Percy Jackson Author Rick Riordan Says Marvel Plays Fast and Loose With Norse Mythology — His Loki Doesn’t
Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan, no stranger to Norse legend, weighs in on Loki, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most bittersweet character, in an interview with The Guardian.
Two fandoms crashing together today: Rick Riordan once had thoughts about Marvel's Loki, Percy Jackson season 2 is rolling out on Disney+, and there is a fresh round of chatter about Loki and Thor sharing the screen again in a future Avengers movie. Yes, that is a lot of myth, multiverse, and middle-school demigods in one place. Let’s break it down.
Rick Riordan on Loki, Marvel, and sticking closer to the myths
Back in 2015, when he launched his Norse mythology book 'Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer', Rick Riordan talked to The Guardian about how Marvel handles the old Viking tales. He grew up reading Thor comics and enjoys the movies, but he wanted his version to feel a lot more like the original stories.
"They play fast and loose with the Norse myths. I wanted my version to be closer to the original. Loki is a great character in the old Viking stories."
In Magnus Chase, Riordan said he wrote Loki the way he acts in the myths: clever, funny, mercurial, silver-tongued, and quick to anger. If you know his other series — 'Percy Jackson & the Olympians', 'The Heroes of Olympus', 'The Trials of Apollo' — you know he’s big on grounding the chaos in the source material, even when the jokes are flying.
Percy Jackson on screen: movies, then Disney+ — and now season 2
The Percy Jackson books first hit live action as movies with Logan Lerman, Alexandra Daddario, Sean Bean, and company. More recently, Disney+ rebooted the franchise properly with 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians', whose first season premiered in December 2023.
Season 2 is here, and according to Radio Times, the first two episodes arrive Wednesday, December 10, 2025, with new episodes dropping weekly on Wednesdays through January 21, 2026. The episode titles and dates are very old-school Riordan — blunt, funny, and absolutely not subtle about the chaos incoming.
- Season 2 episode 1 — 'I Play Dodgeball with Cannibals' — December 10, 2025
- Season 2 episode 2 — 'Demon Pigeons Attack' — December 10, 2025
- Season 2 episode 3 — 'We Board the Princess Andromeda' — December 17, 2025
- Season 2 episode 4 — 'Clarisse Blows Up Everything' — December 24, 2025
- Season 2 episode 5 — 'We Check In to CC's Spa & Resort' — December 31, 2025
- Season 2 episode 6 — 'Nobody Gets the Fleece' — January 7, 2026
- Season 2 episode 7 — 'I Go Down with the Ship' — January 14, 2026
- Season 2 episode 8 — 'The Fleece Works Its Magic Too Well' — January 21, 2026
If you want the quick status check: the show is streaming on Disney+ and season 2 starts with a double drop.
So, about Loki: which Loki are we even talking about?
Quick refresher, because Marvel made this knotty on purpose: the Loki who died in Avengers: Infinity War — the one who tried to stop Thanos and went out protecting Thor and their people — is gone. The Loki starring in the Disney+ series is a variant who slipped away with the Tesseract during the 2012 Battle of New York timeline detour in Avengers: Endgame. That version is not the mainline Earth-616 Loki, which is why the character development you’ve watched on the series hasn’t crossed Thor’s path yet. Dramatic irony by way of time theft.
In the show, Loki eventually gets stuck in a loop of time weirdness and winds up shouldering a very, very big job that puts him about as far from 'mischief' as Marvel has ever taken him. Great arc. One tiny problem: Thor hasn’t seen any of it.
Will Marvel put Thor and the series Loki back together?
Here’s where the rumor mill kicks up: the current scuttlebutt around an upcoming MCU team-up film called 'Avengers: Doomsday' says Loki will be part of the Avengers lineup alongside Thor and the new Captain America, with a release date floated for December 18, 2026. If that sticks — emphasis on if — it would finally get the brothers back on the same screen and pay off the character work the Disney+ series did for Loki.
To be crystal clear: that lineup and date are being reported out there right now, not officially carved in Uru by Marvel. If it all comes together the way people are suggesting, though, it would neatly solve the lingering issue where Thor has no idea what his alternate-timeline brother has become.