First look at Daniel Diemer

Grab your largest tub of peanut butter, because Tyson has arrived on Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

Entertainment Weekly has your exclusive first look at Daniel Diemer playing Percy’s (Walker Scobell) Cyclops half-brother in the season 2 premiere in the photo above.

“He’s such a big part of the story in season 2,” creator Rick Riordan tells EW. “Daniel Diemer, who plays Tyson, the Cyclops half-brother of Percy, he’s just so, so perfect. I don’t know that I had a visual image for what Tyson would look like in the season, but now, it’s definitely Daniel Diemer because he embodies the character. He’s got this fantastic mix of sweetness and vulnerability, but he’s also this really big guy, and you can see that he’s got a lot of strength. He makes you fall in love with Tyson.”

Just like in the book, Tyson is introduced immediately in the season 2 premiere as a new friend of Percy’s while he’s living at home with his mother Sally (Virginia Kull). While Percy doesn’t yet realize Tyson is also a son of Poseidon (Toby Stephens), making them half-brothers, they’ll both learn that fact sooner rather than later — to varying reactions. Most notably, Annabeth (Leah Jeffries) hates all Cyclops due to trauma in her past, so expect Percy’s new family member to cause tension between the two demigods.

Joining the cast in season 2 was a dream come true for Diemer, who has been a fan of Riordan’s book series since they first came out.

“I grew up with it,” Diemer, 29, tells EW. “As soon as I came off a movie I did a few years ago, I started having a bunch of meetings with Disney about some possible projects, and the first thing that I asked about was, ‘I heard Percy’s in the running. I’d love to get in there [to audition] for Percy.’ They were like, ‘No, we’re casting 13-year-olds.’ So to then get Tyson was amazing.”

Diemer had chemistry reads with both Scobell and Jeffries during his four-month audition process, which helped alleviate some worries Scobell had about introducing the character this season.

“I was honestly really nervous because you have this very strong vision of what Tyson looks and acts like when you’re reading the book,” Scobell tells EW. “I was nervous going into season 2 for who they were going to cast for Tyson, because I was like, ‘How are they going to do this, but also not offend anyone or make this seem disrespectful to anyone?’ And I think he just did a perfect job.”

While extremely large and strong, Tyson is essentially just an 8-year-old child looking for his forever home after living on the streets.

“He’s kind of like this fostered Great Dane puppy,” Diemer says. “It’s like his feet are too big, his limbs are too long. He’s tripping over himself, but he’s just been taken in off the streets and he’s so excited to be part of what he hopes is going to be his forever family. There’s this hope there, but also there’s this history, and so there’s a lot of trauma there that he needs to work through. Luckily he’s got the greatest big brother in the world to work through that with.”

While their relationship starts off as “a little rocky,” Diemer says, the brothers eventually “find their groove together.”

“And as they find out their relationship and how they’re connected, it really kind of takes off and has this beautiful arc of them finding each other in a really lovely way,” Diemer adds.

Portraying the baby Cyclops was not easy, however. Diemer worried about making Tyson “too much of a caricature” if he went “completely baby Cyclops.” He focused on finding the balance between Tyson’s innocence and heart, combined with his traumatic history. What helped immensely was not having to rely on any prosthetics or motion capture to give him the appearance of one eye, since that was all done in post-production.

“We didn’t have any prosthetics,” Diemer says. “I saw some behind-the-scenes [footage] in the original Sea of Monsters movie, and they had a lot of dots for [actor] Douglas Smith, [who played Tyson]. So all of that was basically taking everything that I’m giving and combining it as best as they can with the CGI into a singular eye so that the performance is maintained. The actual on-set experience was just me being here with the kids, and there was nothing else that got in the way.”

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Diemer adds it was a “huge, huge relief” to not have to sit in a makeup chair for five hours every day “for the next five years.”

“I didn’t want to do that at all,” he says with a laugh. “To just be able to exist within my own skin was such a gift. It allowed me to really relax and act the way that I normally do.”

Give or take a few years, of course.

For more on Percy Jackson season 2, check out EW’s full cover story. The series returns this December on Disney+.