now that the show is over, i’m slowly revisiting things that are less fundamentally dysfunctional and more symptoms of the overall problems. one of those is hephaestus. the way his disability is so… reduced is. almost incredible. like, they started off on the right foot casting a disabled man, i appreciate that, but the way they utilize hephaestus’ disability, or rather don’t, leaves a lot of room to be desired.
first off, allow me to be annoying by saying he is not there in the book—but i don’t think the decision to add him is inherently a poor choice. it could work.
in the lightning thief, the way the kids get out of his trap is through annabeth’s intelligence in an action-packed scene. in the show, i was alright with the fact they changed the trap—foolishly assuming they were going to actually make something different of equal craftsmanship—but the end result is one of many instances of sacrifice way too early in the series, and an utterly underwhelming solution to that sacrifice—annabeth literally just asks hephaestus to free percy and. he does? i thought she was going to figure out how to reverse the throne’s trap; while she’s not a child of hephaestus, you’d think a child of athena with a passion for architecture would have some understanding of mechanics. it would have been different from the book, maybe not the best approach, but still emotionally satisfying. but alright, we’re… making an emotional appeal to hephaestus. putting aside my feelings about her rant of what exactly it is that makes percy different and worth freeing, why is the show’s hephaestus… so generally underwhelming?
my man was tossed from the fucking heavens by a parent—in pjo it’s hera—they could have visually used that to show hephaestus, like annabeth, does not want to repeat his mother’s cold and selfish ways. but he’s just. alright, first just look at these two guys.
before we get to the meat and potatoes, tell me which of these two guys look like they’ve spent a millennia in a workshop? the guy covered in grease and sweat, dressed in a stain-littered apron, tool belt at his side, muscle built for lifting heavy parts and swinging a hammer century after century? or the man with a neatly brushed, trimmed, washed beard and head of hair, clean hands, remarkably unstained sweater and flannel, crisp, new overalls, and academic-looking glasses? which looks to you like the embodiment of blacksmiths and the flame of the forge? yeah. but that can all be lumped in with my other wardrobe complains of the show, now we get to the section of this post where i would like to tread lightly.
i want to start by saying not all disability is visual, or even overtly visual, but hephaestus’ is and that visual is important to his character and the story. as a disabled person, i love that they cast a disabled actor, but based on how it was handled in the show, i had no idea this man was disabled. i thought he was an able bodied actor, and i am so sorry i came to that conclusion, but i really see no other one i could have come to based purely on what was in the show itself. i had to google who timothy omundson is to know he’s disabled and with what disability (he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on his left side in 2017 and has been in recovery ever since—godspeed my man, i hope it helps where it can). i am so glad it was a disabled actor and not an able bodied one, but he’s still not hephaestus. while obviously no mortal has fallen from the heavens, i think they could have made it work, but a man who’s had a stroke and a man who’s had his body crushed are not the same. i am not here to belittle this man’s experiences or say one is more severe, i am saying they are different, and not interchangeable.
regardless, a disability that is visual is no less than one that is invisible and timothy omundson’s paralysis is visual, but it was hidden. it was NOT clear to the audience timothy omundson is paralyzed, or that he is disabled at all. the gods can appear however they choose, but it’s a point that hephaestus generally does not, or his disability is implied to be such a hindrance on him, no matter how he chooses to appear, he cannot escape his disability, how glaringly visible it is. his body itself is a story of how the gods betray each other, how they literally eat each other alive and are so hypocritical about it. think of how impactful the visual of hephaestus is—has a parent ever rejected your existence so violently, your divine body is broken and disfigured for all eternity? it is a brutal establishment of the godly norm as ruthless, cruel, and petty abuse. and the show, for all its talk of how the gods are awful, just did not highlight his disability and its origins it at all.
again, i think including hephaestus in this scene could have worked, but not how the show went about it. imagine. annabeth, desperately fiddling with the throne’s inner workings, makes her emotional appeal to hephaestus. he’s partly obscured by shadow as he stands, watching from afar on the balcony, but we see a gnarled hand grasp the railing. annabeth, still pulling back the machine’s inner workings, tearfully describes how her mother punished her for embarrassing her. as she does, we receive a few close up shots of hephaestus, still leaving him mostly in the dark, but providing peeks at his disfigurements, and a hesitant but pained look in his eyes tells us he is reliving painful memories—a conflicted bead of sweat runs down the side of his face. it wouldn’t cost any more run time to use these shots while annabeth makes her plea to him, and the disability is in the spotlight, the parallel between athena/hera and annabeth/hephaestus is clear as a younger, more hopeful version of this emotionally broken man begs him to help her be different than both their mothers.
free my friend, she says. and for a moment, he just shakes. he opens his mouth, and annabeth—and the audience—lean forward to hear his reply. but then his face crumples with regret and resentment. he is still apart of the same wheel that crushes everyone in their path—if he, a god, could not escape, why would a demigod? why should a demigod?
no, the god of the hammer tells annabeth, you cannot escape.
annabeth, in her hubris, replies, maybe you can’t—and we cut to her hands, tearing away a gear to reveal a switch—realization flashes across her face, and she grasps the trap’s mechanical release. percy is free, and hephaestus, in his misplaced anger, unleashes more of his creations (mechanical spiders!!) after them, mirroring the book as the kids use quick-thinking to escape waterland.
it’s not perfect, but that would work. instead, they finally show a god rather than just talking about them and it’s so underwhelming. and yes, this hephaestus carries a cane, clearly the potential to show front his disability was there, but you cannot throw me table scraps and tell me my frustration at not receiving the feast i was promised is unfounded. it’s laughable. most of the time it’s on screen it’s not in use and there isn’t even reference in the show as to why he carries a cane. casual viewers unfamiliar with the books or greek mythology might mistakenly assume this is just how this god chose to present himself and he doesn’t need this cane, and not that disability is at the core of who this divine figure is. it is NOT clear to the audience this is a disabled character played by a disabled actor. it is, indefensibly, a watered down depiction. what in the book needed to be ‘fixed’ with hephaestus—? this is a disabled god, you dare not give him to me in all his disabled complexity? you dare not show him as he is?
one of the most insulting things you can do to a disabled person is reduce our disability and the show has done it to the greek god of disability, with such a cheap payoff. if they did not want to be true to hephaestus, to his actor, they should not have shown him at all, and maybe—i don’t know, stuck to the book whose narrative makes sense in this scene?
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