In his latest attempt to justify the changing of his own source material in its jump to the small screen, series creator Rick Riordan says the reason why his original Percy Jackson and The Olympians books lacked a proper exploration of Medusa’s character compared to the series’ current Disney Plus adaptation is that Percy himself was unaware of how to go about “deconstructing the patriarchy”.
As seen in Riordan’s initial telling of his take on Greek Mythology, the snake-haired Gorgon is introduced as a deceptive Middle Eastern shop keeper who in modern times uses the lure of taking a victim’s photograph to expose them to her stone-turning gaze.
Eventually encountered by Percy after he, Annabeth, and Grover stumble into her store in search of food, Medusa initially feigns kindness to the trio until they discover that, in a twisted expression of love for her former beau Poseidon, she wishes to add the group’s leader to her collection.
However, thanks to Percy’s quick thinking and the steel of his Riptide blade, their encounter ultimately ends with her severed head resting upon the floor, her plans ultimately left unfulfilled.
But in the Disney Plus series, things play out a little differently.
Therein, as seen in the series’ third episode ‘We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium’, the Gorgon makes her debut when she appears to offer the lead trio refuge from their ongoing pursuit by Hades’ Furies.
Reluctantly accepting her assistance, the trio then proceed to enjoy a brief lunch with their new host, during which she is able to pick up on Annabeth’s palpable anger towards her – a result of both her dedicated allegiance and love for her own mother, Athena.
Seeking to explain her side of the story, Medusa responds to the tension by recalling to the group, “Athena was everything to me. I worshipped her, I prayed to her. I made offerings. She never answered. Not even an omen to suggest she appreciated my love.”
“I wasn’t like you, sweetheart,” she then specifically addresses of Annabeth and her love for Athena. “I was you. I would have worshipped her that way for a lifetime…in silence. But then one day, another god came, and he broke that silence.”
Gesturing towards Percy, Medusa then asserts, “Your father. The Sea God told me that he loved me. I felt as though he saw me in a way I had never felt seen before. But then Athena declared that I had embarrassed her and I needed to be punished. Not him. Me. She decided that I would never be seen again by anyone who would live to tell the tale.”
Amidst constant protestations to her mother’s innocence from Annabeth, Medusa then concludes, “The gods want you to believe that, that they are infallible, but they only want what all bullies want – They want us to blame ourselves for their own shortcomings.”
However, from there, her story plays out largely the same as it does in the books, with her meeting her ultimate fate courtesy of a head-severing granted by Percy’s Riptide.
As to why this particular change was made to Medusa’s character, the series’ cast and crew would later elaborate on their reasoning during a post-episode-premiere interview given to Variety’s Selome Hailu.
According to Riordian’s wife Rebecca, who also serves as an executive producer on the Disney Plus series, “the only reason Medusa is not more fleshed out in the books was that it was Percy’s narrative and we don’t have her perspective.”
Jumping off his wife’s assertion, Riordan himself further claimed “As a 12-year-old boy in 2005, I don’t think he had the bandwidth for deconstructing the patriarchy. He was looking at it as, ‘This is a scary woman who’s trying to turn me into stone.'”
To this end, Rebecca noted, “It was one of the first things we talked about, how to not have a patriarchal lens.”
And it was through this anti-patriarchal lens that, per the Disney Plus series’ co-creator and co-showrunner Jon Steinberg explained, the team decided to deviate from the original chain of events in order to touch upon the contemporary argument that, in the original myth, Medusa was not a willing lover to Poseidon, but rather a victim of sexual assault at his oceanic hands.
“If you know what she’s talking about, you know what she’s talking about,” detailed Steinberg of Medusa’s meeting with Percy and company. “If you’re too young to be in that conversation, it won’t bother you. You’re just in a scene about this woman who seems complicated. And everybody’s got an opinion about what went down. There’s no version that is the version. If Athena and Poseidon were in that room, you’d get three different versions of that story.”
Echoing his showrunning partner’s rhetoric, Riordan then asserted, “There are many versions from ancient times of what happened in that temple with Medusa and Poseidon and Athena. Who’s to blame? Who’s the abuser? What’s the real story? It’s fiction, but it certainly is important to acknowledge that there is abuse involved here. Abuse of power.”
“One of the most interesting changes that informed the way she looks is that in Medusa’s point of view, the real curse wasn’t making her ugly. It was making her invisible,” he continued. “She has chosen, in this version, to own that. To be seen. To be elegant. She turns people into stone and uses that as art.”
“She has been physically changed,” Rebecca added. “She’s accepted herself the way she is, and the power that she has, but she’s also been traumatized.”
In service of this read of Medusa’s story, the character’s actress, Jessica Parker Kennedy, then revealed to Hailu “Jon wrote a story of [Medusa] thinking that [Poseidon] was someone she could trust, and he broke that trust. She was feeling safe, and then the situation turned unsafe,” and as such “I chose to play that she was a victim of rape and total abandonment, not understanding why Athena would turn on her.”
Kennedy also explained that her performance was inspired by artist Luciano Garbati’s 2008 statue Medusa With the Head of Perseus, a piece which inverts the image seen in Benvenuto Cellini’s 1545 Perseus with the head of Medusa and in recent years was used as an icon for #MeToo movement.
And it seems the actress was not the only crew member to take inspiration from this statue, as Riordan made it a point to highlight how “Another thing we did was show everybody [on the show] the statue of Medusa holding Perseus’ head — the inverted story,” as he felt “it’s a powerful piece of art to start a conversation about who’s telling the story.”
As of writing, new episodes of Percy Jackson and The Olympians hit Disney Plus every Tuesday at 9 PM EST.