What a viral Odyssey adaptation understands better than most Christian studios
(NO SPOILERS)
Something unusual has captured the imagination of Gen Z, and I can't help but notice the deeper currents beneath this cultural phenomenon. A musical adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey has spread like wildfire through TikTok, Spotify, and word-of-mouth—not through Disney-level budget or Broadway backing, but through the authentic vision of a creator who genuinely cares for his project and more importantly, his audience.
Enter Epic the Musical: The brainchild of Jorge Rivera-Herrans, a Puerto Rican-American composer who began the project while still in college. Without the support of a studio or production house, Jorge developed the musical in public — releasing demos, interacting with fans, and building a world one song at a time. What began as a niche project on TikTok quietly exploded into a cultural phenomenon. Unlike a modern Disney remake, Epic reimagines The Odyssey not as a throwaway cash grab or a woke retelling of a classic story, but as a lively journey — one full of danger, longing, and hard-won hope.
But I'm convinced its resonance goes deeper than catchy hooks or mythological monsters. There's something about this musical that speaks to a generation—something they may not even recognize they're responding to.
I mean, think about it: Since when did Gen Z care about an Ancient Greek dude writing about... well, another ancient Greek dude? How could a toga-wearing-monster-tearing-warlord relate to the average nose picking junior high student in 2025, (no offense to my adolescent audience of course)?
Well, aside from the catchy choruses and the heart wrenching storyline, I believe it’s because beneath all of it, there lies a certain satisfaction to an unknown hunger in my generation. It scratches an itch in the brains and hearts of America and beyond.
Odysseus, in all his proud, broken humanity, doesn't just want adventure. He wants to come home— He got married, had a kid (*cough*, *cough*), and he ultimately went to war to protect them. Oh yeah, and he’s also the king of the entire kingdom of Ithaca. Now that he’s protected his loved ones after 10 years of harsh war with the Trojans, he wants to return to his wife, to his son, to the life he left behind. This homecoming impulse resonates profoundly in a world where family structures have fractured, fathers are increasingly absent, and meaning feels increasingly shallow. We recognize his longing because... it's our longing too.
What fascinates me most about Epic is how it echoes deeper spiritual patterns without explicitly naming them. The danger of so many modern works is that they are excellent at making their horrible morals as easy for the consumer to digest as possible. If there is anything that Cynthia Erivo’s “Wicked” has taught us, it’s that just a spoonful of “misunderstood” helps the wickedness go down in the most delightful way.
But Epic takes the same skillset of catchy songs along with audible imagery and applies it to something a little less devious. It follows themes of exile, temptation, descent, and eventual renewal that should feel familiar to anyone who has studied the Scriptures or consumed a good story of any variety in their life.
It’s no coincidence that these themes are present in a popular TikTok musical. They’re foundational patterns in Scripture that other great stories have always tapped into. Epic works because it borrows from the greatest story—whether consciously or not—and weaves them into melody and verse.
The musical form itself is also of great importance here. There’s something about rhythms, recurring motifs, and harmonies that bypass our rational defenses and speak directly to the soul. We were designed to be moved by music—to have truths sung to us, not just spoken. Epic leverages this reality masterfully, allowing its themes to be felt rather than merely understood.
Christian creators would do well to notice what’s happening here. Epic moralizes, yes, but with subtlety and respect for its audience. It trusts the story enough not to overwhelm it with explicit messaging. Unlike some modern Christian media that tends toward the heavy-handed or emotionally manipulative, Epic relies on the inherent power of its narrative and craftsmanship.
This isn't to suggest that explicit faith content has no place—far from it. But Rivera-Herrans demonstrates something vital: when we take storytelling seriously as an art form rather than merely as a vehicle for messaging, we create work that resonates more deeply.
The lesson for us isn’t to envy Epic’s success, but to recognize the opportunity it reveals. If a retelling of Homer can capture hearts through echoes of these patterns, how much more might we accomplish by telling the story these patterns were ultimately designed to reflect? Not with dumbed down moralizing or saccharine sentimentality, but with the blood and glory, the heartbreak and wonder that the ultimate redemption story of the Gospel deserves.
Epic is definitely worth a listen if you love good storytelling and even better music. If you’re interested in giving it a listen, you can do so here. And if you rather live it out visually, there is a loyal community of animators who have created a massive library of animatics for this series which you can see here. There are some graphic bits and allusions to sexual immorality, but these are again challenges for characters to overcome and not pleasures to revel in.
Generation Z isn’t rejecting depth—they’re starving for it. Epic shows us they’re willing to follow complex narratives about homecoming, transformation and redemption. They’re ready for stories with soul.
Now it’s up to us to tell the greatest one.
