Percy Jackson Season 3: Everything We Know Before Percy Holds Up the Sky on Disney+ November 20

A teenage boy plants his feet, bends his knees and shoves both arms up against something we can't see. It's the pose of Atlas, the Titan the gods sentenced to hold up the sky, and in a teaser Disney+ unveiled at Comic-Con for Percy Jackson and the Olympians, it belongs to Percy. "It was my choice to hold the weight," he says over the image. Readers of Rick Riordan's third book know exactly where that moment is headed. Everyone else finds out starting Friday, November 20, 2026.

Disney+ announced the date at San Diego Comic-Con on July 23. Season 3 adapts The Titan's Curse in eight episodes: a two-episode premiere on November 20 on Disney+ and Hulu, then two more every week until the finale on December 11. Here's why that matters even if you never read the books. This is the first time The Titan's Curse has ever been filmed, and it's the chapter where the series stops being a summer-camp adventure and turns into a coming-of-age story about weight: what a kid agrees to carry so the people he loves don't have to.

What It Is

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is Disney+'s adaptation of Riordan's best-selling novels about a New York kid who learns he's the son of Poseidon. Season 1 covered The Lightning Thief and premiered in December 2023. Season 2 took on The Sea of Monsters in December 2025. Each season adapts one book, and the show has won a Children & Family Emmy along the way.

The new season's official synopsis is short and ominous. Annabeth has been captured by the forces of Kronos, and Percy has to rescue her, free a goddess in chains, face the Titan's curse and avoid triggering the fall of Olympus. Hanging over all of it is the Great Prophecy: one child of the "Big Three" gods (Zeus, Poseidon or Hades) will either raise Olympus to new heights or bring it down, and might not survive either way.

Spoiler warning: the next paragraph covers where Season 2 left the characters.

Season 2 brought Thalia Grace (Tamara Smart), daughter of Zeus, back to life, which makes her a second candidate for that prophecy and a rival of sorts for Percy. Luke Castellan (Charlie Bushnell) ended the season more tightly in the grip of Kronos than ever. And in a mid-credits scene after the finale, Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries) took an awkward Percy by the hand and led him onto a dance floor. It was the show's way of saying the next chapter is about these two growing up, right before the story pulls them apart.

Who's Making It

The series was created by Rick Riordan and Jonathan E. Steinberg. Steinberg, Dan Shotz and Craig Silverstein run the show as executive producers, alongside Rick and Rebecca Riordan. Jet Wilkinson joins as an executive producer on the season's last two episodes.

The speed is new. Seasons 1 and 2 arrived two years apart, but Season 3 is landing less than a year after the Season 2 finale aired in January, with filming wrapped early in 2026. For a show starring teenagers, that matters more than it sounds. The actors are aging along with their characters instead of outgrowing them between seasons.

Why It's So Anticipated

Somebody has to hold up the sky. The villain this season is Atlas, the Titan who was condemned by Zeus to carry the heavens and has now been freed. Holt McCallany, the gruff FBI agent of Mindhunter, plays him. Deadline reported that McCallany appears in six episodes as the season's main villain and that Atlas will keep causing trouble for the rest of the series. Now look at the title of Episode 7: "I Put on a Few Million Extra Pounds." Fans can do the math.

The Hunters of Artemis ride in. Dafne Keen, the feral little girl from Logan, plays Artemis, goddess of the hunt. She told Disney that her Artemis keeps her distance from mortal business and gets some real fight scenes. Saara Chaudry plays Zoë Nightshade, the goddess's lieutenant, and said she built the part around Zoë's two thousand years of history. At D23 in August, the Hunters were the ones who walked Walker Scobell onto the Honda Center stage.

Two new kids, and Riordan readers already worry for them. Levi Chrisopulos and Olive Abercrombie play Nico and Bianca di Angelo, siblings who are just discovering they're demigods. Both actors were new to the cast, and Abercrombie told Disney the two became close enough off set that she now thinks of him as a little brother. Book fans know these two matter enormously to the rest of the saga. We'll leave it at that.

Percy without Annabeth. Steinberg has said the whole show orbits the Percy-Annabeth relationship, and this season tests what happens when they're separated. Scobell describes Percy's reaction as no reaction at all: she's gone, so he goes to get her back. Notably, Jeffries greeted the Comic-Con crowd by video because she was overseas filming The Cheetah Girls: Next Gen.

It gets darker, on purpose. "Our job is to adapt the books, and the books get darker," Silverstein told Disney. The cast is older now, he added, so the show can follow.

What the Trailers Show

The official teaser premiered at D23 on August 15. Percy spends much of it haunted by dreams of the Great Prophecy, and the official description promises Percy's frantic search for Annabeth, rising tension with the Titans and a first look at the new characters. At Comic-Con, fans in Hall H also saw the opening minutes of the premiere: Percy and Thalia fighting a monster in a parking garage, before Annabeth admits they need Thalia's help to rescue two demigods. Scobell promised that crowd the season would stay true to the book.

What We Know So Far

The release schedule. Scobell announced the two-at-a-time plan at New York Comic Con on October 10, and the eight episode titles came out the same day, written in the books' cheeky first-person chapter style:

• November 20: "My Rescue Operation Goes Very Wrong" and "An Old Dead Friend Comes to Visit"
• November 27: "I Learn How to Grow Zombies" and "We Visit the Junkyard of the Gods"
• December 4: "I Have a Dam Problem" and "I Wrestle Santa's Evil Twin"
• December 11: "I Put on a Few Million Extra Pounds" and "The Gods Vote How to Kill Us"

Disney's own November schedule lists the two-episode premiere on November 20 and new episodes on November 27, on both Disney+ and Hulu. It gives dates, not a drop time.

The new faces. Along with Keen, Chaudry, Chrisopulos, Abercrombie and McCallany:

• David Costabile (Breaking Bad) as Dr. Thorn, a stern military-academy headmaster.
• Jesse L. Martin as Frederick Chase, Annabeth's mortal father.
• Ming-Na Wen as Hera, Kate McKinnon as Aphrodite, Jennifer Beals as Demeter and Hubert Smielecki as Apollo, plus Andra Day as Athena. Shotz has promised that fans' minds will be blown when they see all the gods together.

The returning cast. Walker Scobell (Percy), Leah Sava Jeffries (Annabeth), Aryan Simhadri (Grover), Charlie Bushnell (Luke), Tamara Smart (Thalia) and Nick Boraine (Kronos). Simhadri, whose Grover spent much of Season 2 away from the group, says his favorite scenes this time are with Thalia, because Grover felt that what happened to her was his fault.

A Good Time to Catch Up

Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on Disney+ now, and you have a few weeks. If you only rewatch one scene, make it that Season 2 mid-credits dance: Annabeth's hand reaching for Percy's is the last calm moment before this season's quest. If you're counting down to another fantasy season this month, our guide to The Rings of Power Season 3 covers Middle-earth's own big November premiere.

The question for Season 3 isn't really whether the show can stage a kid holding up the sky. The teaser already did it. The question is whether it can make us feel what Percy feels under all that weight: that saving his friends was never really a choice at all.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3 premieres with two episodes Friday, November 20, 2026, on Disney+ and Hulu.