[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 1 finale.]
All of Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 1 was leading up to the moment Percy (Walker Scobell) would battle his Olympians cousin, Ares (Adam “Edge” Copeland). Walker Scobell tells TV Insider it was the scene he most looked forward to filming, and he didn’t shy away from the physical challenge it posed. In the TV Insider video interview above, Copeland tells us all about his Ares fight training with Scobell, who was committed to making this an epic fight between the demigod and the god of war.
In the Episode 8 finale, Percy and Grover (Aryan Simhadri) found themselves on the Montauk beach after using their magic pearls to escape the Underworld in Episode 7. Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries) and Ares were waiting for them when they arrived. As the Oracle’s prophecy foretold, Percy faced the god that had turned in his effort to restore order on Olympus and prevent all-out war.
Percy needed Hades’ (Jay Duplass) helm to save his mother, Sally (Virginia Kull), from the Underworld. Ares was hellbent on getting the master bolt back from the demigod as part of his instructions from the titan Kronos. Percy challenged Ares to a single-combat fight. If he drew first blood, he kept the bolt and got the helm. The god of war laughed at first, but he learned how powerful the son of Poseidon really is in this face-off.
Their fight was an epic battle that marked one of the climactic moments of the first season. Ares was cut from the 2010 Lightning Thief movie all together, so this was the first time the Ares fight from Rick Riordan’s 2005 novel was seen on-screen. Both Scobell and Copeland were determined to get it right.
Copeland, a WWE Hall of Famer, is used to throwing adults around in the ring. When fighting Scobell, he admits “it is odd to man-handle a teenager.” There were a couple of moments where the 6’5″ 50-year-old ended a take and checked on Scobell (who was 13 at the time of filming) because his head was “going all over the place” like a bobblehead. But Scobell was unfazed and ready to keep going. As Copeland says, the young star “was just all in.”
The Ares fight in Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 1 finale (Disney)
The fight choreographers didn’t take it easy on Scobell. At one point, Copeland throws him up in the air and bodyslams him into the sand (casting a pro wrestler in this role was an inspired choice — who better to take on these kind of stunts?). For safety reasons, Scobell did every part of the fight except for the actual body-slam landing.
“I throw him up and he was hooked on a line, but then the actual landing part we switched to his stunt double [Cassandra Ebner], who is an absolute just badass,” Copeland says above. “It’s a woman, she’s probably 100 lbs. Stunt people are just awesome. They’re so similar to wrestlers, because we’re our own stunt people, so [it’s a] very similar mindset.”
Copeland and Scobell didn’t cut corners when it came to their sword fighting. “It was actually pretty physical,” Copeland says. “You have to make some contact with those swords, so there was a lot of very close physicality with that. And I’m used to that, that’s the world I come from. But he didn’t bat an eye. Like I said, he was just all in … He was excited to get to this scene.”
Scobell’s face lights up when talking about the Ares fight in our Percy Jackson finale interview. Scobell says that the young cast’s acting coach, Andrew McIlroy, was a great help while filming the fight’s climactic moment, when Ares kicks Percy across the beach. When the demigod stands back up, he uses his nautical powers to send a massive wave crashing down on Ares, turning the tide of the fight in his favor. Scobell sings Copeland’s praises for getting him “riled up” for each take, saying that his wrestling expertise elevated the entire moment.
“We did that scene so many different ways and so many different times,” Scobell shares. “I loved how every single time we did it, it was completely different and it was something new. Everyone on set, even Jet [Wilkinson, the finale’s director] and Andrew and Adam, we were all just figuring out what it should be, and I think it ended up really good.”
“That scene where I stand up to Adam and the wave comes behind me, he really helped me out,” Scobell continues. “He riled me up for that, which is really great. You don’t really think about it, but the WWE wrestlers and all those kind of people, they’re really, really amazing at acting because they’ve been doing that for years.”
“I think the Ares fight was probably the [scene] I’m proudest of because that took a lot of energy out of me,” Scobell adds. “It was 10 hours of getting thrown around and beat up in the sand, which was fun.”
Learn more about how the Ares fight was filmed in the full video interview above.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Available now, Disney+
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
