- Airdate: December 26, 2023Corresponding Chapters: 10-11
Percy, Annabeth, and Grover begin their quest for the Master Bolt of Zeus as they encounter the Furies and Medusa along the way.
"We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium" includes examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny:
- Annabeth smiles when Percy begins singing the Consensus Song. Grover tries to act annoyed, but is clearly trying not to laugh.
- Hermes can't help but smirk as he's delivering Medusa's head to Olympus, courtesy of Percy's impertinence.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: While the books played Uncle Ferdinand's fate for laughs, here Grover properly mourns when he discovers the statue of his uncle in Medusa's basement.
- Adaptational Consent: Like the book, the show uses a middle-schooler-friendly version of Medusa's myth as laid out in The Metamorphoses by Ovid. Medusa and Poseidon were a happy couple, but she grew to resent the sea god when he didn't do anything to stop Athena from punishing her. In Ovid's version of events, Poseidon raped Medusa at the Temple of Athena, and since the goddess of wisdom couldn't punish her fellow deity, she turned Medusa into a Gorgon in retribution.
- Adaptational Context Change: In the show, Annabeth realizes "Aunty Em's Garden Gnome Emporium" is Medusa's home as soon as she sees the excessive lawn ornaments. In the book, the trio didn't realize "Aunty Em" was anything but a kindly human stranger until it was nearly too late. As such, she identifies herself as Medusa from the offset and welcomes the kids into her home to give them sanctuary from Alecto.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Hermes makes a cameo in the closing minutes, personally delivering the package containing the Gorgon's head to Olympus.
- Adaptational Intelligence: In contrast to the books, Annabeth immediately figures out that "Aunty Em" is Medusa based on the statues.
- Adapted Out: The show simplifies the encounter with the Furies on the bus. In the book, the fight results in a fiery explosion that makes national news. Gabe capitalizes on the drama and starts a media circus chasing down the "dangerous juvenile delinquents" across the country. Here, likely for budget reasons, the bus remains intact and Gabe does not appear past the vision of him in Percy's visit to the Oracle. Gabe's media blitz is moved to episode five, after the incident at the Gateway Arch.
- All There in the Script: The second Fury stalking Annabeth and then is killed on the bus is Alecto's sister, Tisiphone. The third sister, Megaera, is nowhere to be seen, likely due to budgetary reasons.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: In front of the emporium are statues of dogs and pigs that were turned to stone by Medusa.
- Classical Chimera: One of the statues near the emporium is a three-headed beast consisting of a goat, an eagle, and a lion on the body of a gryphon.
- Creator Cameo: Statues of Rick and Becky Riordan are present in Medusa's collection.
- Didn't Think This Through: Grover explains his plan to distract Medusa by using the winged shoes, telling Percy and Annabeth to run when he says, "Maia!" Problem is, that's the shoes' trigger word, so he accidentally activates them and is sent flying. He even screams the trope name outright when he crashes back down.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Or in this case, a form that makes you roll your eyes in disgust. The spirit of Pythia, the sacred oracle of Apollo, fills the room with green smoke and the hazy form of Percy's much-loathed stepfather appears to recite the prophecy.
- Disabled Badass: The wheelchair-using female camper, who Percy flubbed his attempt at archery in front of, is brought forward by Chiron as a potential candidate for one of Percy's quest-mates, implicitly making her this.
- Defiant to the End: The Monstrous Humanoid statues in front of the emporium (a vampire bat-like gargoyle with tentacles, a hairless anthropomorphic Hellhound, and an actual Humanoid Abomination with one eye) seem to have been glaring at Medusa when she turned them to stone which implies they were not afraid of her.
- Freudian Excuse: Medusa's backstory is given much more emphasis than the original novel. She was a devoted worshipper of Athena who fretted that the goddess did not appreciate her piety. She started a romance with the more open, passionate Poseidon, and only then did she catch Athena's attention. Disgusted that her priestess was sleeping with the sea god, she turned Medusa into a Gorgon, and Poseidon was either too ambivalent or too cowardly to stand up for his love. Percy sees the parallel between Poseidon's neglect of Medusa and his present-day failure to do right by Sally.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: However sympathetically Medusa came to be a Gorgon, she undeniably uses her curse for evil. She has petrified hundreds of humans, animals, and monsters over the years, and makes a tidy profit off of selling her victims as outdoor décor. When the kids fail to internalize the "lessons" she is trying to teach about the gods, she decides to simply turn them to stone and send their statues to Olympus, musing that maybe then Poseidon and Athena will regret their actions.
- Gory Discretion Shot: To prevent the show's rating from reaching TV-MA territory, Percy beheads Medusa while Annabeth's invisibility cap is on. Furthermore, when Percy petrifies Alecto, his body obscures the camera's view of the severed head.
- The Heart: Grover takes up this role in the episode. With Percy and Annabeth arguing with each other early on their quest, he attempts to try to make them get along with a saccharinely sweet friendship song, because he doesn't want to upset either of them. However, after Medusa is defeated, he decides that "maybe things need to get a little upsetting" before they can feel better, and insistently urges both of them to come clean about the secrets they've been hiding, clearing the air between the trio and forming a stronger bond of trust between them.
- Horrifying the Horror: Alecto, a sadistic Fury who serves the Lord of the Underworld himself, is quick to avert her gaze the second Medusa shows up and is not to keen on joining a cursed Gorgon for lunch.
- Innocently Insensitive: Percy suggests burying Medusa's head with the invisibility hat on, unaware that it was the only gift Annabeth had ever received from her mother.
- Just Following Orders: Alecto explains to Annabeth that she doesn't actually know what the Lord of the Underworld wants with Percy. This is in contrast to the books where they are aware of his motivation.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: In front of the emporium is a small warthog-like animal that was turned to stone by Medusa.
- Monstrous Humanoid: Three of the monster statues in front of the emporium. See Defiant to the End.
- The Mountains of Illinois: Unlike the show's filming location of British Columbia, New Jersey does not have any pine forests like the one the trio wanders through. Percy lampshades this:Percy: I didn't even know they had forests in New Jersey, but we found one.
- Mythology Gag: The song Grover attempts to sing to get Percy and Annabeth to stop fighting, can be seen as a nod to another song he sung to ease the pair's tensions.
- Prophecy Twist: Percy attempts to invoke this. The oracle's riddle says that he will be betrayed by someone who calls him a friend. So he chooses Annabeth, who's been nothing but cold and distant to him, because he's confident the two of them would never be friends.
- Shout-Out: As in the books, the elevator to Mount Olympus plays aggressively cheesy music. On Hermes's ride up, we hear the theme from Arthur (1981).
- The shot of Percy, Grover and Annabeth leaving Camp Half-Blood with their backpacks calls to mind Frodo and Sam crossing the threshold of the Shire in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Bilbo in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
- Taken for Granite: Percy uses Medusa's severed head to turn Alecto to stone.
- Throwing Your Knife Always Works: Annabeth kills the second Fury by throwing her knife at her.
- Villain Has a Point: Medusa is a monster in the literal and metaphoric sense, but she's right that the gods are fallible and have not adequately served their worshippers or their demigod children.
- Wham Shot: When Percy, Grover, and Annabeth go hide in Medusa's basement, they discover thousands of human-shaped statues. In spite of Medusa's justified anger to the gods, she had remorselessly used her curse to turn not only monsters to stone, but also innocent people and animals, and sold them for tips (thus rendering her sympathetic excuses completely moot).
