original novels.
Similarly, while The Rings of Power struggled to retain its massive initial audience and saw a big drop-off in viewership between season 1 and its sophomore outing, Percy Jackson & the Olympians has built a more stable fan base throughout its two seasons. Thus, the Disney series is uniquely well suited to taking on HBO’s upcoming fantasy series.
The Rings of Power has plenty of defenders, but the show’s fan base is likely to grow bigger as the Lord of the Rings prequel gets even deeper into the lore of Tolkien’s world. In contrast, Percy Jackson & the Olympians is already exactly the major mainstream family-friendly YA fantasy hit that Harry Potter hopes to be.
