Blood of Zeus — A Netflix Original Failure
“Look at this clown, using TV Tropes for citation.”
Are you too lazy to spend four hours watching this show? That’s okay. I took one for the team and watched it so you don’t have to! Here’s the bare minimum you need to know about the show, plus some spicy analysis from yours truly to really get those brain juices flowing.
Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers!
What is “Blood of Zeus” about?
Simplistically, the show is about the blood of Zeus. Metaphorically, figuratively, and literally. The symbology of Zeus’s blood takes form in various ways. The protagonist, Heron, is Zeus’s son. He is, by definition, (a) blood (relative) of Zeus. The entire show runs on Zeus’s blood — it’s fuelled solely by his actions, which creates an interesting Ancient Greek feel to the story (more on this later). Heck, the series’s premise is Hera (Zeus’s wife) literally being out for Zeus’s blood — which we get to see lots of in the season finale!
Despite the “Bad Girls Do It Well” archetype Hera falls into (not that I’m complaining), I don’t blame her for blowing up! Zeus honestly can’t keep it in his pants (side note: an actual quote from the show, also, nobody in this show wears pants)! It’s interesting to note, however, that the show does generously lower his offspring count from a whopping 92 children to 8 children (seven bastard children; Ares, I assume, being the only child of Hera and Zeus.) Is cheating on your wife seven times better than cheating on your wife ninety times? Who’s to say?
![A screenshot of Blood of Zeus, episode 6. The subtitles read, “[God 2] How dare he? The seventh bastard child he’s sired.”](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/1*_iC2rloWwBzWCM6Sm8wk0A.png)
Heron grew up with a single mother, not knowing who his father was. He and his mother have lived outside a little podunk town all their lives. Clouds settled in overhead (courtesy of Zeus) when they moved in and have been there ever since! As such, the townsfolk don’t look upon Heron and his mom too kindly, considering they essentially condemned the town to ~two decades of cloudy weather. Imagine the amount of rickets. Yikes.
Heron finds out he is the son of Zeus. Not only that, but the old man hanging around them all his life is Zeus in disguise! Somehow, Hera never caught wind of any of this — until now. Also, demons raid the village for… whatever reason? Seraphim (really named your child “flaming serpent,” huh?), Heron’s demonic half-brother, believed to be dead by their mother, pops up. Except, he doesn’t know who either of them is, and they don’t know who he is. The demon raid separates Electra (mom) and Heron. Our protagonist gets paired up with the competent Alexia, Grand Archon of the Amazons. No, I don’t know the significance of the title. I don’t think the show does, either.
Cerberus (yes, Cerberus, Hades’s dog…? Who sent him there? Why is he there? What is the context here?) chases the pair. They get away, and the poor dog has to chew one of his impaled heads off to narrowly escape being crushed to death by falling boulders (courtesy of Heron).
The pair split up — Alexia to assist against the raid, Heron to look for his mom. Also, Heron gets weirdly targeted by Seraphim? I mean, the dude’s view of the town looks like this:
So it’s a mixture of strange but highly impressive that he’s able to single Heron out like this when he hears him call for his mom:
![Seraphim’s bident comes flying from the mountain in the background, narrowly missing Heron. The subtitles read “[explosion].” A red circle is drawn at the top of the mountain. Red text reads, “he is somewhere around here,” with a red arrow pointing at the circle.](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/1*iCh_mN6LjQZCvWbaevqONQ.png)
I wasn’t sure whether this was meant to show Seraphim as having exceptional sight and skill or if this was just one of many weird things overlooked in the series.
Either way, Heron escapes due to Zeus whispering into his ear to GTFO. A wise move, seeing as he barely managed to avoid getting skewered three times. Over by a mining shaft that the villagers are running for, Electra sees the demons heading her way and drags another lady with her to a hut to hide. Seraphim confronts the small group of townies. With the town on fire and Seraphim in front of them, there’s nowhere to go but Hades!
Seraphim, of course, has them all slaughtered, then runs off to find Alexia. She has… a really important map? Maybe the show explained it in the first episode, but I didn’t really know what was happening or why until episode three. Zeus throws Seraphim off her trail, and, in turn, Hera leads Seraphim straight to Electra using Alexia’s discarded cloak.
I have to hand it to the writers here; I am genuinely impressed that Electra lasted not one, not two, but THREE whole episodes! The instant I saw her, I could see her death written in the stars. And because our protagonist needs more angst, Heron finds his mother right when she’s about to be killed. He gets so close to being there for her, their hands outstretched toward each other… but he will never feel the loving touch of his mother ever again.
Electra had to die. If we say it enough times, maybe it will become true. Otherwise, where would our male hero be without the death of dear old mom? And in a very Oedipus-style turn of fate, Seraphim has killed his birth mother without even knowing it!
So, that’s the entire first half of the season, essentially. Hera gives Seraphim some angst fodder to turn him against Zeus, but what’s funny is he doesn’t really seem to give a damn for the rest of the series beyond murdering his uncle. More on that later.
The second half entails… two or three wars going on at once. Gods against Gods, humans against demons, demons against Gods, TITANS against Gods against humans against demons against… Gods? It sounds messy, but I genuinely enjoy conflict-of-interest scenarios in media. While it could have been better written, it was entertaining, even if somewhat predictable.
TLDR; Zeus dies. Heron is a hero. Happily ever after…?
What did Blood of Zeus do well?
As a Castlevania enjoyer, I obviously adore the art style. It’s a good mix of American cartoon and Japanese anime styles, plus some of the character design in this series reminds me of a comic I need to catch up on. I will be a little predictable here, but my favorite design is Seraphim’s. I mean, we all like a bad boy, don’t we?
Another thing I absolutely love about Seraphim is his voice. Elias Toufexis does a fantastic job voicing him, and frankly, I’m a bit surprised that the guy hasn’t had more voice-acting roles. He has the perfect voice for video game villain type-casting. The rest of the voice acting in the show is phenomenal as well. I literally have no complaints. In fact, I initially forgot it was even something to be considered when judging the show — that’s how natural the voice acting felt to me. While browsing for vindication through others’ opinions on the show, I’ve noticed that I haven’t read a single comment on the voice acting either.
I don’t mean to harp on the character design, but it’s genuinely so good. There are so many depictions of Greek gods out there, so it can be hard to come up with something truly new. Did Blood of Zeus come out with some earth-shattering, never-before-seen designs? No. But that’s the beauty of it. With a lot of the characters, they managed to make the designs feel modern and relatable while also tying in their ancient Greek origin.
Despite taking place in Ancient Greece — despite the main antagonists even being gods — the show had a down-to-earth and everyday-life feel at certain points. At the story’s core is a couple struggling with their marriage after one has been unfaithful. I’ve seen stories solely operating on that premise that didn’t feel as real to me as Blood of Zeus did. And maybe it’s because of the exaggeration we receive in the show, where Hera’s actions come across as large as her emotions. It feels more realistic, in a way, because there’s something human and believable at the center of each character that causes them to do what they do.
Another thing the show got right was, whether intentionally or not, the feel of a good, classical Greek myth. More than that, it had serious ancient theatre vibes — theatre at the time was for catharsis as much as it was to teach people that the gods are strong and they will have their way. (Oedipus, anybody?)
The entire ordeal of the world at large (or, I guess, that particular portion of Greece) becoming a shitshow because Zeus couldn’t keep it in his pants is… very on-brand, actually. It’s laughable that this whole thing is over a chump who can’t stick with his wife (adult communication 101, anyone?), but I’m pretty sure Greek gods have done more for less.
Hopscotching back to the color design for a moment — while I can’t say that the entire show was colorful (not a criticism), the moments where color was used… by golly, that color was used. One of my favorite scenes was when The Fates summoned Heron. I’m a complete slut for glowing cyan, so obviously, this was already going to be a hit for me. Still, I also adore the artists’ take on the three Fates.
Their designs have serious Avatar vibes (the animated cartoon, not whatever the hell James Cameron did). The choice to depict the Fates as three versions of one person — young, middle-aged, and old — was visually exciting and made sense narratively. The idea that the Fates depict how, in their eyes, everything is happening now and all at once. Although I’ll be honest, I didn’t catch onto that when I initially watched the series! Some of the best artistic decisions in media are the not-so-obvious details. It was subtle and didn’t bash you over the head with, “isn’t this such a cool concept?”
Looking back, another artistic decision I enjoyed was the intro title — I loved how it changed each episode. The animations used to reveal each title card were also refreshing, as most shows don’t take the time and effort to include this sort of detail. I especially appreciated how each title worked the corresponding episode’s story into the design as well. This is yet another one of those little details that make watching a show worthwhile! It was super creative, each of the designs was fantastic, and it’s a terrific way to set the series apart from others.
While going through the episodes again, I also want to touch on Electra’s part in the story. While I snarked about Electra’s death earlier, I do actually appreciate that she didn’t die in the first episode. Technically speaking, she lasted almost half the story. There’s a lot of media out there that can’t be said about. It would have been refreshing to have Electra last the whole story, but losing a good parent (or important guardian figure) is almost a pillar in stories like these. So while I’ll jest about it in good fun, I ultimately respect the writing decision on that front.
She also delivers some critical exposition to the protagonist and audience. How the story recounted a single event multiple times and kept it interesting each time is a sign of good writing. I would go as far as to say that those were perhaps some of the most interesting parts of the series. It’s hard to write flashbacks interestingly without making them cheesy. In Blood of Zeus, I feel that they did an excellent job of incorporating them into the story and having them make sense in context.
What did Blood of Zeus do poorly?
Well… *flipping pages on my clipboard*
Firstly, the story was too big for 8 episodes. I’ll discuss possible reasons for shortcomings in the show later, as many of these points tie together, but this one is my main complaint. I’m sure with enough trimming down, the writers could have coherently had a well-written, well-paced story. The thing is, I like the story, and there wasn’t much that I felt needed to be trimmed. While there’s always something in a story that can be cut, it comes down to the point where the story itself may begin to suffer from a lack of content.
More than a few plot points come to mind when I think about what I would have liked to see more of. In episode six, “Back to Olympus,” Heron undergoes training because, supposedly, he is The Chosen One, and the world’s fate rests upon his shoulders. There are hints throughout the series that Heron may have unrealized demigod powers he inherited from his father. During this scene, Zeus implies that as well, hinting that Heron may still have discoveries to be made about himself.
The biggest disappointment for me is that the story had potential. While it didn’t quite get as much steam behind it as Carmen Sandiego did, the way Blood of Zeus was presented is comparable to the ending of Carmen Sandiego. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll just say that it should be a crime to cut production on shows in their prime. I’m shaking my old man’s fist at Netflix and yelling at them.) It felt like Netflix ignored their two-and-done method of producing shows and skipped straight to cutting Blood of Zeus before it even left the gates.
I’m not sure whether I would have preferred a cliffhanger versus a rushed story, though, and the fact that I can only choose one or the other in some cases is unfortunate. (Cursing capitalism and its ways. In a perfect world, all art would be free to create, and we immortals would have as much time needed to perfect it. Sigh.) While I ultimately respect the decision to tell the whole story in one season (I have a feeling that a second season is off the table — and if they do get a second season, I’m calling favoritism), there are some loose ends that didn’t get tied up.
Completing a story in a satisfactory manner while leaving potential leads for future content is a challenging task. In the case of Blood of Zeus, I can’t really say they did a great job of it. In fact, I can’t really tell what they were going for with the ending if anything. The fact that Zeus’s sword is still at the bottom of that ocean bothers me. Something that powerful exists, and yet it’s just… chilling there? Completely forgotten? (To be entirely fair, I think it runs in the family. Just look at Hades and his bident. Total nonconcern from that one.) And what happened to Hera? I don’t believe she’s dead because they could have just had her die onscreen.
As a matter of fact, I don’t even think Zeus is dead (“Never count someone dead unless you have the body in front of you”). If he is, I think it was a stupid decision, artistically. I mean, that’s Zeus we’re talking about. That’s like, God of Gods, you know? Is he really just gonna die like that? Nah. I don’t buy it. But if he really is dead… it’s a stupid way to end the series.
Killing him off essentially leaves nothing for a future story. In the case of a surprise second season, I would like to argue that the Not Quite Dead trope sucks and is overdone. Not an opinion but an undeniable fact. My thoughts on this are literally law, and if you don’t like it, you can go cry to Schrödinger about it.
Another thing worth mentioning (and, disclaimer, take this with a grain of salt as white as my skin) is something that I’ve seen in other media. There will be diversity in character race, but really only in the sense that, yeah, that character sure is… not white. As the TV Tropes page points out, “This can be considered an easy way to add visual diversity to a work when the author doesn’t want to deal with real-world racial issues” and can be “the result of trying to avoid Monochrome Casting while having Only Six Faces — everyone looks the same except for coloring anyway, it’s just that this one has darker skin.”
To be frank, the trope at hand is also much more nuanced than “I can’t tell where you come from” (as I’ve seen many others take away from it). There’s also the consideration that an “ambiguously brown” character can be representation in and of themselves. I’ve read well-written posts on how to avoid this trope while writing characters. To quote the previous link, something important to consider is this: “Do you want diversity, or do you want representation?”
Both are important. However, an indecisive middle ground can often fall into the “Ambiguously Brown” trope. As the linked source explains, “You don’t have to 1 to 1 code a culture. But for actually differentiating between people, you’re going to need more than one point of reference beyond looks…Diversity is more than physical appearance.”
(If it’s not obvious, I recommend reading through the post since I’m by no means the best source for this conversation.)
When speaking of technical issues, they are abundant in Blood of Zeus. The animation was incredibly cheap! I thought I would be in for a treat with Blood of Zeus because of how well Castlevania was animated. Instead, I found myself laughing at several moments in the show when the animation was distractingly bad. Various things like awkward movement, too-little-frames, and cheap Adobe Animate tween-sliding of assets plagued the show from the first episode.
The entire time, I joked that they were saving their budget for the season finale. Then the season finale came, and, well, it was average at best in terms of animation. If you go to watch it after reading this, just keep in mind that some of the scenes play out like a Powerpoint slide.
Also, RIGHT after the averagely-animated Big Battle, this is what you’re hit with, a la Twinkle Nora Rock Me!:
While I discuss this more in-depth later, everything in this show reeks of “we didn’t have enough time!” Earlier, I mentioned how weird the scene where Seraphim and Heron initially met was. Going through the show again, we saw that same exact aerial shot multiple times throughout the first few episodes. While I understand and appreciate the mantra of “work smarter, not harder,” I feel that in episode three, they could have, at the very least, zoomed in on the image.
And THIS part…
Allow me, for a moment, to go off on a tangent.
The beginning text is forgettable and tacky. I completely forgot about it until I had to rewatch this episode. If it’s going to be there, it needs to serve a real purpose for the narrative — and this just doesn’t. Not only that, but it’s not visually interesting whatsoever. The font is cheap-looking, there are no eye-catching effects, and, worst of all, it’s simply presented on a solid black background a la Youtube videos made in Windows Movie Maker from 2010.
For starters, this isn’t Star Wars! Text at the beginning of a show or movie will come off as cheesy and desperate (“please watch my show!”) if it isn’t done correctly. The text at the start of Blood of Zeus is the perfect example of how not to do it. I suspect it may have even been added in after the completion of the show as an attempt to retain its audience through the first few episodes.
It states that Blood of Zeus is a Greek tale lost and forgotten due to oral storytelling traditions of the time. Keeping in mind the rest of the show, I don’t see the purpose of including this detail! We don’t need to be told that this cartoon is fictional — we already know that. If the first episode had been rememberable at all, this could have affected the audience’s ability to suspend disbelief. Secondly, and this is just personal taste, I don’t appreciate the insinuation that this is a real Greek tale.
Blood of Zeus claiming to be a “real Greek myth!” reminds me of those paranormal movies that claim they’re “based on a true story!” for shock value. While having a sentiment like that on a movie poster may be a good way to draw people to the movie theatre, putting it in the actual content itself comes off as desperate. It’s like if I posted a video on YouTube, but the first thirty seconds are just me promising that the video is going to be awesome and that they definitely won’t regret watching the whole thing. Doing something like that is going to make your viewers question if it really is worth watching — because if it is, surely they would be allowed to decide for themselves?
With how much story Blood of Zeus needs to cover in eight episodes, every second of the show counts, and the starting text just wasted a minute of it.
Another issue I take with the series is the characterization of… some of the characters.
Most of the characters.
All of the characters?
I’ll dive into this further later, but I found this Reddit post to have a pretty apt description of Heron:
Heron has very little personality besides, I guess(?), rage, although it’s only talked about for, like, two seconds and then never mentioned again. He’s like a male version of the sexy lamp test. Seriously. Go through the series in your mind’s eye and replace him with a sexy lamp (or object of your choosing). The guy is there… FOR NOTHING! All he cares about is his mom. Then she dies, and he’s… *spins wheel* the Chosen One? I dunno.
Seraphim’s character developed more as the series progressed. His characterization in the latter half of the show was superb! I could see what the writers were going for, especially with the end scene between him and Hades. They ALMOST had me feeling bad for him…
…until you remember he killed a bunch of random people at the start of the series for literally no reason. Go ahead and state all your good faith claims, but you won’t change my mind. The man’s character is inconsistent throughout the show. It reads like the first draft of a character arc, as if the writers neglected to go back and make his story more congruent. Narratively he goes from a ruthless killer to misunderstood babygirl who “would never kill a child.” His actions doth make no sense, sire.
Blood of Zeus also suffers from too many characters, which contradicts the First Law of Metafictional Thermodynamics: “If a character or setting is added, then the plot will slow down so that the character or setting can be properly introduced, other characters or settings will fall Out of Focus, if not outright Put on a Bus.” This leads to a handful of characters that ultimately serve no narrative purpose.
Why am I complaining about useless human characters and not any of the gods? Because I’m biased as hell, and obviously, I want to see Greek gods in the show about Greek gods.
[how the giant’s remains were discarded??? are there any demon fish that ate from the flesh? do they just not…. decompose?? ew.]
the reveal of who zeus is w/ ares because i didnt get that. solely so i can use that meme i made. also the law of interference?????
Why do you think the show failed?
Simply put, it was set up to fail by Netflix executives. We’ve seen that the studio that worked on Castlevania can do great work. When watching interviews of the Parlapanides brothers, they’re clearly passionate about their work and believe in what they’re creating! I can only imagine that many of the artists working on the show felt the same way, and it is genuinely a travesty that the show bombed the way it did.
The biggest thing to me, which I touched on in the previous section, is that the show felt rushed.
What would you do differently?
Disclaimer: it’s easy to look at art and say, “Well, if I made this, I would have…” From an artist’s perspective (what, you think all I do is write?), art is a process. Sometimes, a project needs more time or effort than we can give it, or we look at something after we’ve finished it and go, “Damn! XYZ is a great idea. I wish I had thought of that while working on this.”
Creating art, at its core, is ultimately a way of self-expression. Did the team who worked on Blood of Zeus effectively communicate what they were trying to express? That’s only for them to say.
We start with some action between Alexia’s men and Seraphim’s demons. It catches the audience’s attention, introduces future core conflict, and the animation here is pretty decent as well. With the rest of the series in mind, I would keep this beginning, then transition to the scene in episode three where Heron is in the village calling for his mom. It’s okay if we don’t know who is who right now — all that can be explained later. The most important thing right now is proving to the audience that watching this show is going to be worth it. We’re starting the series with a tense, action-filled scene. It’s critical to keep that momentum going and, if possible, increase the tension. Show us who the important characters are and make the viewers want to know what happens next.
Unfortunately, the show doesn’t do that. While it started strong, the narrative wilts two minutes into the episode as the demons flee from Alexia. Why did they flee? I’m not sure. From how Seraphim punished his injured follower in a later episode, I’m fairly confident he wouldn’t take kindly to this group running away from a few soldiers. With an aerial shot of Heron’s village, we develop the idea that the demons are headed toward it.
The other parts of the first few episodes could be cut away. Episodes one and two, and most of episode three, all contain information that ultimately could have been worked into later parts of the story. The amount of exposition in the first three episodes only slowed the story down and, ultimately, ended up losing the majority of its audience’s interest. I only stuck around past the first two episodes (keep in mind, that’s an entire hour of boredom — practically a century in ADHD time) because I was stubbornly determined to finish the show.
The demon raid mentioned in episode one doesn’t even happen until two episodes later.
I realize now that where I felt strange about Seraphim’s first battle with Heron, the reason the entire scene felt logistically odd is that the artists simply reused this frame instead of painting another background. For the sake of having that scene feel more natural, it would have been beneficial to create a separate background to depict Seraphim’s position. He’s just simply too far away from the village for his battle with Heron to make any logistical sense.
A different way to solve this, although the scene still would feel strange at the time, is to show Seraphim having super-vision/hearing later in the show. A viewer is more likely to be forgiving if they’re proven wrong about something (“Oh, I see, XYZ was intentional!”) than if the issue is left unaddressed.
