Bolts, Prophecy, Titans—Let’s Break Down the Season Finale of ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’

The first season—and only, so far, since there’s still no news of renewal—of Percy Jackson and The Olympians has come to an end with its eighth episode, where all plotlines converge and are explained.

While longtime fans of Rick Riordan’s books—on which the show is based—probably saw everything coming, there were definitely a few surprises along the road for those who have gotten into the story of demigod Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, with the television show.

What’s certain is that there’s a lot to unpack from this season finale, both when it comes to payoffs planted earlier in the season and what storylines we could expect in the future. So let’s break down the most significant plot points of “The Prophecy Comes True”—of course, massive spoiler alert for the entire first season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians ahead, so be warned.

The prophecy does come true

As the title of the episode suggests, the prophecy that Percy was given by the Oracle at Camp Half-Blood before leaving for his quest does come true—even if with an unexpected twist, as most prophecies in Greek mythology do.

The prophecy states that Percy “shall go west, and gate the god who has turned. [He] shall find what was stolen, and see it safely returned. [He] shall be betrayed by the one who calls [him] a friend. And [he] shall fail to save what matters most, in the end.”

As Percy himself explains in one of the final scenes of the episode, he did indeed go West towards the entrance of the Underworld and faced a god who has betrayed the Olympians—Percy, Annabeth, and Grover originally thought this god to be Hades, god of the underworld, but it turns out it was Ares, god of war, who helped steal Zeus’s master bolt for Kronos.

Percy also finds two very important items that were stolen and returns them both to their rightful owners—Zeus’s master bolt, whose disappearance kickstarted the entire quest, and Hades’ Helm of Darkness, which was also stolen by Ares and which Percy obtains after defeating him in single combat. It was actually the Helm that the fury Alecto, one of Hades’ longtime servants, was after all this time, rather than the bolt.

Let’s actually jump ahead to the last line of the prophecy now, since that, too, is of easy interpretation. Percy ultimately can’t save his mother, whom he must leave in the Underworld, even though he had set out with the very clear intent of bringing her back with him. Still, Sally Jackson is safely home once Hades gets his Helm of Darkness back, and we see that she and Percy continue their not-so-regular life in New York—going to school, baking blue pancakes, jotting down ominous threats from a supposedly defeated Lord of the Titans. Regular stuff.

As for the third line, the identity of the betrayer is actually the big reveal of this episode. Percy initially thinks he’ll be betrayed by someone going on the quest with him, which is why he picks Annabeth to accompany him—he thinks they could never become friends and so avoid the threat the prophecy warned him of. Of course, Percy and Annabeth proceed to become incredibly good friends, but still, it’s not the daughter of Athena whom Percy should have been concerned about.

The traitor has always been Luke Castellan, son of Hermes, the first friendly face Percy met after his arrival at Camp and the one who actually taught him a lot of the inner workings of their peculiar world. Luke has turned to Kronos in an attempt to get revenge against all the gods, who he feels use demigods for their purposes without worrying too much about them the rest of the time—and I mean, he’s not entirely wrong there. 

So it was Luke who stole the bolt, aided by Ares, and he meant to deliver it right into Kronos’s lap with the winged shoes he gave Percy—shoes that were meant to drag him and his backpack into Tartarus. Since it was actually Grover who ended up wearing the shoes, the plan was foiled, and it instead became a key element for Percy to figure the whole thing out.

Luke, Kronos, and Ares

Once found out, Luke escapes Camp Half-Blood to presumably rejoin his master Kronos and continue in their plan to destroy the Olympian gods and reinstate the Titans and their rule. The Titanomachy is actually one of the major fights of Greek mythology, with Zeus defeating his father Kronos and freeing all his siblings—Hades, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter and Hestia—which Kronos had swallowed to prevent them from rising up against him.

Without going too much into detail, the fight against Kronos and his allies—demigods, gods and monsters—takes up all the first series of Percy Jackson books, which comes out to five novels total and so could span at least four more seasons of Percy Jackson and The Olympians. Percy’s nightmare at the end of the episode certainly suggests that.

***The following section includes spoilers not just from this season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians but also for the following books written by Rick Riordan, which means that there could be spoilers ahead for eventual future seasons of the show. Be warned.***

Thalia and the forbidden children

While on Olympus, Poseidon and Zeus discuss Percy’s status as a “forbidden kid”—and Poseidon reminds Zeus that they have both broken that vow, since Zeus had “his Thalia” just like Poseidon had Percy. 

This is a plot element that was only touched briefly in this first season and that gets expanded in the books after The Lightning Thief—the gist of it being that the Big Three, brothers Hades, Poseidon and Zeus, all made a vow not to have any more demigod children after World War II. Not only did the war have heavy involvement from all of their children, but that was the time when they received the Great Prophecy that mentioned a child of the Big Three being a key player in the possible fall of Olympus. 

So the three gods promised not to have any more children to try to prevent that—only Hades stuck to his promise, even though he found a clever way to work around it, but both Zeus and Poseidon broke the vow.

That’s how Percy was born and also how Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus, was born. She was the demigod Luke was traveling with when they both stumbled across Annabeth and fought their way back to Camp Half-Blood. Thalia actually sacrificed herself for the safety of her fellow demigods and was turned into the tree that guards the access to Camp, the one Annabeth was standing under in her final scene with Percy and Grover. 

With the Great Prophecy coming into play in the books following The Lightning Thief, let’s just say that transformations are not always permanent in the world of Percy Jackson.

More little adorable details and Gabe’s end

There were also a slew of other tiny details that had my Greek mythology-loving, Percy Jackson-reading absolutely soar—like Poseidon and Zeus talking to each other in Greek, or Percy referring to Kronos as “grandpa.” While it’s technically true, I’m very much with Sally here on not wanting him to refer to the Lord of the Titans like that. It’s just very uncomfortable.

And then there’s Gabe’s end, which is shown in a post-credits scene and that is truly the height of dramedy. While arguing with his lawyer, since Sally is finally divorcing him, he realizes that he can no longer enter the Jacksons’ apartment—so in peak Gabe fashion, he decides to steal the package he finds at their doorstep. Too bad that’s the same package Percy sent to Olympus, containing one extremely petrifying Medusa head. I wonder what Sally will think when she returns home and finds a Gabe-shaped statue right in front of her door.

(featured image: Disney+)