Table of Contents for Blood of Zeus

1. Season One
2. Season Two
3. Season Three

I gave the first season of this show a very harsh review, because I was bored out of my mind by episode six of season one when trying to give it a chance at the recommendation of a close friend. It had some good parts, but it was clearly following the dull Hero’s Journey formula and when I skimmed through the last two episodes; I found exactly the complete waste of time that I expected. I may have been harsher than usual, because I was dismayed by the fact that the two writers were notorious at the time for being the writers behind the failure of the Death Note Live-action Netflix film. When I had been browsing Netflix and spotted this, it annoyed to me see it listed under “Anime” and it honestly felt to me like Western studios were just trying to pilfer and claim the unique accomplishments of Japanese animation studios as their own. Overall, it just wasn’t a good combination and finding out that the writers had been behind the Death Note live-action debacle after what felt like wasted time because it had some interesting elements only to devolve into that boring formula was what led me to offer a very scathing review. I was actually surprised when my close friend’s rebuke to me on Twitter was given a “like” by one of the writers of Blood of Zeus. Honestly, I guess I sometimes think that sending a review online is just a drop in the bucket of a massive void, because surely people who make money working for Netflix would probably read the popular critic reviews and maybe highly upvoted comments on social media giving positive affirmations, but not some random blogger whose review was just a drop in the bucket of a sea of endless reviews that they can click on, right?  However, to my surprise, given that heart-shaped “Like” to my friend’s comment to me, I think it might suggest that at least one of the Parlapanides brothers probably did read my blog review of Season One. One of them, Vlas, has worked in Wall Street for the Oppenheimer Holdings investment firm for two years; surely, someone who has made that sort of financial success isn’t going to care what some random blogger thinks. Yet, this seemed to have been a mistaken belief on my part. My assumptions about people having an insatiable curiosity of what others think of them and their work seems to have been more correct than I thought; both historic research and modern psychological research seems to attest to this, even when factoring wealth disparities. Even if I’m assuming too much and I’m wrong about the possibility of one of them reading my review of season one, they most likely read all the criticisms like the demons in season one being jarring inclusions in what was suppose to be a show about Greek mythology and the criticisms of how boring Heron was as a character which was essentially a uniform opinion throughout reddit by even people who liked the first season.

It would be wrong of me to ruthlessly criticize what I found to be dull and asinine in season one and then ignore any and all improvements made for the second season. It seems likely to me that COVID-19 gave an unexpected benefit for the writers to brush-up on their understanding of Greek mythology beyond just art and architecture. The ending of season one had made more than just a few eyes roll with Hades being given a villainous role in the final reveal of the last episode. This second season surprisingly makes a massive effort of giving Hades a sympathetic backstory and goal; the abduction of Persephone and refusal of Demeter to part with her is reinterpreted as Persephone eloping, having a loving marriage with Hades to the extent that they have two children, and Persephone being forced to appease her mother’s selfish whims or otherwise Demeter threatens to keep the world in eternal winter that harms humanity and Zeus – not wanting to really bother with fulfilling his duty – tried to make a compromise of Persephone being required to spend six months with her mother while being forced to be away from her husband and children. Hades is reinterpreted as the one who informed Seraphim to eat of the Titan’s flesh in order to keep him alive; Hades is revealed to have been very sympathetic to Seraphim’s plight when Seraphim was a human and the trident that Seraphim has control over is revealed to be a blessing from Hades. He was genuinely disgusted with Zeus and Hera’s repeated abuses of power to the extent they tricked Hades to become lord of the Underworld and completely ruined Seraphim’s life, even bringing it up at Zeus’s trial. Yet, Seraphim actually feels like more of a robust character instead of underutilized to serve as a chess piece like in the first season, and continues to reject Hades’s offer of help because he reasonably believes he’ll just be manipulated. The only reason that Seraphim finally helps Hades is to remove the memories and pain of his former lover suffering in the underworld with regrets; which Seraphim blames himself for, since he chose revenge against his adopted mother’s killer above eloping with his fiancé when presented with both options. He’s later burdened with the knowledge that had he chosen his fiancé, she wouldn’t have been randomly killed by a monster; they’d have lived a peaceful, happy life together.

It’s not without flaws; there is one major problem that can’t be ignored. That is, despite attempts by the writers to give Heron more character and even an interesting bit of character development by using season one’s illogical event of conveniently throwing away the sword that could have helped him save his village as a major lifelong regret that he blames himself for, because it led to the death of his mother, Electra. It’s a good introspection, but it’s not enough to make-up for how boring he usually is. He’s given more depth to his character by acknowledging that Seraphim’s overarching argument was correct, even if he went about it the wrong way and he quickly picks-up on who Seraphim is based upon Seraphim’s blunder in a realistic fashion, given the content of the worldbuilding. However, his retinue of “friends” that were never given any meaningful characterization to begin with, are made all the more useless. One of them leaves for vague reasons related to business and trade; it is realistic, but it ultimately felt more like the guy was cut for budgeting reasons. The other two don’t really have any meaningful character. They have some cool parts in fight scenes, but that’s about the only highlight for them. Heron and his two companions ultimately suffer from the fact they had no real character development, motives, and their introductions were largely based on Zeus’s monologues about who they are from season one. By direct contrast, Seraphim, Hades, Demeter, Persephone, Hera and Gaia genuinely have far more character than anything that Heron and his friends provide. A look of horror from Persephone at Hades’s desperate and cowardly murder of Heron has more depth than the entirety of Heron and his friends’ supposed development for two seasons. Despite the title of this series, and I’m sorry to have to say this, but I think the story is better off if Heron remains dead and his friends both die from Typhon’s rampage. The character motives and development of Hades, Persephone, Seraphim, Demeter, and Gaia are frankly completely and utterly superior to everything from season one. Heron serving as Seraphim’s motivation for change might honestly be the best form of development for the show to carve its own unique identity. Heron has some development, but it’s largely left piecemeal and to contrast Seraphim’s behavior; Heron chooses to help a village that attempted to rape his mother and chooses not to commit revenge, whereas Seraphim usually always went for revenge until forced to confront how his actions harmed the only person that he ever loved and who genuinely loved him back. It’s probably the best development that Heron has ever gotten, I’d argue that it’s even better than the later scene with choosing not to take revenge on Hera. Yet, Seraphim is still more compelling than Heron overall; with Heron, it feels like he’s just going through the motions of what’s expected of him despite his internal feelings. In contrast, Seraphim provides emotionally compelling and logical reasons for his actions and he’s always fun to watch because he understands where he went wrong and his reasons for why he’s going through with serving Hades makes sense. Can the same be said of Heron? It seemed like Heron was simply reacting to situations as they came-up, whereas Seraphim had compelling motives to pursue specific goals.

There’re a few other issues that I have, but I might just be leaping to conclusions based on my own assumptions from season one. Given that Hades doesn’t act anything like the brief season one version that we observed and he’s given a really good character motivation to the extent that I still feel like rooting for him, even though he technically became complacent with the mass murder of innocent humans by Demeter and became no different than Hera in terms of moral culpability for it; I think the show is framing Persephone as the one that’ll ultimately drink the water that removes memories. I’m confused why Persephone and Hades didn’t just conspire to make Demeter drink the water, if Persephone was getting fed-up with her. Even if Demeter is her mother, I don’t get why Persephone entertains Demeter after a point, when Persephone has the wellbeing of her own children to think about. At the end, Gaia basically confirmed that Demeter completely lied to Persephone’s face about whose idea it was to poison humanity to make plant monsters and weaken the Demigods in a bid to get the orb. I kind of hope Persephone is the one who snaps, either after Hades is killed somehow or her own children are put in danger because of Demeter’s narcissism and hunger for power, and becomes the Dread version of the Greek myth. That would be very interesting to see, but I doubt Persephone will get a bigger role or become a full-fledged antagonist in relation to her origin myth of Despoina. I can’t think of another way that the Greek Gods will defeat Typhon with both Zeus and Heron dead. Most likely, they’ll just bring Heron back and he’ll be the typically boring Jesus analogy forcing Abrahamic cult beliefs into the intellectually superior Greek mythology. I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit when Hades said “Forgive me” after stabbing Heron as it turned the forgiveness argument on its head and Gaia went from smiling at Heron accomplishing his destiny of bringing peace to deciding that the Greek Gods had become too corrupt to improve. I think the story would be better off if Heron remains dead, personally. He just doesn’t bring anything nearly as interesting as either Seraphim or Hades and watching those two be in conflict due to the fallout of season two’s events would be vastly more interesting than Heron ever returning from the dead. The problem would then be the title of the show; it’s clear that they had intended for Heron to be the titular main hero since season one, but then the reaction to Heron’s character, from even people who were defending the series and said they enjoyed it, must’ve shocked the Parlapanides brothers’ and made them rethink who should be focused upon. To be frank, if Heron does return as some chosen hero archetype that he’s already been introduced as, then they would be stifling their best quality writing with a brewing conflict between Hades and Seraphim for mediocrity.

This brings me to an issue that I feel that this series encapsulates. When taking both seasons together as an analysis of themes and story structure, I would argue that this show proves that the Monomyth / Hero’s Journey formula needs to absolutely die because it does nothing more than harm the full potential and breadth for conflict, human emotions, and character arcs by relegating all of it into extremely banal storytelling. The first season epitomized exactly those problems with the strictures of the three-act structure; the moment the writers dropped the three-act structure and Hero’s journey formula, and gave each of the characters’ competing motives, it gave us a story that was way more engaging. Moreover, a key problem with the three-act structure / Hero’s Journey is that it is inherently premised upon overcoming personality deficiencies that is intrinsically at odds with expressing problems with systemic issues of abuse of power. At best, the ending of a series will have some brief commentary on systemic issues, but it doesn’t actually explore those underlying issues and the three-act structure / monomyth being confused for the full limits of human imagination seems to have honestly destroyed the majority of Hollywood being allowed to express their creativity. We’re bombarded with rehash after rehash of the same major series due to American corporate media’s fear of taking risks and the monomyth is used as an excuse to not have any sort of interesting character motives or goals at all. The monomyth / hero’s journey is often used as a replacement for character motivation; this is precisely why Heron completely sucks as a character, while Seraphim and Hades don’t and are far more compelling when compared to him. Heron is a prime example that the monomyth / Hero’s Journey just seems anachronistic and comparing this show’s two seasons provides a very good case for that. How can Western writers talk about more deterministic themes of systemic oppression, when the three-act structure / hero’s journey is about solely focusing on a character learning to correct an internal failing? Moreover, the three-act structure itself doesn’t make coherent sense because people apply it double or triple depending on the events of a story, yet still continue to insist it’s a three-act structure when people are using six or nine acts of a character learning to improve themselves. When I read more into Native American mythology – specifically the Popol Vuh and Dine Bahane – and how they had their own four-book structure with repetition being emphasized as a positive narrative tool to express a deeper meaning; I realized that a lot of what the Hero’s Journey proclaimed as dogma was genuinely bullshit to a degree that I hadn’t ever anticipated. I honestly think that the two seasons compared to each other are primary examples of how much the Hero’s Journey / Three-act structure is a resounding failure and perhaps there are simply viewers like me whose brains just fall into automatic boredom because of it.

Overall, I would rate the second season of Blood of Zeus as 8 /10. I’m kind of hoping there’s some late plot twist confirming Seraphim was actually also Zeus’s child somehow, so that Heron remains dead as a decoy protagonist and the titular character is revealed to be Seraphim. Seriously, the entire story is an improvement without Heron.