Petty No More
Ladies, gentlemen, and gender non-conforming everybodies! Welcome, once again, to the Petty Olympics! *cue Olympics theme * Blood of Zeus is back for its final season, and it’s leaving it all on the floor. Under the hands-on guidance of creators/writers/producers Charles and Vlad Parlapanides, does it reclaim the glory of the last two seasons? Can the Parlapanides’ pursuit of perfection provide the peak petty we’ve come to expect? (I can’t resist alliteration sometimes, forgive me.)
Grand Opening, Grand Closing
Some shows don’t know where to close their story. You can peruse streaming platforms and find seasons five and six of something that might have wrapped up nicely in three or four. Blood of Zeus feels as though it has a mythos that could span so many seasons. The Greco-Roman pantheon is full and vast, with so many interconnected relationships across the gods, the demigods, and mortals. But that would be unfocused and as confusing as someone joining the MCU at phase four. Blood of Zeus is focused and has a story to tell. In 2025, three seasons of a hit show is a ‘hit and quit it’. And at every point, it appears that Blood of Zeus knew what it wanted to say, how it wanted it said, and understood the importance of good timing, which includes knowing when not to overstay. This creative team is focused, man!
Passing the Torch
After three seasons of reviews, there isn’t much more to say about the sleeper hit this show is. What can’t be said enough is how culture leads the way. Right out of the gate in the first season, they introduced the idea that this story is not just a reference to Greek mythology, but that what we call ‘myth’ was a religion. There were/are rituals, sayings, art, food, all associated with the things we see animated. Bringing culture to the table for the last two seasons has kept Blood of Zeus a grounded and focused fan favorite in adult animation.
Season one gave us the petty nature of these complacent gods and the mortals they mess with. Season two drove the emotional layer of the underworld, the pillar that keeps the status quo of Olympus in place. And the mortals they mess with. This third and final season is about legacy. About who has one, who deserves to leave one behind, and who gets to choose.
Architects & Archetypes
Blood of Zeus is just as pretty as it’s ever been. International collaboration at a high enough efficacy to make the UN jealous. Netflix fan favorite Powerhouse Animation, the studio behind Masters of the Universe, Seis Manos, and Castlevania teamed up with two Korean animation studios; Mua Film and Hanho Meung-Up (aka: the studio that animated my entire freaking childhood). The result is a cool animation style that delivers complexity, effects, and weight without blowing out the budget. That doesn’t mean Blood of Zeus doesn’t bring out the heavy weaponry when needed.
This third season arrives with a more philosophical feel. Gone are the minor squabbles that brought us here. Now, the focus is on ‘the path’. Blood of Zeus uses the hero’s journey to retell the origin of the hero’s journey. *puts on scholar hat * Even though the hero’s journey is as old as the first story told, it wasn’t coined until 1949, when Joseph Campbell noted and explained the ‘monomyth’. A revelation that found most stories have the same beats. Someone hears the call to action, goes and meets a mentor who teaches them to do something special. The main character screws up the first time, almost dies, comes back from being down bad, learns the special skill, kicks ass, and goes home built different. Boom. The end. Roll credits. Then mid-credit scene, “The end??” Every popular story you know has these beats. What’s dope is that many of these beats were first recorded in Greek stories and fables. So when we follow Heron and Seraphim this season, these beats are exaggerated.
Greek philosophy is one of the pillars of modern human thought. So many of those philosophers laid the groundwork for advanced thought, and that is the bit of culture that differentiates this season from the last two. Despite the high stakes, there is way less fighting this season and a lot more thinking. Blood of Zeus is giving away some free game. This is an animated philosophy class on the hero’s journey disguised as an animated series. Yeah, the visuals are fantastic, but this is also high-level narrative development. Don’t sleep on this, you’ll regret it.
The Good
Fred Tatasciore’s turn as Hades is a shining light; he so often voices grunting, angry soldier-type characters that hearing him voice with this much nuance is refreshing. We’ve seen hundreds of takes on Hades in media, but this one is the blueprint from here on. His walk on the hero’s journey is as complete as Heron’s. In three seasons, we’ve watched him evolve from a god set on petty retribution to a sad, resentful family man, to a dedicated father, husband, and son-in-law. The whole time, Tatasciore is giving us the range of a veteran voice actor.
The Petty
Listen y’all. With the stakes this high, things can only get petty. And every petty moment is a fight waiting to happen. The potential freeing of Cronos and the titan homies at the end of season two should be a harbinger of the madness to come. If your sons beat you and your homies ass and then locked you up for eternity, you might be feeling a tad bit froggy. Maybe even a bit petty.
The Hype
Without giving away too much, we finally get to see Hermes unleashed. It’s as satisfying as a Quicksilver moment in the X-Men movies and as grounded as Makkari’s scene in Eternals. There’s this beautiful aura that surrounds him in motion. Physics shouldn’t have to mean anything in fantasy worlds, but dammit, watching Hermes go straight up speedster was a thing to behold. Seeing Hermes barely slip away time after time after time kept me on the edge of my seat the entire scene. Hat’s off to the team, seriously. Unlike Black Adam, the hierarchy is actually shifting in the BoZ universe.
Closing Ceremony
Blood of Zeus seasons always come to us in times of need. Season one dropped during the COVID-19 quarantine. Season two gave us somewhere to escape after the 2024 election. As the world feels on the brink of forgetting how heroes are made, season three reminds us of the hero’s journey. And just like the real world, nothing is as it seems; everybody has a legitimate claim, and everyone is wrong as hell. It’s so messy, in a good way. Check out Blood of Zeus’ final season on Netflix right now!
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