Aidonian's blog

Blood of Zeus was very interesting to watch because it relied heavly on Greek mythology to tell a story. Originally meant to last 5 seasons, it was shortened to 3 seasons because of how Netflix does things. Let’s delive into the mythology behind Blood of Zeus and how it stayed true to the mythology or deviated from it. There is a lot to cover, but i will cover the main plot from the show.

Gigantomachia

This is the story of the Giants who rose up in revolt against Zeus. In the story Gaia was angry at Zeus for not releasing all of her children still trapped. So first she sends Typhon,a monstrous being who frightened the Gods so much that they fled to Egypt. Only a few remain behind to fight the beast. One of them was Zeus. In the end, Zeus was victorious so the second wave was send against the Gods the Giants.

In Blood of Zeus, the Giants are born from the blood of the Titan who died in the sea. In mythology, they were children of Gaia.In the first Gigantomachia, Herakles fought alongside the Gods like Dionysos. In Blood of Zeus, no mentioned was made of Herakles. The Giants had an strong advantage. They could be revived so long as they are on their homeland. Once removed from it, they could die and stay dead. In the show when they are revived by Hera by releasing the souls of the Giants, they couldn’t die either so long the cauldron was in their posession. The cauldron that stored their souls was a a plotdevice created by the makers.

In the myths there are no mention of how their flesh turns humans into demons. The design of the Giants was totally different in mythology than on the show. On the show they went for a more monstrous look instead of the humanlike look we usually see.At the end of season 1, Zeus dies, followed by a succession war of who will follow him as king of the Gods. In mythology there is no mention made of who would follow Zeus if he was gone. On the show Hades vied for the throne because he wanted to escape the Underworld with Persephone. Which leads to the next part.

The rape of Persephone

I like how they handled the story of rape of Persephone. In the myth, Hades fell in love with Kore (her name before she became Persepone) He went to Zeus and asked for his permission, which he relunctanly gave without informing Demeter. So when Hades abducted Kore-Persephone, Demeter was unaware of it, triggering the start of the seasons on Earth. The show took that story and went into a different direction. On the show, Persephone spurned many suitors like Ares but fell in love with Hades.Here the story is treated differently. Many interpret the story as in that Persephone was kidnapped and raped by Hades. Truth is, that is how it usually went down (more or less) during antiquity and before. A dowry was paid by the groom and he took her to his home after the wedding ceremony when the parents agreed to the match. One less savoury aspect of it, is that the girl was usually around 12-14 years old. Back than, they didn’t have any knowledge of how pregancy worked so girls were wed when they had their first period.The groom was usually a adult in his thirties. Now this will be considered pedophilia and righfully so.During that time, it wasn’t.

During the second Gigantomachia, Hades stayed neutral, not wanted to interfere in the affairs of Zeus and Hera. When Seraphim entered the Underworld, Hades forced him to work for him. The second season showed a different side of Hades we usually don’t see in media.

Death of Gods

To the best of my knowledge, no God actually dies in Greek mythology. except for Dionysos, but he was resurrected again. Herakles as a halfgod died, to be resurrected as a God on Olympos. Norse mythology, they could die. Those who died before Ragnarok were ressurected after Ragnarok.In Greek mythology, there was no such thing. On the show, Gods or even Judges who were thrown into the Abyss were annihilated with no chance of returning. Even Gods had souls, so when Kronos threw the souls of Ares and Hephaestos into it, their souls were destroyed by the pitt. In the end, Zeus returned and was resurrected with no explanation was given as to how it happened. Mostly due to the fact that the show only had 8 episodes per season and 3 seasons to tell their story. This could probably be explained when they had two more seasons. Sadly we will never get this answer.

The Giants

The choice to depict the Giants as monstrous beings was done purely for aesthetic reasons i think so that there is a clear distinction between a Giant or Titan as Titans were depicted as humanoid, while the Giants weren’t. Some Giants walked on two legs, but didn’t look human at all. In the war, Herakles fought alongside the Gods along with Dionysos to help the Gods to achieve victory. Herakles and Dionysos were absent in the show it seems. The Giants were depicted in ancient art as either spear-wielding hoplite warriors in armour or primitives clothed in animal-skins and armed with rocks and flaming brands. In sculpture and mosaic art they were usually depicted with the tails of serpents in place of legs.Which is a huge contrast with how they were depicted on the show. The ancients saw them as a tribe of hundred men. The show didn’t portray as many as that would further make it dififcult to follow.

The Titans

The Titans are a race of older Gods, also called Ouranids after their father Ouranos. Children of Ouranos and Gaia who ruled the world after Kronos dethroned his father by cutting off his genitals. Here the depiction of the Titans seems in line in how the ancient Greeks saw them. The Giants weren’t Gods, but the Titans were. Hence why the show depicted the Titans also humanoid like with the Gods, but unlike the Gods, the Titans had the ability to shrink themselves to human size or to giant size. Alfred Molina was amazing as voice of Kronos. He was the right choice for it. While in myth Kronos doesn’t die, in the show he does die at the end of the show during the showdown between Kronos & Heron & Seraphim. Like with the Giants, in order to not confuse the audience, they didn’t use all the Titans here. During the Titanomachia, some Titans chose the side of the Olympians like Prometheos and his brother Epimetheos, but also Hekate. Hekate was also featured here breifly as Kronos needed her torch as a means to find the soul of Zeus as the others have hid him from Kronos. Kronos does mention the golden age of mankind when he was king, which is a nice touch that they added to the show as the Kronia and Saturnalia was about changing the roles of master and slave for a while.

The Furies/Erinyes

These Goddesses of vengence were feared and for good reason. As the son of Agamemnon found out first hand how terrible they were when he killed his mother. The Gods send the Erinyes after him for matricide. Here they seem to be agents of Kronos who serve him. The Erinyes were born from the blood of Ouranos when it fell on the Earth after Kronos castrated his father. Some other stories tell also of this but add that when the member fell into the sea, Aphrodite was born.

Typhon

Typhon was the storm God, born from Gaia and Tartaros, but the show changed that. In the show Typhon was born when the last Titan died and fell into the sea and like with the Giants, Typhon was also born but instead of intervenen then, he listened to Python and waited until the Giants were defeated before going after the Gods. In mythology, it was Gaia who send Typhon after Zeus to defeat him. It almost worked, but in the end he was defeated. The very sight of Typhon made the Gods tremble and hide in Egypt to get away from him. In season 3 Ares references to this when he stated that he ran away once from that beast. That is what he was referring to. The show depicted Typhon also as a monstrous being with wings and dragonlike. According to myths, he was more or less depicted like that, as dragonlike, but the thing is, that Typhon was also considered a God of storms and as such he was equated with other storm Gods from other cultures like Baal or Yawheh. I digress. In myth he also went by another name: Typheous. Theoi Project states the following on Typhon/Typheous: TYPHOEUS (Typhon) was a monstrous storm-giant who laid siege to heaven but was defeated by Zeus and imprisoned in the pit of Tartaros. He was the source of devastating storms which issued forth from that dark nether-realm. Later poets describe him as a volcano-giant, trapped beneath the weight of Mount Aitna (Etna) in Sicily. In this guise he was identified with the giant Enkelados. Typhoeus was a winged giant, said to be so huge that his head brushed the stars. He was man-shaped from the waist up with two coiled serpents in place of legs. He had a hundred serpent-heads for fingers, a filthy, matted beard, pointed ears, and eyes flashing fire. According to some he had two hundred hands consisting of fifty serpent-headed fingers on each hands and a hundred heads proper–one was human, the other ninety-nine bestial (of bulls, boars, serpents, lions and leopards). As a volcano-demon Typhoeus hurled red-hot rocks at heaven and fire boiled forth from his mouth. He was seen as the personification of the destructive hurricane.The show did include that he was trapped beneath the vulcano Etna and he was released there from it by Gaia so he could free Kronos as she thought that the Olympians were unfit to rule and sought the reshape the world again. While the myths state that he is still trapped there, the show killed him off like with Kronos.