Debuting in 2020, Blood of Zeus was another impressive addition to Netflix’s animation library. Created by Charley and Vlas Parlapanides, the series explored a brewing conflict between the Greek Gods, further complicated by demigod heroes like Heron and dangerous wildcards like Sepharim. Now, almost four years after the debut of Heron’s adventures, Season 2 is ready to bring audiences back to Olympus — and far beyond.
Blending the show’s impressive eye for stylistic violence with a greater exploration of the human dramas that infect the godly Greecian pantheon, season 2 builds off the events of the first season in exciting ways. Beyond testing the Gods and those who would stand against them, the show also explores the way legends can shape love, and vice versa. Sitting down with TVBrittanyF ahead of Blood of Zeus‘s Season 2 Netflix debut on May 9, Charley and Vlas Parlapanides discussed their intentions for the major relationships of Season 2, the season’s biggest surprises, and tease their plans for Season 3 (and beyond).
Brandon Zachary: After the critical success of Season 1, I can imagine there was probably some pressure coming into Season 2 of Blood of Zeus. How did that impact your approach to this new batch of episodes?
Charley Parlapanides: To be honest, it was a blessing. Season 1 of Blood of Zeus was probably the most positive experience we’ve had professionally. We just couldn’t wait to jump back into that arena. You have to understand, we finished writing the first season of Blood of Zeus in 2018 and then the show didn’t come out until 2020. So we were constantly talking about, ”Well, if we get another season, this is what we could do. This is where the story could go.’ ‘
So when the call finally came in? We were ready… As a writer, you don’t have a paycheck every two weeks. Your most valuable asset is your time. Despite that, we would constantly drift back to Blood of Zeus. We knew we had to work on new material because there was no guarantee there wouldn’t be a Season 2. When that call came in, we were chomping at the bit. We couldn’t wait to dive back in.
Vlas Parlapanides: That’s exactly right. We had done so much work before we actually got the green light. We had 25 pages of what we thought the Season 2 would be, because we’re crazy [Laughter]. Even though we didn’t immediately get the green light, we just went ahead and were jotting things down and always talked about the story. So when we did get the official word, there wasn’t pressure, in some weird way. We were just excited, naive, stupid, all those things combined. Because there should have been pressure, but there wasn’t.
CP: To be honest, we were just grateful to be working. When Netflix ordered Season 2, it was November of 2020. That was during the height of the Delta surge. All our friends in live-action weren’t working, everything was shut down. No one knew what they were going to do to survive. Then we had this lifeline of a show that we love working on and that we’d been talking about.
We had written a pilot for MGM at the time. After we would hand it in and were waiting for notes, we would always drift back to what other seasons of Blood of Zeus would be like. We started writing ideas down into a document, and then we would talk to [Shaunt Nigoghossian], our Season 1 director. He’d be like, “Oh, that’s cool! How about we do this?” It was such a blast.
BZ: Sepharim went from being the primary threat in Season 1 to almost a co-lead in Season 2. Was that always the intention for the character, and how did you approach balancing his newfound focus without losing time with Heron?
CP: One of the notes that we got from our creative exec at Netflix, Brandon Mattingly, was
“Fundamentally, this show hangs on the relationship between these two brothers.” That’s something that we kind of took to heart. The truth is, this originated as a deconstruction of the Hercules story. We always loved the fact that Hercules and his brother [Iphicles], who wasn’t a demigod, went and were on the Argo with Jason. They went on these adventures together. We were like, “Well, wouldn’t it be interesting if instead of them being allies, they could be adversaries?”
So that’s how the idea of Haron and Seraphim bumping heads in the first season came about. What if we spin it so they’re long-lost brothers, and now they have become adversaries? But Brandon said, “This show fundamentally hangs on them.” Even though we wanted to explore the Hades and Persephone story… [Heron and Seraphim] are always at the heart of the show for us. We always thought that was smart advice. That’s kind of the spine and everything else hangs off of that.
VP: It is by design. We wanted to start off Seraphim at a certain point. When you first meet him, he’s pretty ruthless. He’s done some horrible things. We wanted to see if we could take him and then put him on a journey… Season 2 was like breaking not quite the midpoint of his arc, but before the midpoint. It was about sharing with the audience something about Seraphim that they didn’t know before. Giving them a new awareness of him. Hopefully, we’ll be able to continue that journey if we’re afforded the opportunity to, you know, get more seasons with it.
We think that’s just an interesting journey for the character. We share an awareness with the audience that they didn’t have about the character, but also the brothers learn more about each other. When they do learn more about each other, they empathize with each other a little bit. So we wanted to start them off adversarial, where they’re really far apart and they want to kill each other. We would love to get to a point where they’re actually working together, where they would even die for each other. So that’s the eventual arc of their relationship, which we hope that we can fully explore.
BZ: You mentioned Hades and Persephone, which is a particularly powerful focus this season as well. It’s almost a direct contrast to the toxic relationship between Zeus and Hera in Season 1.
CP: We felt that Zeus and Here really did have the epitome of a toxic relationship. we just thought, what would be interesting is to do the antithesis with them to make them complete. Each one makes the other better. They truly love each other and support each other.
VP: They’re complimentary.
CP: It’s kind of like the early seasons of House of Cards where the two of them are working together in their plans. We wanted it to be a love story in a lot of ways, but a tragedy. I mean, it’s Greek, it’s got to be a tragedy.
VP: If you’re familiar with Greek mythology, there are some things that you know about Hades. There are some things you know about Persephone. We want to kind of present them and present their relationship in a way where, if you’re familiar with Greek mythology, you can say, “Oh, that’s why that came about, why people believe that, this is kind of what’s in the canon.” What’s the traditional version? Well, maybe Demeter made up that lie that he actually had stolen or taken Persephone against her will and had his way with her.
Where did that come from? How did that seep its way into the mythological story as well? Some people took it literally. Well, maybe Demeter made up that rumor. That’s just our take on it. But what we tried to do is — people that are familiar with the mythological tales, they can enjoy some of the insights. They can enjoy the stories. But the people who aren’t familiar with those mythological stories can still enjoy the story as just a good drama. I love that.
CP: If you’re taking stories that are 1000s of years old, they have a different sensibility… We just thought it was a cool story idea.
VP: It was a cool creative choice. One of the things that we talked about quite a bit is that we didn’t want to portray Hades as the evil mustache-twirling bad guy. We wanted to make him as three-dimensional as we could. We wanted the audience to really kind of understand his wants and to even be rooting for him. One of the themes of the season is how far would you go for your family? How far would you go to prevent them from pain? To prevent them from being torn apart year after year for eternity?
CP: We always just look at what is intrinsically true of the character, based on the things that we know. In a lot of the ancient poems, they say [Hades] is very wealthy, that he has these vast kingdoms. But they also talked about his loneliness, and that he’s surrounded by the dead. So we just took that and humanized it. If we couldn’t see our wife half the year, that would be awful. That would be awful that first year and then to do it every year? You have children and they’d be aware of that — if your wife goes out for a day, the kids are already crying. Lalone half a year. Even though they’re gods, they still have human relations. You try and play that up, and then let that drive their actions. Then we understand why they’re doing these things for the people they love.
BZ: You have a lot of characters to play with in the show — looking back to the early days of developing the season, which character would you say surprised you the most in Season 2?
VP: The biggest surprise for me — I’ve shared this with Charlie, the thing that I’m most proud of, I didn’t even write. The thing that I most want to share in the show was something Charlie wrote. It’s this bit about forgiveness. Gaia shares it and wants to teach it to the gods, about how important [forgiveness] is. I didn’t see it coming, in all honesty. Not the way it came about, in a really organic way. I remember when he first pitched me the idea, I was like, “I don’t know if that’s gonna work, bro. To be honest with you. I don’t know.” I think he pulled it off and pulled it off beautifully. That was a real surprise. It’s something that I’m very proud of, and something I really want to share with the world. Especially now, with everything that’s going on. I hope that resonates.
CP: It’s funny, because Marcus Aurelius wrote about anger. He was a stoic, and he said “There was never a time where I lost my temper where I’m glad that I did.” He said when you’ve been wronged, how you react reveals your character… It’s just interesting. He was the ruler of the world. And he never thought it was good that he lost his temper. Then you start thinking about things. Then you think about forgiveness in general. The world needs it now more than ever.
What can you share about a potential Season 3 of Blood of Zeus?
CP: So, ten days after Season 1 launched, they called us and said they were ordering Seasons 2 and 3. Even Netflix’s media people put out that Seaosns 2 and 3 are being ordered. Then they changed it to just Season 2. There are still articles that say Seasons 2 and 3 have been ordered. Their marketing people said, “Just talk about Season 2 and tell them that people have to watch if they want to get more, because they want the audience to feel they earned it.” So I don’t know. We’d tell you everything. But I don’t know.
VP: I would frame it this way. I would I would ask everyone, to please watch Season 2. Yeah. If you want to get more Blood of Zeus — and it won’t take four years for the third one to come out, because we’re pretty much there.
CP: We could have it out by December if that’s when Netflix wanted to launch it. But they told us that if people watch Season 2, they’ll go forward… and then depending on how Season 3 performs, we can get Seasons 4 and 5 for Blood of Zeus. We’ve kind of engineered Season 3 where it feels like it could be a fitting conclusion, but there’s a thread we can pull to keep going on. And we really want to.
VP: We have a lot of story left to tell.
Blood of Zeus Season 2 premieres May 9 on Netflix
Article content is (c)2020-2024 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram.