It’s no secret that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has struggled over the last few years. However, the good news is that Disney already has its next great franchise ready to go: Percy Jackson and the Olympians.Since making its Disney+ debut in December 2023, the fantasy series – which focuses on a young boy named Percy (Walker Scobell) who finds out he’s the son of a Greek god – has proven a hit with fans and critics alike. Its first season currently has a critics score of 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, far outpacing that of the first adaptation back in 2010 (which sits at a measly 48%).Credit: Disney+Related: Warner Bros. Considering ‘Harry Potter’ Spinoffs, Report SaysNumbers are just as good behind the scenes. Disney has reported that an incredible 26.2 million viewers watched the premiere episode of Percy Jackson and the Olympians after three weeks on both Disney+ and Hulu, dubbing it the biggest Disney Branded Television premiere of all time.This week, Nielsen also released the streaming ratings for the show’s two-episode premiere. This amassed 572 million minutes of watch time in the U.S. alone, which works out to approximately 7.15 million complete streams.Credit: Disney+Related: Disney Quietly Starts Work on Another ‘Percy Jackson’ Series, May Save Streaming ServiceThese numbers become even more impressive when you compare them to the performance of recent Marvel projects. Recent Marvel shows to debut on Disney+ have failed to strike the same chord with viewers. The premiere of Secret Invasion hit 461 million minutes, while the season two premiere of Loki reached 446 million minutes in total viewing time. While Agatha was well-received by fans, it also landed in the unfortunate spot of Marvel’s second least-watched Disney+ series.With fans and critics alike seemingly growing exhausted by the MCU – primarily its increasingly complex and bloated canon – there have been questions about which franchise Disney will lean into next. Until recently, Marvel was Disney’s top-performing cash cow. While Star Wars remains popular with fans, it has also experienced the same fatigue since the disappointing release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).Credit: Marvel StudiosPercy Jackson seems like the obvious IP to take that spot. Not only is the show’s first season a hit, but there are four more books (thus four more seasons) of material to go, with the second season slated to premiere later this year and a third already commissioned. Should Disney wish to take the franchise even further, the author of this source material, Rick Riordan, also penned a second five-book series – Heroes of Olympus – that featured the same characters, as well as a new demigod cast inspired by Roman mythology. Unlike a lot of spinoffs and sequels, Heroes of Olympus was also extremely well-received by fans.As if that’s not enough, Riordan has also written multiple short stories featuring the characters, as well as adjacent series – The Kane Chronicles (inspired by Egyptian mythology), Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard (inspired by Norse mythology), The Trials of Apollo (focused on side characters from the original series) – featuring guest appearances from Percy Jackson characters, not to mention an ongoing trilogy that covers Percy’s transition from high school to college.Credit: Disney+Related: ‘Percy Jackson’ Disney+ Reboot Cuts Fan-Favorite CharacterFrom the millennials who read the books when they were first released, to the younger readers only recently delving into the series, there’s also the fact that Percy Jackson has a grip on multiple generations of audiences. Yes, Marvel has the same nostalgia factor for plenty of people – but it’s been done over, and over, and over again for the past 15 years, and doesn’t exactly seem to be getting better. All Percy Jackson fans have had to tide them over screen-wise are two films released in the early 2010s that were so poorly received, even Riordan himself recently called for “bad film erasure” to do its job and scrub them from pop culture memory.It seems extremely possible that Marvel will rebound in time, especially with the release of Avengers: Doomsday (2026) and its return of Robert Downey Jr. on the horizon. For now, however, we have plenty of Percy to go around – and that’s more than a worthy successor in our eyes.Have you watched Percy Jackson and the Olympians yet?The post Disney Has Found the Next Franchise To Replace Marvel appeared first on Inside the Magic.