On a patch of farmland in Langley, in the outskirts of the Metro Vancouver region in British Columbia, the soil was stripped away layer by layer. Topsoil was scraped off. Drainage systems were laid. Tonnes of engineered material were backfilled and compacted to create a surface that could withstand the pounding of hooves, the weight of racing chariots, and the repeated passes of heavy equipment.
Berms were sculpted and seeded weeks in advance so grass would grow thick enough to conceal the edges of an elaborate film production set.
Trees were planted in deliberate sightlines. Stables were erected nearby to house horses between takes.
By the time cameras rolled, the land no longer resembled a strawberry field. It had become a mythological arena — vast, dust-choked, and alive with motion.
This was not a location borrowed from history or a digital environment rendered after the fact. This was one of the largest practical sets built for the second season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians on Disney+ — and it was created almost entirely by local crews in Metro Vancouver, a region whose film and television production industry has earned its nickname of Hollywood North.
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For decades, Vancouver has doubled as cities around the world. What the second season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians reveals, however, is something deeper than versatility. It showcases a concentration of craft — costume designers, prop builders, set decorators, sculptors, painters, engineers, and coordinators — capable of building entire fantasy worlds from the ground up. Not virtually. Not hypothetically. But physically, in wood and steel, leather and foam, fabric and paint.
At the centre of that effort are four department heads whose work defines the show’s tactile reality: Cate Adair, costume design; Michelle Hendriksen, prop master; Raymond Garrioch, supervising art director; and Hamish Purdy, set decorator.
During the second last week of filming for the second season in early 2025, Daily Hive Urbanized chatted with these four creative leads during a behind-the-scenes tour of the production’s home base of Mammoth Studios. The second second premiered earlier this month.
Owned by Bosa Development, Mammoth Studios, located at the southern base of Burnaby Mountain, was previously a longtime warehouse and distribution centre for Sears Canada.
The facility offers more than 50,000 sq. ft. of office space and five soundstages totalling 280,000 sq. ft., including a 121,000 sq. ft. soundstage — one of the largest in North America, with a 40-ft ceiling. Bringing all of this together under one roof enables an exceptional range of creative possibilities and truly ambitious, large-scale set builds for productions like Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Together, Adair, Hendricksen, Garrioch, and Purdy oversaw teams numbering in the dozens — sometimes hundreds when construction and support crews are included — all working in concert to transform Rick Riordan’s mythological universe into something actors could inhabit and audiences at home could believe.
The second season is bigger, bolder, and more ambitious than the first. It is also unmistakably more physical — a deliberate choice that underscores the strength and capabilities of Hollywood North today.
The most consequential decision shaping the second season happened early in pre-production: a deliberate move away from heavy reliance on CGI and virtual volume stages toward traditional large-scale practical build sets.
Since 2022, Mammoth Studios has been home to a permanent StageCraft LED volume operated by Disney’s Industrial Light Magic (ILM), which is a direct extension of ILM’s studios in downtown Vancouver. The series’ production ecosystem is based in Metro Vancouver, with the local ILM hub also leading the visual effects and animation work.
This specialized 20,000 sq. ft. soundstage uses a large, bright LED screen video wall to provide the virtual live background for scenes during filming, replacing much of the need for the use of green screens and the associated post-production work.
For Adair, an Emmy award winner who joined the series as head costume designer for the second season, the scope of the decision to not rely on the volume and post-production CGI became clear almost immediately.
“In Season 1, many of the creatures were CGI,” she explained. “This year, we made most of them. In fact, I think we made all of them.”
That single choice reverberated across the entire production. Creatures that once existed primarily as digital placeholders now required physical bodies.
Armour had to flex, breathe, and protect performers. Costumes needed to integrate prosthetics and harnesses. Props had to function as real objects — safe enough for stunts, durable enough for repetition, and convincing enough for close-ups. Sets could no longer stop at waist height or fade into LED screens. They had to exist fully, all around the actors.
Garrioch felt the shift away from CGI immediately.
“Instead of building part of a cave and extending the rest digitally,” he said, “we’re building the entire cave.”
Virtual production offers efficiency. It limits the square footage required for a set. It allows for faster resets.
But it also imposes constraints. Practical builds, by contrast, demand commitment — more time, more labour, more problem-solving, and more money. What they offer in return is something intangible but unmistakable: reality.
“You feel it when you walk into a real space,” said Garrioch. “So do the actors.”
The second season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians moves quickly from the everyday into the mythic. The early scenes still touch the modern world — an apartment, a school, a taxi — but by the end of the first episode, Percy and his companions are fully immersed in a realm of gods and monsters.
“That’s where it gets more fun,” said Garrioch.” And more challenging.”
Fantasy, he noted, is not just about scale, but about cohesion. Every department must agree on how the world works. Colours, textures, materials, and proportions must align. A sword cannot feel medieval if the armour reads modern. A cave cannot look ancient if its surfaces feel synthetic. These decisions are not aesthetic flourishes; they are narrative tools.
The art department walls at Mammoth Studios were lined with concept art — illustrations created by renowned production designer Dan Hennah, who won an Oscar award for his work on The Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King, and his team in New Zealand. But these artistic renderings were not aspirational, they were promises.
“They represent the target,” said Purdy. “What we’re trying to achieve.”
From those drawings came scale models, then construction plans, then full builds — each stage requiring translation from idea to reality.
The chariot race is the visual and logistical centrepiece of the second season — and a statement of intent. Rather than simulating the race in fragments or relying on digital environments, the production chose to build the arena in full.
The result was a massive outdoor set in Langley, measuring approximately 400 ft long and 100 ft wide, complete with colonnades, statues, seating areas, and working stables.
“All of that is built practically,” said Garrioch. “We had horses pulling chariots, people racing them, stunts happening at speed.” To achieve this, the production turned to the same chuck wagon racers who thunder across the Calgary Stampede, grounding Greek mythology in real-world spectacle.
Roughly 10 acres of land itself had to be transformed. The natural grade was unsuitable for racing, so crews scraped down to a stable level, installed drainage layers, and rebuilt the surface so it would remain firm under constant use. The track needed to shed water quickly, remain consistent from day to day, and be safe for animals and performers.
Safety dictated nearly every design choice. Dividers running down the centre of the track had to be strong enough to hold ropes but engineered to break away instantly if struck. Turnaround points were designed so horses could reverse direction quickly without long resets. Emergency access paths were built into the layout.
A lot of effort went into considering what could go wrong, and how to prevent it.
To sell the illusion of a massive arena, the crew also had to hide the modern world. Berms were planted early so grass would grow in time. Trees were positioned to block sightlines. Power, tents, and equipment were hidden beyond camera reach.
Even after construction was complete, the work never stopped. Tire tracks from lifts and vehicles had to be erased. Footprints had to be controlled. Horse prints and chariot wheel marks had to look intentional, not accidental.
“We had to maintain this constantly,” said Purdy.
While the arena established scale, costume established identity. Adair’s costume department peaked at around 60 people, including specialists in armour, textiles, breakdown, and specialty fabrication.
The second season demanded more from costumes than season one. Characters travel through more environments. They engage in more combat. They wear armour. They encounter monsters. And they do all of it while growing — literally.
Adair deals with a cast of teenagers who are growing by inches a year, which was particularly the case for Walker Scobell, the series’ lead who plays the namesake character of Percy Jackson. Measurements are made regularly, almost monthly, to make sure the costumes keep up with their height.
Every costume existed in multiples. Hero versions. Stunt versions. Harness-friendly versions. Wet versions. Damaged versions. Growth allowances were built into seams and patterns. Extra fabric was stored for future alterations.
Armour posed its own unique challenges. It needed to look mythic, but also move. It had to protect performers without restricting them. It had to accommodate stunt work while maintaining visual consistency.
Each faction in the chariot race had its own insignia, materials, and patina — a visual language developed in close collaboration with props and art departments. Nothing existed in isolation.
Creatures that had been CGI in the first season were now physical builds: foam, leather, feathers, sculpted elements, and prosthetics integrated into wearable costumes.
“It’s a privilege when you get to work in such a magical space,” said Adair.
If costumes establish character, props enable action — and the second season is defined by action.
Hendriksen leads a 22-person props department, all local hires, responsible for creating nearly every object actors touch. Weapons, artifacts, everyday items — all had to function under intense conditions.
“Actors need something real to work with,” said Hendriksen. “If it doesn’t have weight, if it doesn’t feel real, it never looks right. They can’t just pretend.”
A single weapon might exist in half a dozen forms and materials: metal for close-ups, bamboo for choreography, rubber or foam for high-impact stunts. Props had to be durable, replaceable, and instantly recognizable across versions.
Even simple objects posed unexpected challenges. Percy’s pen — which transforms into a sword — had to be fabricated entirely from scratch, including internal components, while still reading as utterly ordinary.
“When people ask what the hardest prop is, it’s often the simplest one,” said Hendriksen.
Handmade craftsmanship remains central to her philosophy. While digital tools and 3D printing have their place, Hendriksen prefers sculpting, molding, and traditional fabrication.
“Sometimes when things are perfect, you miss that organic nature of it, and the feeling goes away. So I tend to skew more to handmade things than just having a machine make them,” she said.
That philosophy extends to background details viewers may never consciously notice: Camp Half-Blood beads sculpted to look child-made, books and magazines designed in-house, artifacts intentionally imperfect.
She adds that sometimes the hardest thing for really good artists is to make something look bad on purpose.
The second season introduces giants — a challenge that required precise coordination across departments. To sell the illusion of scale, Hendriksen’s team built props in multiple sizes, sometimes props 40 per cent smaller than the size of the prop typically used, depending on camera placement.
“A shovel becomes a spoon,” she said. “Whoever’s closest to it gets the size that sells the illusion.”
Those illusions were reinforced by Garrioch and Purdy’s set designs, which controlled sightlines and proportions, and by Adair’s costumes, which bulked out performers while preserving movement and safety.
Nothing about the illusion was accidental. Every angle was planned. Every interaction was rehearsed.
If the chariot arena was the largest outdoor build, the Ironclad ship set was the most audacious indoor one.
The 170-ft-long warship — raised from the depths by the god Ares — was built in full on a soundstage. Mounted on a massive hinge system, it could tilt up to eight degrees to simulate being dragged into a whirlpool.
“We actually took the whole ship and tilted it,” said Garrioch.
Inside, Purdy dressed tight, claustrophobic interiors — deliberately resisting the temptation to cheat scale for camera comfort. The ship sat on a teeter-totter mechanism, allowing it to rock during filming. Lights and set dressing swayed. Even the crew sometimes got seasick.
“The actors were fine,” said Garrioch. “[But] the crew got seasick.”
Special effects added water, wind, and rain. The set was soaked repeatedly; massive dump tanks splashed water across the bow to simulate a storm. A moat was built around the ship to keep the water in. Everything had to be waterproof, resettable, and safe.
“We’re basically doing feature-level sets for a streaming show,” said Garrioch, noting that the calibre, scope, and scale of the production is comparable to the second season of HBO’s The Last Of Us series, which was also filmed in Metro Vancouver.
What unites costumes, props, and sets is collaboration. No department works in isolation.
Costumes must integrate with harnesses and props. Props must function within moving sets. Sets must accommodate stunts, animals, and camera choreography.
“There’s an amazing amount of collaboration,” said Garrioch, while emphasizing that every decision has to work for both safety and storytelling.
Problems are solved collectively — often in real time. They do not always know until they see it on camera.
Across all four departments, one fact stands out: the overwhelming majority of the crew is local. And these are not transient crews — they are professionals who have built careers in Metro Vancouver, project by project.
“You’re kind of recreating an entire world… It requires a good team of people to achieve,” said Garrioch, noting his team reached a size of about 50 people at its peak.
Between them, Adair, Hendriksen, Garrioch, and Purdy bring decades of experience to the industry. All point to Metro Vancouver’s studio infrastructure, training pipelines, and collaborative culture as reasons the region continues to attract large-scale productions.
Every film and television production made in B.C. pushes the industry further, building creative and innovative experience among local crews and talent, one project after another. With each major production, the local industry grows stronger — especially through large-budget projects like Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which give teams the scale and resources to push the boundaries of what is possible.
Over decades, this consistent pipeline of work — reinforced by strong post-secondary training programs — has helped Metro Vancouver develop and retain one of the most skilled and accomplished film crews in the world.
According to Creative BC, the local film industry generated $2 billion in provincial GDP in 2023, supporting 26,000 jobs.
For Adair, the payoff comes when the world finally exists — not as sketches or plans, but as something tangible.
“It’s been an amazing journey. I think we’ll probably all be ready for a bit of a rest. It’s all worth it,” said Adair at the time.
As Percy Jackson and the Olympians returns for its second season, it arrives not just as a fantasy series, but as a declaration of what Hollywood North can do at full scale — proof that some of Hollywood’s biggest worlds are built by hand, right here in Metro Vancouver.
The second season made its Disney+ debut on Dec. 10, 2025, and the season finale is scheduled to be released on Jan. 21, 2026.
Moreover, filming for the third season in Metro Vancouver began in August 2025 and is expected to conclude in March 2026. Each season of the Disney+ series covers one book in Riordan’s Percy Jackson original literary series of five books, with the first season adapting The Lightning Thief and the second season adapting The Sea of Monsters, and the future seasons expected to cover The Titan’s Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth, and The Last Olympian.
As well, filming for the second season of FX’s Shogun is set to begin in Metro Vancouver in January 2026. Originally conceived as a limited series, Shogun — another big-budget production, recreating feudal Japan in the late 16th and early 17th centuries — was renewed for Disney+ following widespread critical acclaim and its emergence as a must-see success.
You might also like:
– This Japanese Pine tree in Port Moody is a legacy of Disney’s Shogun filming
– Second season of award-winning Shogun to film in B.C. soon
– Is Hollywood North thriving? Major Vancouver film producer weighs in
– Granville Street bus shelter in Vancouver gets apocalyptic decay makeover to promote The Last of Us
– Vancouver city councillor urges need to support Hollywood North’s global talent
– Disney opens Industrial Light and Magic’s largest studio at The Stack tower in Vancouver
– Opinion: Why creative immigration is the missing piece for Hollywood North’s evolution and growth in Vancouver
