Disney Plus’ Percy Jackson series has found Thalia Grace: the punk rock daughter of Zeus who will stop at nothing to keep her from being a god or a mortal.
Tamara Smart (Netflix’s Resident Evil) will play Thalia, alongside Walker Scobell’s Percy, Leah Jeffries’ Annabeth, and Aryan Simhadri’s Grover. She is the second new cast member announced for this season, following Daniel Diemer (Half of it) was announced as Percy’s Cyclops half-brother Tyson.
This casting is a double whammy, as Smart previously played the daughter of the late Lance Reddick in the Netflix series Resident Evil series (well, the younger version of that character). Reddick played Zeus in season 1 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
“Lance Reddick and I have always talked about working together again, so it’s even more special and important to me to play his daughter Thalia once more, and to keep his memory alive,” Smart said in a press release. “I feel his presence all around me and strive to make him proud on this exciting journey.”
The funny thing is that even though Thalia is a hugely instrumental character in the books, The sea of monsters — the second book, which Season 2 follows on from — she is actually mostly a tree.
(Editorial note: Spoilers for the Percy Jackson books below!)
TL-DR: Years before the series began, Thalia made a last stand on the edge of Camp Half-Blood to keep her friends safe. Instead of letting her die, Zeus turned her into a pine tree. That pine tree anchors the magical force field that protects the camp. The second book picks up with the pine tree being poisoned and a few demigods going on a quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece, which has healing properties.
Thalia doesn’t appear until the last few pages. It turns out that the healing powers of the Golden Fleece not only cure the poison in her tree… but also break the spell that turned her into a tree in the first place. It’s great that she’s no longer a pine tree, but since she’s a child of the Big Three (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades), she could play an important role in a major prophecy that suggests one of the Big Three’s children will greatly influence the fate of Olympus and the gods.
Thalia will play a bigger role going forward. But for now, we’re curious to see if her small role at the end of the second book will expand into something more significant for the second season.