After seven weeks of Wednesday episode drops, the finale of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” season two finally aired on Jan 21. The season as a whole had me incredibly split, and the finale is the sum of the reasons why.

The finale was an amazing episode in general. Tensions were high, the actors were on point and the pacing was even. My eyes were glued to the TV the entire time. If this episode was part of an entirely original concept, it would’ve been groundbreaking. However, it wasn’t an original premise. It was an adaptation of book two of the “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” series, “The Sea of Monsters.” When you look at the finale through the lens of adaptation, the show falls flat with inaccuracy, making me incredibly worried for its future.

No series will ever have an absolutely perfect adaptation from the book. However, with “Percy Jackson,” the TV show’s biggest selling point was exactly that. Fans hated the 2010 and 2013 films due to the inaccuracy, which the author Rick Riorden himself agreed with. When the show was announced, it promised a book-accurate show with no major changes besides small details to “flesh things out.” Having each book be covered by an entire season of 45-minute episodes rather than a one hour-and-a-half long movie gave it potential to not only be good, but be an accurate version fans have been dying for since the movies’ failure. Instead, we got multiple massive changes throughout the season, made for shock value, rather than trying to improve the story the show is trying to tell.

The season finale changed one of the major plot points from the book. This change for the character of Thalia Grace (Tamara Smart) makes the decisions made in the third book, “The Titan’s Curse,” make no sense. If they want the outcome of the third season to be the same as the book, the writers have to make more major changes. This could potentially make season three even more inaccurate, further disappointing fans and increasing the probability of negative reception.

Despite the inaccuracies, the episode was not without its strengths. The budget for visual effects was given a clear upgrade for the finale, giving viewers a sign that season three will also be higher quality in production value. However, for positive reception, a TV show like this must also be a good and satisfactory adaptation, to which the finale was not.

While the finale was a fantastic episode of a regular TV show, it was a worrying episode as an adaptation of “Percy Jackson.” It makes me wonder if Riorden has even read his own books, or if he’s trying to use the show as a rewrite for what he’d wish he’d done differently. If that is the case, I beg of him to just write a new story rather than try to change something fans already love.