5 Things We Hope To See In The Live-Action 'Avatar: Last Airbender'
Image Source: IGN
Now that we know the live-action remake of Avatar: The Last Airbender will come out in 2024, revealed by Netflix at their Tudum event in Brazil, fans eagerly await any more details to come out about the show.
We do know the episode titles, which gives us a little bit more information about what the show will cover as it adapts the original cartoon series. The episode titles are as follows:
‘The Last Airbender’
‘Warriors’
‘Omashu’
‘Spirited Away’
‘Into the Dark’
‘Masks’
‘The North’
‘Legends’
With this list of titles, it’s pretty clear what major beats the live-action will cover. So let’s take a look at what some of those beats could be and what would really make the live-action series a smash hit for ATLA fans and beyond.
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5. An Action Packed Ending
Since the last two episodes are ‘The North’ and ‘Legends’, there’s a great opportunity to take some of the most exciting parts of the cartoon’s first season and translate them into some absolute banger action at the end of the live-action first season. We know that the Mechanist and his son Teo have been cast, played by Danny Pudi of Community and Lucian-River Chauhan, respectively. The episode titled ‘The North’ likely indicates Aang and the group’s trip to the Northern Air Temple, which has been occupied by a man named the Mechanist and his son Teo, as well as others that don’t really get named. It’s revealed that the Mechanist, unknown to his son, is secretly making weapons for the Fire Nation, and when a Fire Nation army comes to collect them, Aang convinces the Mechanist to fight back using his own inventions against the might of the Fire Nation. After that, they proceed to the Northern Water Tribe, where the Fire Nation lays siege to the city. Here, Aang enters the Avatar State to drive the Fire Nation navy back by becoming a massive Water Spirit and destroying much of the fleet. These beats set the stage for what could be an exciting ending to the first season.
4. Silliness
Let’s be honest, Avatar The Last Airbender was a cartoon, and part of its charm was the silliness. Sokka was the comedic relief of the show, often the butt of jokes, and, being the only non-bender in the group for a while, gets subjected to all the stuff that comes at the group that benders can protect themselves from (like sewer muck). There’s plenty of room for this to happen. One of Aang’s first actions in the cartoon was to chase and play with penguins. As the group tries to get into Omashu, Aang pretends to be an old man. The episode ‘Masks’ suggests it’ll cover the interaction between Aang and Zuko disguised as the Blue Spirit, and the reason they come into contact is that Aang is looking for frozen frogs for his friends to suck on, per the advice of a medicine woman, because they’re sick. As suggested above, ‘The North’ will likely contain the part of the season where the group meets the Mechanist, who works with Sokka to make smelly bombs. Too often, live-action adaptations take the route of becoming serious because they’re live-action, but the casting (they’ve cast the Cabbage Merchant, played by the cartoon’s voice actor, Jamse Sie) and possible arcs leave room for the silliness of the show to remain.
3. Seriousness
That said, Avatar: The Last Airbender began something that we are finding more and more in modern animation: it’s a cartoon, but there’s a serious story behind it. I’ve explored the themes in the sequel series in another article, but the original cartoon still had its real-world themes, like genocide and fascism, and imperialism. The first series explores this while also trying to have fun. For example, in the first episode, when we’re introduced to Aang, it’s clear the Fire Nation is a threat, but Aang doesn’t seem to realize this as he was frozen in ice and is an 11-year-old kid. He wants to play with penguins! As the season progresses though, he confronts the current reality, and his 100-year absence’s consequences, more and more.
There are signs they’ll keep this motif in the live-action series. The fact that they are including Jet (played by Sebastian Amoruso), who is a freedom fighter willing to sacrifice innocent people to take down the Fire Nation, suggests the serious element will be present. The episode title, ‘Into the Dark’ also suggests as much. The episode takes place between ‘Spirited Away’ and ‘Masks’, which if the episode names are indicative of how close they follow the cartoon, ‘Into the Dark’ could be the stretch of the show between Aang’s trip to the Spirit World, where Avatar Roku gives Aang a wake-up call, and Aang’s rescue by Zuko as the Blue Spirit. This would include the episode with Jet, but also ‘The Storm’, where Aang tells Katara about why he was in the ice. That stretch, from Roku’s wake-up call to ‘The Storm’, are some of the strongest character development points of the first season, where Aang comes to accept what he has to do. It highlights one of the most sobering parts of the show: Aang loses out on the innocence of childhood to assume the Atlas-esque role of protecting the world.
2. Badass Bending
One of the most appealing aspects of the cartoon was the fantasy elements central to it. Everyone thinks bending is super cool. Controlling the elements? Come on, who doesn’t imagine what that would be like? And after the fiasco that was M. Night Shyamalan’s movie adaptation (I still cringe thinking of the earthbending dance scene), fans want some cool bending. The suggestion is that the reason why the show is taking so long to come out is it’s spending quite a bit of time in post, which would be where the visual effects would be handled. Therefore, there’s hope that the length of time it’s spending in post means it will be some really solid bending.
They also have the opportunity to do something that came later in the cartoons: bending subsets. By now, after the original series run and The Legend of Korra, we’ve been introduced to subsets or sub-skills of the main bending arts. The showrunners have the opportunity to bring those in earlier than they did in the cartoons if it serves the story. We know bloodbending, a subset of waterbending, and metalbending, which is a subset of earthbending, came in as part of character development. But other subsets like lavabending, combustionbending, and even flight, are implied to have been around for a while, as the characters they use to introduce these subsets are older or they learned it from historical documents. It would be super cool to see these subsets make their debut in the first season somehow.
1. Great World Building
Finally, one of the best things about the ATLA universe is the world-building. It’s strong enough that they’ve created a TTRPG about it and expanded it through novels and graphic novels. The whole thing about the Avatar Cycle and the Spirit World and even the cultures of the different nations gives the showrunners of the live-action show so much room to explore and incorporate world-building through visual and artistic means that doesn’t detract from a solid story. The diversity of the Earth Kingdom, being the largest in population and territory, is an excellent pallet with which to demonstrate the depth of world-building inherent in the ATLA universe. I also hope that they take some artistic liberties with the breadth of the Fire Nation’s technological capabilities. We know they have airships, tanks, and massive warships. Let’s see some further innovation. It’s a sad fact that war often breeds technological progress, and since this has been a war for 100 years, it would be cool to see the showrunners go a little beyond the established vehicles and technology that the Fire Nation exhibits.
Bonus! Silly Animals
As a fun little extra, it would be even more fun if the showrunners fully embrace the bizarre creatures of the ATLA world. If you’ve seen the shows, then you know they have all manner of crazy hybrid animals that populate the planet. There should be the obvious, like Appa the sky bison, or Momo, the flying lemur, but let’s not forget the others. Through the shows, we’ve been introduced to polar bear dogs, rabbiroos, hogmonkeys, parrotmonkeys, and tigerdillos. We can’t forget the expanding list of bears, like skunkbears, platypusbears, gopherbears, armadillobears, and even a normal bear (his name is Bosco). There’s even the incredibly diverse population of pigs that encompass combinations with all kinds of other farm animals like chickens, cows, and even deer. It’s a fun aspect of the world-building that would just help flesh out and make the live-action as fun as the original shows.
As we near 2024, there are likely to be more and more details that emerge, especially after we get a trailer (hopefully soon, Netflix…), so stay tuned for more coverage.
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Source(s): IMDb, Fandom, Comicbook.com
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