Avatar has only recently returned to television, but Nickelodeon’s kept the anime franchise around through plenty of video games for consoles and phones over the years. Sure enough, there’s another title joining the lineup, but this one is a fighting game.
Currently called Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game, the title pits players in one-on-one brawls as characters from across the franchise. At launch, there are 12 characters, including Aang, Korra, Zuko, and Toph, and support characters can help pull off special moves similar to Mortal Kombat 1. While the launch roster is small, more will come via post-launch DLC. (The trailer makes sure to emphasize Last Airbender characters, so if you’re a Korra fan, you may have to wait for your faves to join the fray.) According to the Steam page, the game will also feature a single-player campaign with an original story, “flow system” combat mechanics with movement-focused gameplay, and crossplay support.
Developed by first-time studio Gameplay Group International, a big point in Avatar Legends’ favor is its hand-drawn 2D animation, which helps the game retain the visual style the franchise is best known for. These characters have been all over Nickelodeon’s larger brand games—including the two fighting-focused Nick All-Stars titles—so it’s only fitting the franchise gets a fighting game all to itself.
If Avatar Legends feels like your cup of tea, it’s intended to launch on Steam in summer 2026, with consoles to be announced at a later date. And if it doesn’t look appealing, good news: Saber Interactive, creators of Space Marine II, are developing an action-RPG for the franchise that may be a better fit.
“Great” is an understatement. Pulling from history has allowed this list to blossom into the greatest Kids TV shows of all time. It’s full of absolute classic. Grass fed GOATS. With that in mind, here are our picks for 13 old TV shows that both kids and adults can enjoy today.
(Nickelodeon)
Avatar: the Last Airbendermay just be the greatest children’s show ever made. When it aired on Nickelodeon, it was the first of its kind. Most kids’ TV series were slapstick cartoon sitcoms with no over arching story or complex characters. Avatar changed all of that. Set in an ancient Asian inspired world where humans can bend elements with their minds, Avatar follows an Airbender named Aang who is called to save the world from the Fire Nation empire.
(Cartoon Network Studios))
Over the Garden Wall came out of absolutely nowhere to become the greatest animated miniseries ever. Brining together legends like Tim Curry, Elijah Wood, John Cleese, and Christopher Lloyd, this whimsical series tells the tale of two boys who are trying to find their way home after becoming lost in fairytale world. The pair must contend with pumpkin headed villagers, axe-happy woodsmen, and a mysterious Beast that threatens to steal them away.
(Warner Bros.)
The hits just keep on coming. Batman: The Animated Seriesis one of the best pieces of superhero fiction ever put to screen. A myriad of classic Batman stories, along with some skillfully written new tales, coalesce into a series that is brooding, hilarious, and unexpectedly deep. The series features the legendary voice acting talents of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as Batman and The Joker respectively, and are practically the dictionary definitions of the characters.
(Disney)
Gravity Falls is melds humor and horror together in a series revolving around a pair of twins who solve mysteries in the Pacific Northwest. While staying with their grumpy Grunkle Stan the the tourist trap Mystery Shack, the pair investigate manly minotaurs, lab-grown boy bands and rainbow-vomiting gnomes. 2013!!! (If you know you know)
(Cartoon Network)
Genndy Tarkovsky is practically the patron saint of Western animation, and Samurai Jackis one of his greatest works. It’s a dark, foreboding series about the titular samurai, who is flung into the far future by the evil demon Aku. The future is anything but bright, as Aku’s forces have turned it into a cyberpunk hellscape, and poor Jack has to fight his way back home again.
Hey Arnoldis the closest that American kids animation came to the slice-of-life anime genre. Taking place in a city that’s part Brooklyn, part Seattle, and part everywhere, the football headed Arnold and his friends navigate the vicissitudes of their preteen lives. They build incredible tree houses, grow award winning pumpkins, and ride ghost trains. In short, they live their fleeting youth to the fullest.
(image credit: Nickelodeon)
Spongebob SquarePants is still airing, but real ones know that seasons one through three were the pinnacle of TV comedy. Despite being decades old, Golden Age SpongeBob frames are still responsible for half the memes on the internet today. It’s the only series that’s ever successfully been able to get away with dropping the f-bomb on kids TV while simultaneously teaching children a lesson about not using foul language. Legendary.
(Cartoon Network)
Adventure Time is a hallmark of fantasy, a modern day children’s odyssey as sweeping as Lord of The Rings. Finn the Human and his beloved best friend Jake the Dog while away their days hunting for treasure, diving into dungeons, and rescuing princesses from the mad clutches of the Ice King. What starts as a silly little story of adventure unfolds into a sweeping epic that ends in cosmic battles won by lesbian love.
(Max)
Looney Tunes is the seed from which comedy animation bloomed. Eat your heart out, Walt Disney. Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck and the myriad others are simply unbeatable. Slapstick shenanigans abound endlessly, glued together by the incendiary talent of that God of Voice Actors Mel Blanc. Tweety Bird. Foghorn Leghorn. Bugs. Sylvester. Taz. Porky Pig. Yosemite Sam. That “yeah see” ganster guy. They were all voiced by THE SAME MAN. What a legend.
(Cartoon Network)
Codename Kids Next Doorturned the cultural war between youth and age and made it literal. The Kids Next Door are a paramilitary group of preteens waging guerrilla warfare against adult forces from their treehouse. Using 2 x 4 technology (cobbled together from wood) they battle adult villains seeking to destroy the magic of childhood – evil dentists, Cheese-themed Shoguns, and of course the anything-but Delightful Children From Down The Lane and their villainous father. Oh, and all the teenagers. KND‘s got smoke with them too.
(Cartoon Network)
Dexter’s Lab is a love letter to feuding siblings everywhere. It’s the story of the precious scientist/elementary schooler Dexter and his older sister DeeDee… who makes up for what she lacks in brains with sheer, unbridled enthusiasm. Dexter creates a genius invention in order to tackle a childhood problem, and DeeDee somehow manages to muck it up every time.
(Featured Image: Cartoon Network)
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Season 2 of the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender is coming. You know what that means: Toph Beifong is coming with it. While the role of the fan-favorite character has been filled, fans want to know if Miya Cech is vision impaired like the character she plays.
Who is Miya Cech?
Miya Cech is a 17-year-old actress who has appeared in the film You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah as well as the series Beef, where she played a younger version of Ali Wong’s character. The actor is not blind, despite visually impaired people having been encouraged to submit for the role.
According to Cech, training for the role has been intense, and she is currently studying martial arts in order to prepare. As fans of the animated series know, the 12-year-old Toph is an earthbending prodigy.
She was taught the art by earthbending badger moles after becoming lost in a cave as a child. Due to her blindness, Toph’s wealthy parents believed that their daughter’s time was best spent in the safety of their estate. Toph had other plans. She continued to perfect her earth bending in secret, developing it into her own style entirely, a style inspired by the real-life Southern Praying Mantis style of martial arts which traces its origins back to the Hakka people of China.
Miya has had years of martial arts training and also has a background in dance, both of which are likely helping her prepare. Miya is also working with a consultant, who is blind, in order to better play the role.
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We’ve known pretty much since it became an immediate smash hit for the streamer that Netflix has been working on a second (and third) season of its live-action re-imagining of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but now Netflix is ready to give you your first tiny look at what’s to come in Aang and the gang’s continuing adventures… mostly in the form of a very familiar face.
During tonight’s Geeked Week Live event in Atlanta, Netflix confirmed that season two of the live-action Avatar is in production, with a brief teaser announcing that Miya Cech has joined the main cast as beloved Last Airbender character Toph Beifong. Similarly introduced early on in the second season of the animated series (initially in a brief vision before making her full appearance in “The Blind Bandit”), Toph is a young blind girl who uses her earthbending abilities to connect to the world around her and extend her senses. Initially joining Aang, Katara, and Sokka on their journey to teach the young Avatar how to hone his own earthbending skills, Toph eventually becomes one of the most powerful and famous earthbenders around, going on to discover its sub-type metalbending and eventually help to train the next Avatar, Korra, during the series’ successor, The Legend of Korra.
Cech, who is of Chinese and Japanese American descent, is not blind, but will work “with a producer and consultant, who is blind and a professional from the blindness community, to make sure the blindness community is represented appropriately” in portraying the character, according to a press release provided by Netflix.
For all its tweaks to the source material, controversial or otherwise, no one is going to be too surprised that the next season of Avatar will bring Toph into the fold. After all, Netflix is calling the show’s second season “Earth” much like the animated series did. Time will tell, Toph or otherwise, just what else Avatar will manage to adapt in its sophomore season in contrast to the animated series. Even as it shot up the streaming charts to success, one of the consistent criticisms of the first season was its choice to condense the story of the animated show’s 20-episode debut season into just eight episodes. While Netflix has yet to confirm just how long either season two or season three of the live-action show will pan out to be, fingers crossed it’s a lesson the series has learned to handle a bit better this time round.
We’ll bring you more on Netflix’s plans for The Last Airbender as we learn them—but with season two only just entering production, it’s likely going to be a good while yet before we get to see more of Toph and her new friends in action again.
The Crimson Diamond is AVAILABLE NOW!! (Launch trailer)
Play it on: Steam Current goal: Solve an old-fashioned mystery
A few weeks ago, I mentioned how I was captivated by Unavowed, a point-and-click adventure from the folks at Wadjet Eye. Well, I’ve finished that one (it was great) just in time for a brand-new entry in the genre to come along. And while Wadjet Eye’s output is most reminiscent of ‘90s adventure games that offered full voice acting and elegant drag-and-drop interfaces, this new game, The Crimson Diamondfrom designer Julia Minamata, is influenced by an earlier era of adventures, ones that ran in EGA and had you typing in what you wanted your character to do. I can’t wait to explore its mysteries.
The Crimson Diamond is perhaps most reminiscent of Sierra adventures, especially the Clara Bow games which saw their plucky heroine tossed into murder mysteries during the roaring ‘20s. Itcasts you as Nancy Maple, a young woman investigating the discovery of an unusually large and valuable diamond in a town in northern Ontario, Canada. It’s clear from the trailer that her investigations will find her encountering people with motives of their own, some of them sinister, and land her in no small amount of peril. Sign me up!
People often talk about the evolution of adventure games from text parsers to purely graphical interfaces as a net good, as if text parsers were just a crutch, a relic from the genre’s early days that we no longer needed, but I’ve always thought of them as two fundamentally different approaches, each with their own strengths. I think there are ways in which the presence of a text parser can encourage creative thinking that a purely graphics-based interface doesn’t always allow for, and in addition to digging into the plot of The Crimson Diamond, I’m eager to see how it uses this design element that so rarely gets employed in modern games. All in all, it sounds like a perfect fit for a cozy weekend. —Carolyn Petit
Austin Williams, Carolyn Petit, Moises Taveras, Kenneth Shepard, and Ethan Gach
The Legend of Korraushered in a new era of Avatar: The Last Airbender, yet so many characters we’d grown to love during the original series were long gone. Despite their absence, we’re still dying to know what happened to Suki.
If you’ve forgotten about Suki, why? How? Okay fine, we know how since we couldn’t see her during The Legend of Korra. Nevertheless, the Kyoshi Warriors became an important part of history and were mentioned in the latest series. As non-benders, the Kyoshi Warriors practiced chi-blocking, which became an important part of self-defense for non-benders everywhere.
After her stint at Zuko’s bodyguard, Suki would go on to teach civilians about chi-blocking. If Suki was still alive during the timeline of The Legend of Korra, then it’s more than likely that she would have ended up on Kyoshi Island.
Do Suki and Sokka End Up Together?
Most diehard fans believe that Suki and Sokka’s relationship did not progress after the events of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Sokka didn’t have any family of his own, and there were no mentions of Suki remaining a part of his life. If there were any mentions of Suki, it would be in remembrance of their achievements together during the war.
Maybe this is a lucky turn of events for Suki. At least she didn’t turn into a celestial body like one of Sokka’s exes. While Suki’s ending is unknown, the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender movie might give us a better hint of her whereabouts.
(featured image: Nickelodeon)
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The eight episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender—Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the animated Nickelodeon show of the same name, which aired from 2005 to 2008—were released for all to stream this week on Netflix.
The live-action series tries to cram twenty episodes’ worth of storytelling into Netflix’s usual formula, so each of the series’ eight episodes is packed with a whole lot of plot and exposition. So here we all are, breaking down what exactly happened during the finale to make sure there are no questions left unanswered as we head into a possible second season.
*** Beware of SPOILERS ahead for the entire first season of Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender.***
What was the deal with Admiral Zhao and the spirits?
The final episode of Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, titled “Legends,” covers the entire Siege of the Northern Water Tribe by the Fire Nation troops of Admiral Zhao. All our main characters are there—Team Avatar, of course, helping the Tribe, but Zuko is there as well, always chasing Aang. As is Iroh, who is warily keeping an eye on Zhao.
Since it’s established that the ice walls of Northern Water Tribe had never been breached before, Admiral Zhao—a man who clearly has just a dash of ambition and hubris on his side, what with wanting to become Fire Lord and tampering with the foundational forces of nature—has concocted a plan that should gain his firebenders the ultimate upper hand against the Northern waterbenders.
That plan is none other than killing the Moon Spirit, which takes material form for one night a year together with the Ocean Spirit. The two, which have given the people of the Water Tribes their lives and their bending abilities, appear in the shape of two koi fish in the Spirit Oasis, the most sacred place in the entire North Pole.
When Zhao kills the Moon Spirit, he, of course, disrupts the entire natural balance—the moon disappears from the sky, depriving waterbenders of their abilities, and the Ocean Spirit turns furious and vengeful as its eternal counterpart is taken away. To turn that anger against the Fire Nation and give the Water Tribe a chance, Aang chooses to give himself to the Ocean Spirit. The power of the spirit, combined with Aang’s Avatar State, creates what can only be described as a Godzilla-like creature that washes away the entire Fire Nation fleet.
In this way, though, Aang would be lost forever, merged endlessly with the Ocean Spirit. That’s when Yue decides to sacrifice herself. As she told Sokka in episode seven, the princess and spiritual leader of the Northern Water Tribe was saved by the Moon Spirit as a young child. The Spirit healed her of a sickness that would have proved fatal, turning her hair silver and giving her the ability to walk in the Spirit World from time to time.
(So yes, Sokka’s first girlfriend did turn into the moon. Some might say that it’s rough, buddy. image: Netflix)
So Yue returns the gift of life that the Moon Spirit had given her. Her sacrifice restores the Moon Spirit to life and its balance with the Ocean, with the moon reappearing in the sky and the Tribe’s waterbenders regaining their powers. The Siege of the North is won, and Team Avatar lives to fight another day.
Speaking of Team Avatar, what’s going to happen to Aang, Katara, and Sokka?
While those who have already seen the original Avatar: The Last Airbender know very well what the future has in store for our three main characters, it may not be so hard for newbies to figure out what happens next.
Aang needs to start training in the other bending arts besides air, to master them all as every Avatar before him has done. Technically, he should have already started on water bending during his journey to the North, learning alongside Katara. But we can only assume that the newly named Master Katara—that’s my girl right there—will teach him as they travel back to the Earth Kingdom in search of an earthbending master, the element that Aang will have to learn immediately after water.
What about Zuko and Iroh?
After having dispatched Admiral Zhao, the reunited uncle and nephew leave the Northern Water Trip by themselves without rejoining the rest of the Fire Nation soldiers. After all, they did attack a high-ranking officer—something that would not go down very well with Fire Lord Ozai, considering what we’ve seen during his Agni Kai duel with Zuko.
Again, longtime fans of the original A:TLA know where Zuko and Iroh’s journey will take them, but we can assume that they’re going to lie low for a while before deciding what to do.
And what about Azula?
The last we saw of Azula was her capturing King Bumi and declaring Fire Nation rule in Omashu. As she states to her soldiers, there’s only one major Earth Kingdom city left independent—the great Ba Sing Se. So it’s safe to assume Azula will head there to try and topple it the same way she did in Omashu.
(To be honest, I’m still not sure what to think about this new version of Azula. image: Netflix)
What was that whole deal with Ozai and the Comet?
The episode’s final scene shows Fire Lord Ozai studying a model of the sky together with the Great Sage of Avatar Roku’s shrine. The Sage tells him that they will soon witness another passage of Sozin’s Comet through their skies—the very same comet that was in the opening shot of the show.
Sozin’s Comet passes through the sky every hundred years, giving fire benders a power boost like nothing else in the world. Fire Lord Sozin—after whom the comet was named in the years of Fire Nation rule—harnessed that power to eradicate the Air Nomads from the world. That’s why he tells Gyatso that he might have beaten him in any other circumstance except their current one.
Since Sozin’s Comet is bound to return, we can easily imagine that Fire Lord Ozai’s plan is the same as the one hatched by his grandfather—take advantage of the extra power the comet will give fire benders and make sure that the Fire Nation reigns unchallenged over the entire world. Good thing there definitely is someone willing to challenge him.
Benedetta (she/her) lives in Italy and has been writing about pop culture and entertainment since 2015. She has considered being in fandom a defining character trait since she was in middle school and wasn’t old enough to read the fanfiction she was definitely reading and loves dragons, complex magic systems, unhinged female characters, tragic villains and good queer representation. You’ll find her covering everything genre fiction, especially if it’s fantasy-adjacent and even more especially if it’s about ASOIAF. In this Bangtan Sonyeondan sh*t for life.
All eight episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender are now streaming on Netflix. Is the show good? No. Is it a bittersweet reminder of all the amazing characters and lore that the original animated series gave us? Yes! In particular, the original Airbender provided origin stories for previous avatars, like Avatar Roku. You’re no doubt here, reading this article, because you’re curious about who plays him in the remake. I respect that!
Avatar: The Last Airbender (both the original and the remake) follow 12-year-old Aang, who finds out that he’s the only person on Earth who can manipulate all four elements. In other words, he’s the Avatar, destined to maintain peace and harmony in the world. But when the Fire Nation wages war against the other civilizations, Aang learns that he has to step into his responsibilities instead of running from them.
In the opening of the new series, we see a sequence in which previous Avatars join each other on a large staircase. These avatars include Avatar Kyoshi, Avatar Kuruk, and Avatar Roku. Here’s everything you need to know!
Who is Avatar Roku?
Avatar Roku is the last Avatar before Aang. Roku’s soul is reincarnated into Aang’s body, but because Aang is frozen in ice for a hundred years after fleeing his home, the world spends over a century with no active Avatar.
As a member of the Fire Nation, Roku is a close friend of Fire Lord Sozin, who begins the Fire Nation’s conquest of the rest of the world. In the cold open of the Netflix remake, we see Sozin and his soldiers attacking a member of the Earth Kingdom. In the animated series, Roku tries to stop Sozin from trying to conquer the world, and appears as a spirit to advise Aang.
Who is C.S. Lee?
In the Netflix remake of The Last Airbender, Roku is played by C.S. Lee. Lee is best known for his portrayal of Vince Masuka in Dexter, and Lee Jung-Gil in For All Mankind. He also played Dr. Ba in The Sopranos, and Jin Park in the Quantum Leap episode “One Night in Koreatown.”
There you have it! The Last Airbender may not be a great remake, but at least it’s got some great talent.
Julia Glassman (she/her) holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has been covering feminism and media since 2007. As a staff writer for The Mary Sue, Julia covers Marvel movies, folk horror, sci fi and fantasy, film and TV, comics, and all things witchy. Under the pen name Asa West, she’s the author of the popular zine ‘Five Principles of Green Witchcraft’ (Gods & Radicals Press). You can check out more of her writing at <a href=”https://juliaglassman.carrd.co/”>https://juliaglassman.carrd.co/.</a>
Fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender have been waiting for this day for a long time: the release of a live-action adaptation that finally captures the spirit and magic of the original beloved cartoon.
The cult classic cartoon aired for three seasons on Nickelodeon starting in 2005 and hasn’t left the zeitgeist since, even after a disappointing live-action movie came out in 2010 directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
It’s an easy claim to make that Netflix’s Last Airbender blows the 2010 movie out of the water — but it does so much more than that. It brings to life a world rich in beauty and history while staying true to the whimsy that made the original series so special. It’s at once expansive in its scope and grounded in its characters, everything you’d expect for a show about a group of, well, just kids saving the world.
Avatar: The Last Airbender tells the story of the Avatar, a “chosen one” character who is the only person on Earth who can master all four elements: earth, wind, air and fire. In The Last Airbender, our young protagonist Aang is just that, the last of his kind after a genocide wipes out his people. In his quest to take on the conquering Fire Nation, Aang picks up friends along the way and audiences get taken on a journey that showcases the unique nations associated with each element, based on Inuit, East Asian and South Asian cultures.
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The master of all four elements. The savior of the world. Avatar: The Last Airbender is NOW PLAYING ON NETFLIX! pic.twitter.com/aSobkEbxNj
Indigenous and Asian representation is abound in Netflix’s eight-episode series, something that was sorely missing in the 2010 movie. Global News sat down with South Korean-Canadian actor Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, best known for his role as Appa on Kim’s Convenience, to chat about taking on the iconic character of Uncle Iroh and how Asian representation in media has changed since he first became an actor.
“When I started off, it felt like a desolate wasteland, where you kind of felt doomed to forever play a gang member or convenience store owner, or a doctor or lawyer or whatever,” Lee said. “Characters that were just window dressing and not really characters, but more decorations, human decorations that were sprinkled in the background to show diversity but were never the ones that were the centre of attention or the ones that drove the narrative.”
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Coming off a major boom in Asian cinema and diverse casting, Lee says “we are living in a golden age, and I love it because it’s a movement and not a trend.”
Lee says it’s an inspiration to see “a story like this on this scale, the epicness of it and the sweeping adventures, and not only that, seeing Asian characters at the forefront who are driving the narrative.”
“When you see your culture, your people, people who look like you as heroes instead of villains, it makes a world of difference,” Lee said. “I think a show like Avatar will put another stamp in that history book and say, ‘Hey, let’s open up more chapters and keep building on this.’”
Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Iroh in season 1 of ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender.’.
Robert Falconer/Netflix
Lee revealed that he watched The Last Airbender for the first time in 2017, on the recommendation of one of his Kim’s Convenience co-stars.
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“She said, ‘You’ve got to watch this show. It’s probably some of the best television I’ve ever watched.’ So I sat and watched all three books. I thought, this is fantastic. And then very shortly after that, it was announced that it was being developed by Netflix into a live action remake. And I got fan-casted by thousands of people, which was like, really, really great.”
When Lee got into his Iroh costume with full hair and makeup for the first time, he cried.
“The first time I saw the full look, I cried because, there he was. And he’s me. Like, I’m him. It was crazy how transformative it is,” Lee said.
“And then you see everybody else show up and everybody’s in costume … and it’s like they plucked them from the cartoon and put them right in front of you. And as a fan, it doesn’t get any better than that,” Lee added. “It’s so magical.”
Uncle Iroh and Prince Zuko make a firebending escape.
Lee also talked about some of the darker themes of The Last Airbender, and how they strike such a chord with younger audiences.
“It’s almost like a gateway to to explore the events that are happening around them currently. It helps them to understand the dynamic of the real world and what’s going on. It gives them parallels. And it’s a great conversation starter, too, like, ‘Oh, this is very similar to the Fire Nation wanting to take over and, you know, colonizing all these different kingdoms.’”
But The Last Airbender is not all doom and gloom, Lee notes; it is as much about self-discovery and finding out who you truly are.
“You’ve got to figure out who you really are and what you want, because that’s your life. And, you know, your parents or other people might want you to do certain things, but at the end of the day, it is your life. And so what are you going to do with that? And I think this message is great because it can be inspiring. It can be contagious,” Lee said. “I think a lot more people in life would be happier if they were able to ask themselves that question and honestly come to those answers and pursue that happiness.”
Threading that line between The LastAirbender’s themes of war and environmental destruction with its focus on the transformative power of love and friendship is something the Netflix adaptation does seamlessly.
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Fear and loss push these characters to do terrible things, but at the end of the day, history is altered by a group of kids who won’t let go of their hope.
The four nations are rendered in spectacular fashion, the bending and fight scenes are stunningly fluid and the on-screen chemistry of the main cast is so natural for a group of kids and teens forced to grow up a bit too early.
The challenge of condensing the original 24-episode first season of The Last Airbender into an eight-episode arc are on display in some of the cracks of this series. The plot moves at a breakneck pace without much time for Aang, or the audience, to sit with the lessons learned along the way. The show also makes changes to the intentions behind Aang’s character that take away from his development and initial fear of assuming his role as the Avatar.
The show makes up for some of these changes by ensuring audiences get tons of fan service. There are numerous nods to some of The Last Airbender’s most iconic scenes and inside jokes.
In all, fans of the show are sure to be impressed with the visual majesty on-screen, even if Netflix’s adaption doesn’t quite reach the same peaks of the original series.
Few series are more highly anticipated than Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The series is based on the fan-favorite animated Nickelodeon series that ran from 2005-2008.
The series received critical acclaim and inspired books, comics, video games, and the spin-off series The Legend of Korra. It also inspired M. Night Shyamalan’s disastrous 2010 live-action movie The Last Airbender.
In 2018, Netflix announced the development of their live-action adaptation developed by Albert Kim (Sleepy Hollow). Six years later, the series has finally arrived and it looks awesome. The special effects are top-notch, and it’s clear that Netflix put a lot of money and effort into the show. Will Avatar: The Last Airbender be as successful as Netflix’s big-budget adaptation of One Piece? Or will it crash and burn like their live-action version of Cowboy Bebop? Fans will have to wait until the series drops to find out.
The series synopsis reads: “Water. Earth. Fire. Air. The four nations once lived in harmony, with the Avatar, master of all four elements, keeping peace between them. But everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked and wiped out the Air Nomads, the first step taken by the firebenders towards conquering the world. With the current incarnation of the Avatar yet to emerge, the world has lost hope. But like a light in the darkness, hope springs forth when Aang (Gordon Cormier), a young Air Nomad — and the last of his kind — reawakens to take his rightful place as the next Avatar. Alongside his newfound friends Sokka (Ian Ousley) and Katara (Kiawentiio), siblings and members of the Southern Water Tribe, Aang embarks on a fantastical, action-packed quest to save the world and fight back against the fearsome onslaught of Fire Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim). But with a driven Crown Prince Zuko (Dallas Liu) determined to capture them, it won’t be an easy task. They’ll need the help of the many allies and colorful characters they meet along the way.”
When does Avatar: The Last Airbender premiere on Netflix?
The 8-episode first season will be available on Netflix at 12 am PT / 3 am ET on February 22, 2024.
Adaptations can be tricky, particularly when the source material is animated. More often than not, they’re reviled upon reveal, because they often feel like they’re going through the motions or twisting the original thing into something it’s not. It can be a dismal prospect to see something you grew up with lose its identity, and things get even worse when you can’t really let it go.
How The Last Airbender Inspired Lisette Olivera
Last weekend, I watched The Last Airbender, M. Night Shyamalan’s 2010 adaptation of Nickelodeon’s Avatar series. I’d made an active choice to avoid the movie back then, largely because the cast was whitewashed as hell. And beyond catching the last 15 minutes on TV forever ago, I hadn’t ever seen the full thing. Now that I’ve done so, after years of hearing it described as the worst thing ever… it’s just a mediocre adaptation. There’s nothing remarkable about it being bad, other than how it sucking was definitive for an entire generation of kids. To be honest, I was a little disappointed it wasn’t actively worse, but then I started to think about why the movie and its badness stuck around in audiences’ minds for so long.
In the mid and late-2000s, studios were trying to anything that could possibly strike with the same impact as Harry Potter movies. At the time, films based on kids books like Eragon and The Spiderwick Chronicles did okay or fizzled out, and while Dragonball Evolution hurt anime’s Hollywood aspirations for a decade, the medium wasn’t quite a juggernaut yet. The original Avatar show arrived at the right time in 2005: it looked enough like anime to stand out, but came without having any of the negative baggage attached to anime back then. And what made it feel even more special back then was how it was actively aging up with its audience, something cartoons weren’t really doing at the time.
Image: Paramount
Avatar was a show for 11-year-olds, and it was formative in the way good shows often are when they hit you at the right moment. TheLast Airbender movie was very clearly aimed at fans of the show, which had wrapped in 2008. Two years was just long enough for some wistfulness for the original show to kick in… which made it all the more heartbreaking that the movie just blows. Whatever small bright spots it has, like Dev Patel and Aasif Mandvi being the only ones trying to give performances as Zuko and Zhao, are quickly overwhelmed by a film that makes it clear from the jump it’s going to be a stinker.
Condensing a 20-episode series into a film was never going to be easy, and it’d be foolish to think the movie was going to get as much in as possible. But it’s still pretty startling to see this movie adapt a handful episodes and leave it at that—something made worse by how half-hearted the effort feels. The “best” of the bunch is really only the assault on the Northern Water Tribe toward the very end, and that’s really only because the movie does a decent job at giving Aang’s waterbending big tidal wave a sense of scale. (But even that doesn’t hit the same as the giant water kaiju in the finale of the show.)
In that sense, I can get why series creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino would align with Netflix to take another live-action stab at their own work. (After a split from Netflix due to “creative differences,” they headed to Nickelodeon to head up Avatar Studios, where they’re developing an Avatar animated film, among other projects.) As for the general public, it feels weird to still give the 2010 film oxygen; at its best, Netflix’s upcoming live-action take on the material—an eight-episode series made without Konietzko and DiMartino, and arriving on the streamer February 22—can really only make us go “well, it’s better than the last one.” But the larger Avatar series pretty much recovered from it around the third season of Legend of Korra, and it’s not like this is ever going to get a reexamination like the Star Wars prequels or several pre-MCU Marvel movies from Fox.
The Last Airbender’s biggest fault was how much it didn’t really do right by the source material or even have its own novel spin on things to distract from what it lacked. As an adaptation, it commits the cardinal sin of existing for its own sake and not being additive in any real way. Overall, it’s just dull and annoying—but not enough to hold a 14-year grudge.
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer. Universal Pictures
From major Oscar nominees to a massive new Netflix series, this week boasts some exciting new titles across streaming. Action, thriller, musical and more—it’s all available to watch this week, so make the most out of your streaming subscriptions.
What to watch on Netflix
Warrior
A gripping historical crime drama that mixes martial arts with gangsters, Warrior is an excellent blend of genres that’s worth watching for its fight scenes alone. The show comes from a long lost pitch from the late Bruce Lee, and it’s brought to life by his daughter Shannon Lee and a dedicated team. The series takes place in 1870s San Francisco, where the burgeoning Chinatown sees brewing gang wars. Meanwhile, Chinese immigrants in the city are facing threats from a white establishment that’s growing increasingly hostile. All three seasons of Warriorwill begin streaming Friday, February 16th. Read Observer’s review.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
One of the most anticipated live-action television adaptations in recent memory, Avatar: The Last Airbender is a new fantastical adventure series based on the mid-’00s cartoon of the same name. The show takes place in a world where nations tied to the elements (water, earth, fire, and air) are at war. The Fire Nation is on a path of conquest, helped by those who can wield and bend the element, and only the mystical figure known as the Avatar (who can control all four elements) can stop it. The problem? The Avatar, Aang, is only a child, but he’s been hiding from his responsibilities for years. Avatar: The Last Airbenderpremieres Thursday, February 22nd.
Amy Schumer returns with Season 2 of Life & Beth, a dramedy about grappling with love, loss, and buried trauma. Schumer stars as Beth, a woman who ditched her fairly comfortable (but fairly boring) life to deal with the death of her mother and all of the feelings that it stirred up. Along the way, she discovered a charming farmer (Michael Cera) and decided to really try to live her life rather than just exist in it. Now, they’re a happy couple, but personal realizations and rushed proposals threaten to derail that relationship. Season 2 of Life & Bethpremieres Friday, February 16th.
What to watch on Amazon Prime
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have long been sources for middling movies, so it’s a good thing that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem finally realized the fun that could be had with these characters. The animated film takes the kind of creative visual swings that made the two Spider-Verse movies such hits, oozing with bright, clever animation. Mutant Mayhem follows the heroes in a half shell as they work to bust a mysterious mutant crime syndicate and get some good press (with the help of Ayo Edebiri’s April O’Neil) for mutants at large. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhemstreams Wednesday, February 21st.
What to watch on Max
The Color Purple
A new take on an American classic, The Color Purple puts Alice Walker’s riveting story of self-discovery and empowerment (and, more specifically, its Tony Award-winning Broadway musical adaptation) on the big screen. American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino stars as Celie, who suffers abuses of all kinds as she struggles to find her voice. The rest of the cast is overflowing with musical and acting talent, with Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins, H.E.R., Halle Bailey, and Ciara making up the sprawling ensemble. The Color Purplepremieres on streaming Friday, February 16th.
What to watch on Apple TV+
Constellation
From Invasion to For All Mankind, no platform loves a space show as much as Apple. Constellation is the newest space-set series from the streamer, though it leans a bit more into psychological thriller than sci-fi or drama. Noomi Rapace stars as Jo, an astronaut whose mission goes awry. When she returns to Earth, she discovers that key parts of her life are different, from an inexplicable new ability to play the piano to Jo’s altered relationship with her daughter. Jonathan Banks and James D’Arcy also star. The first three episodes of Constellation premiere Wednesday, February 21st.
What to watch on Peacock
Oppenheimer
The biggest addition to streaming this week comes in the form of one of 2023’s biggest and best movies. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer made a massive splash in theaters last summer, combining the director’s affinity for richly realized filmmaking and an intricate story about one of history’s most notorious figures. It’s a heavy favorite to walk away with plenty of Oscars come March 10th, given that it’s the most-nominated film of the year. With stellar performances from Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, and Robert Downey Jr., this period piece about the science and politics of war is near-perfect. Oppenheimerpremieres Friday, February 16th. Read Observer’s review.
What to Watchis a regular endorsement of movies and TV worth your streaming time.
I’m talking, of course, about Toph, daughter of the wealthy Beifong family and self-taught earthbender. Here’s why Toph probably won’t be in season 1 of the Netflix adaptation, and when we can expect her to arrive.
Season 1 of Netflix’s Avatar will likely cover Book One: Water
The original Airbender series on Nickelodeon consisted of three seasons, or books: Water, Earth, and Air.
Book One: Water began with Aang waking up after a hundred years frozen in an iceberg, and culminated with Team Avatar’s journey to the North Pole so that Aang and Katara could master waterbending. Although they had plenty of diversions along the way, and we did meet new characters, season 1 was mainly focused on the burgeoning friendship between Aang, Katara, and Sokka.
Judging from the footage we’ve seen in the two trailers for the Netflix adaptation, season 1 will likely follow the same course. You never know, though—the adaptation isn’t a direct remake, so it’s possible they could shake things up.
Toph’s first appearance in the original Avatar: The Last Airbender
In the original Nickelodeon series, Toph doesn’t appear until season 2 (or Book Two: Earth). Her first appearance is in episode 6, “The Blind Bandit.” As a blind child, Toph is kept sequestered by her overprotective family, but she secretly learns earthbending and becomes a formidable fighter. When she meets Aang, Katara, and Sokka, she fits right in, and teaches Aang earthbending.
That means that Toph will probably appear in season 2 of the Netflix adaptation—although a second season hasn’t been greenlit yet, nor have any casting announcements of season 2 characters been made.
So if you’re impatient to have Toph back in your life, I feel you. Let’s just cross our fingers that a) season 1 is good enough to warrant a season 2, and b) season 2 comes quickly.
In the latest trailer for Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, the live-action remake of Nickelodeon’s animated series, we meet a cuddly little sidekick. Who is this cutie piece? Whether you’re looking for a refresher on the animated series or you’re an Airbender newbie, here are the basics on Momo, Aang’s flying lemur.
Momo in the Avatar: The Last Airbender trailer
In the Avatar trailer, Sokka (Ian Ousley) tells Aang (Gordon Cormier) that all Team Avatar needs is the two of them, Katara (Kiawentiio), and the flying bison Appa. As soon as he finishes his sentence, a strange creature lands on his shoulder: it looks a little like a white flying squirrel, but with bat wings under its arms and huge ears. Fans of the animated series no doubt recognize the creature as Momo, the lovable flying lemur.
What part will Momo play in the Netflix series? If it’s anything like his role in the animated series, his main job will be to act adorable and make us laugh.
Who is Momo, and why is he such a good boy?
(Nickelodeon)
In the Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series, Momo is believed to be the last flying lemur on Earth after the Fire Nation’s genocide of the Air Nomads. In season 1, Aang finds Momo hiding in the Southern Air Temple. Although Sokka wants to eat the lemur for dinner, Aang keeps him as a companion after Momo brings them food. The word “momo” is Japanese for “peach,” and Aang names him after he steals a peach from Sokka. What a scamp!
Throughout the animated series, Momo serves as comic relief throughout the adventures of Aang, Sokka, Katara, and Toph (who won’t be appearing in season 1 of the remake, but will hopefully make her debut in a possible season 2). Momo is also a companion to the team’s other wordless animal companion, Appa.
Can’t wait to get more of Momo in your life? Avatar: The Last Airbender is dropping on Netflix on February 22, 2024.
The Mechanist is everyone’s second favorite war criminal in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Uncle Iroh is our first, of course.
While I am still traumatized by the M. Night Shyamalan live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender, these newly released stills are giving me more hope than the actor who played Katara on Ember Island. We’re not quite out of the woods yet—after all, the original creators of the series parted ways with the Netflix production due to creative differences. It’s not exactly a great sign, but considering Netflix’s relative success with the live-action One Piece series, we can raise our hopes slightly.
The Last Airbender to Return in Live Action on Netflix in 2024
Nickelodeon’s popular series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, will be making a comeback in 2024 in an exciting new Live Action version, with Netflix taking the reins. After the disappointing 2010 film adaptation, this latest adaptation looks promising, as Netflix has released images of the characters from the Land of Fire. The story follows a young boy who is the last Airbender and future Avatar, tasked with restoring order between the four nations of Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. When the previous Avatar died, the Fire Nation seized control, disrupting the peace. Now, the last airbender must discover a way to restore balance. Fans can expect this highly anticipated series to release next year, aiming to stay faithful to the original material.
Netflix’s Commitment to Staying True to the Source Material
Netflix has assured fans that they will use the original material as a guide to create the Live Action adaptation. The platform aims to give a fresh visual dimension to the 2005 animated series. This is not the first time Netflix has revived an anime, as they previously produced a successful live action version of One Piece. For those eager to revisit the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the animated series is currently available on the SVOD platform.
The First Reactions are Very Positive
Since the release of the trailer, fans have taken to social media to express their excitement. Messages such as “Netflix, I trust you, don’t be wrong” and “Oh my God, this is so good. I can’t wait” flooded the official Netflix tweet revealing the Fire Nation actors. Currently, no further information about the story or additional cast members has been disclosed. However, Netflix has hinted that more details will be revealed during GeekedWeek 2023, which will take place from November 6 to 12.
One Piece is a series built on lofty promises. Chief among them: that its hallowed treasure, which still has yet to be revealed since the series began 26 years ago, will be worth the journey; that protagonist Monkey D. Luffy will someday fulfill his dream of becoming the king of the pirates; and that its long-running manga series and intimidatingly long anime will ultimately end on a satisfying note. The release of Netflix’s One Piece live-action series adds yet another promise to the series’ tab—the promise that, in being adapted to live action, it will emerge as one of the good ones, avoiding the dismal fate of so many anime that have made that journey before. The show doesn’t completely succeed in keeping this promise, but it makes a decent if uneven first impression, beckoning long-time fans and newcomers alike to stay aboard and see where it could go next.
Netflix’s One Piece Live-Action Trailer Has A Treasure Trove Of Anime Easter Eggs
The live-action anime seas are treacherous waters for anime fans who’ve, either earnestly or out of morbid curiosity, watched as series like Dragon Ball Z, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Fullmetal Alchemist, and most recently Cowboy Bebop, capsized under the weight of their own misguided ambition to recapture the magic of their source material by throwing real people into the mix. These experiments, for lack of a better term, led to the consensus that any subsequent live-action adaptations would be doomed to fail because the grand worlds, battles, beauty and kineticism of anime can’t be reproduced in a live-action format, at least not without looking cheap and uninspired by comparison.
One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda has been more than aware of fans’ trepidation that the One Piece live-action series could well besmirch his magnum opus’ legacy by becoming yet another example of live-action drivel. Stoking those fears was the fact that producer Marty Adelstein’s Tomorrow ITV Studios also did Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop, which was promptly canceled after its first season. Still, Oda promised that the adaptation, on which he serves as an executive producer, wouldn’t “betray” fans who’ve been supporting the series for the past twenty years, and stressed that the show wouldn’t launch until he was satisfied with it.
Netflix
The first season of the One Piece live-action series, which covers the major story beats from the start of the manga’s opening East Blue saga up until the conclusion of the Arlong Park arc, sees Luffy assemble his pirate crew as they set sail to find Gold Roger’s titular hidden treasure. The show covers a lot of ground, especially when you consider that it’s condensing what would be 93 chapters (or roughly 17 hours of anime) into eight hour-long episodes. The result is an occasionally clumsy show that opts to streamline major story beats by dual-tracking arcs together in a single episode, thus giving fans who felt intimidated by the manga and anime’s lengths a gateway into Oda’s grand world.
And while it leaves a bit to be desired, the Netflix One Piece is one of the rare well-made live-action anime adaptations. The show is full of heart, from its vibrant set and wardrobe designs to the disarmingly charming found-family dynamic that the live-action crew so effectively exudes.
What Netflix’s One Piece live-action series does right
What surprised me most about Netflix’s One Piece live-action series is how it deviates ever so slightly from being a rote, SparkNotes summary of the source material’s first major arc by adding its own original wrinkles to Oda’s epic, allowing one of the series’ subtler relationships—that between Admiral Garp (Vincent Regan) and marine recruit Koby (Morgan Davies)—to take center stage.
Throughout the season, the show balances this thread with the cat-and-mouse chase of the Marines pursuing the Straw Hats as they sail toward the Grand Line. While manga and anime One Piece enjoyers like myself know the pair eventually develop an unbreakable bond, we never get to see how the relationship between the fearsome admiral and the former pirate takes root outside of a few stray manga panels interspersed between latter arcs in the series. Thankfully, the Netflix series is more than willing to dedicate time to depicting the humble beginnings of their wholesome friendship.
Throughout the live-action series, Garp instills agency in Koby by teaching his subordinate that he should get out of his own head and trust his gut instincts. In one of the earlier episodes, Garp instills this lesson in Koby over a game of Go, which Koby proceeds to best Garp in after accepting his advice. While innocuous on the surface, this scene serves to fill in the anime’s gaps in Koby’s sudden and awesome character development, as he goes from being a timid coward to one of the Marines’ bravest heroes.
This all comes to a head when Koby chooses to defy Garp’s orders to detain Luffy because he believes his friend is a good pirate—something marines are indoctrinated into believing doesn’t exist. Instead of chastising Koby, Garp praises him for being honest with himself and doing what he thought was right.
Rather than feeling like filler or glorified fan fiction, Garp and Koby’s conversations build upon the series’ long-running theme about throwing caution to the wind in the pursuit of one’s dream. For Koby, that dream is being a good marine.
While the series does an exceptional job of characterizing the dynamic of the Straw Hats’ burgeoning camaraderie, Garp and Koby’s flourishing relationship steals the show, and instilled a desire in me to see other relationships explored more deeply in the live-action series, should it get renewed for a second season.
Netflix’s One Piece suffers from growing pains, but they aren’t deal breakers
That’s not to say that Netflix’s live-action series doesn’t make some sacrifices along the way. In the show’s slightly brisker pacing, which combines both origin stories and early character-defining arcs for characters like Sanji and Zoro, you miss moments of character development for Usopp and Luffy, who come off as one-dimensional bystanders to whatever scenes they accompany. This is particularly disappointing considering their manga and anime counterparts play a more active role in their crewmates’ arcs by having salient conversations about how their friends are feeling. Instead, the live-action pair are often delegated to onlookers who either incessantly comment about how strong their friends are or, worse, quip like Marvel heroes.
While the CGI in the live-action One Piece series is on par with what you’d see in Netflix’s Witcher series, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment whenever the show attempted to recreate Luffy’s rubberman fighting style. Mind you, my disappointment wasn’t with how uncanny it looked, but how sparingly the series showcased Luffy’s devil fruit powers. Whenever he actually fights using his rubber man abilities, it’s contained in brief, tight camera shots, as if the showrunners were self-conscious about how goofy it might look to viewers. If anything, the series would’ve benefited from hanging on shots of Luffy going wild with his rubber man antics, especially considering the great first impression the show makes by displaying how effective Luffy’s Tom and Jerry-esque punches are at knocking folks out.
As a whole, the first season of Netflix’s One Piece live-action series is a satisfying start, one that’s faithful to the source material while adding its own fresh, welcome insights. Whether the show’s success eventually leads its live-action crew to sail to the sands of Alabasta, the clouds of Skypiea, or the impenetrable fortress of Enies Lobby has yet to be seen, but I hope to witness its efforts to live up to its promising first season.
