Series Review: Blood of Zeus – Season 1 (2020)

I love Greek mythology, have been since I was a kid. Okay, I love mythology in general, but Greek has always been at the top of the list for me. And now we have an animated Greek mythology series from the studio who gave us “Castlevania”? Sign me up!

Ladies and gents… “Blood of Zeus” season 1.

Ancient Greece. A young man named Heron (Derek Phillips) lives a fairly mundane life as a peasant. This however gets turned on its head when he learns that he is in fact the spawn of Zeus himself (Jason O’Mara), and that he now has a duty to stop a demon (Elias Toufexis) from taking over the world. So yeah, for as colorful and weird as Greek myths can be, this is a fairly standard narrative. If you can predict a part of Heron’s arc, it most definitely happens. That said, it’s still a fun story, with decent stakes and plenty of spectacle. A big, epic tale of betrayal, family, finding oneself, and ol’ thundercrack not being able to keep it in his toga. They don’t try to do anything too weird or unique with the narrative, but what we do get here is still an enjoyable, if slightly shallow, piece of Greek spectacle.

The characters in this range widely in terms of how interesting they are. Let’s start with Heron, our protagonist, a kind, heroic young man whose world gets changed after learning about his heritage as another bastard son of King Lightning dick. And I found Heron to be fairly bland. If you’ve seen a kind, heroic, skilled protagonist in a thing before, then you know what you’re getting, especially if those previous ones had some sort of destiny they weren’t too sure of at first. Anyhow, I guess he works fine, even though he’s not the most engaging character. At least Derek Phillips does a solid job with his voice work. Next, let’s talk about Electric dong himself, Zeus. A father figure who loves his son and wants him to fulfill his destiny, even if he’s not always the best at expressing some of that. He makes for an interesting character here, and Jason O’Mara is great in the role. And then we have Seraphim, our main villain for the show. He actually has kind of a fascinating arc that I don’t wanna spoil here, but I do think he is quite an interesting and compelling character. And Elias Toufexis is great in that role. We also get performances from people like Jessica Henwick, Claudia Christian, Chris Diamantopoulos, Adetokumboh M’Cormack, Matthew Mercer, Adam Croasdell, and more, all doing very well in their respective roles.

The score for the show was composed by Paul Edward-Francis (triple first name, hell yeah), and I think he did a great job. His score is big, bombastic, dramatic, and badass. If you’ve played a “God of War” game, you know exactly what kind of sound we’ve got in this score. And if not, you can probably figure it out if you’ve seen some big, epic movies with heavy brass and epic choirs and such. But just because it’s familiar doesn’t mean it’s bad, because like I said up front, it’s great!

“Blood of Zeus” was written and created for Netflix by Vlas and Charley Parlapanides, with Shaunt Nigoghossian handling all the directing. And I think they, along with everyone at Powerhouse Animation did an excellent job crafting this show. This show is incredibly well animated, giving us some beautifully handled action scenes that flow marvelously well. And even in slower, less action-packed scenes it looks beautiful. The eyes of the characters took a little getting used to, but overall I have no complaints about the visual style of the show.

This show/season has been quite well received. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 100% positive rating. And on imdb.com it has a score of 8.0/10.

Season 1 of “Blood of Zeus” may be a little generic in some of its characterization and drama, but overall it’s still a highly entertaining show that I recommend. It has a pretty good story, good characters, great performances, great music, and fantastic directing/animation. Time for my final score. *Ahem*. My final score for season 1 of “Blood of Zeus” is an 8.65/10. So while flawed, it’s still definitely worth watching.

My review of “Blood of Zeus” season 1 is now completed.

FYI, Norse is a close second in terms of the mythology rankings.