One of the longest conversations regarding Stranger Things has been about the fact that the actors playing young characters are and look much too old to be playing their respective ages. This is one of the biggest challenges with making television around little kids: they grow up.
A similar problem was faced with the HBO Max show Euphoria, especially the second season, where the characters are teens in high school, and the actors playing them are in their mid-to-late 20s, making suspension of disbelief slightly more difficult.
However, the latest Disney show, Percy Jackson & the Olympians, might just manage to bypass this issue with filming stories centered around kids. Keep reading to find out how the Disney show managed to do something that even Stranger Things and Euphoria couldn't.
Percy Jackson & the Olympians has Stranger Things beat in one particular aspect
When it comes to making a television show, it is a reality of the age that shows with the same magnitude as Stranger Things or Percy Jackson & the Olympians cannot deliver a new season every year. Producing a television show involves many factors, beyond the fact that networks usually wait to assess how a current season is performing before deciding whether to renew it for future seasons.
So, by the time a new season takes life and goes through production, filming, and post-production, a lot of time has passed. For older characters, this time wouldn't make that much of a difference, but for shows centered around young kids, such as Stranger Things, Euphoria, and Percy Jackson & the Olympians, this is a major issue owing to the actors growing too old to play their young characters.
The Netflix blockbuster Stranger Things and the HBO Max blockbuster Euphoria were at the center of a lot of these conversations, as the characters were too young to be played by actors who were well into their 20s. The main characters, Mike, Eleven, Lucas, Will, Dustin, and Max, are all 17 years old, whereas the actors are aged from 21 to 24. In the teen characters, Nancy and Jonathan are 19 and 20-year-olds, whereas the actors are 30 and 31. Similarly, Robin is 19, but Maya Hawke is 27, whereas Steve is 20, but Joe Keery is 27.

Although this has long been an issue, fans have largely come to terms with it. However, Disney’s Percy Jackson & the Olympians appears to be breaking away from this pattern. Walker Scobell and Leah Sava Jeffries, who play the central kids in the show, were 13 when they were cast in the Disney show as 12-year-olds.
Percy Jackson & the Olympians Season 2 returned two years later, making the actors 15-year-olds playing 13-year-olds. If a similar track were to continue for the third season, the Disney show would also have actors aged up playing younger roles. However, Disney handed Percy Jackson & the Olympians Season 3 an early renewal, and both seasons were filmed consecutively, cutting back the gap between filming.
So, if the show were to get its desired five-season run, the material would not need to be aged up to fit the actors' ages. Nevertheless, Percy Jackson & the Olympians has not been renewed for the fourth and fifth seasons yet, but there is a huge possibility that the Rick Riordan adaptation will get its desired run, making the aging up a non-issue.
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