When news first broke in 2018 that a live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender was in the works at Netflix, fans of the original animated series found themselves understandably divided.
On one hand, all four elements had magically realigned to bring about a fresh take on the Primetime Emmy winning show. Plus, Netflix's successful debut of One Piece bode well for the streamer's ability to reimagine beloved animes into live-action adaptations.
On the other hand, the potential for disaster was extremely high.
Look no further than M. Night Shyamalan's ill-fated attempt at adapting the animated series into a feature film. 2010's The Last Airbender was based on the first season of the Nickelodeon show, and in spite of the popularity of its source material, the movie was poorly received by audiences. For perspective, the film is sitting at a devastatingly unimpressive five percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with an audience score of 30%.
Now, less than a month out from the release of a second attempt at adapting Avatar: The Last Airbender for live-action, all eyes are on Netflix to get it right. Otherwise, the streaming platform is going to receive a whole lot worse than Zuko's wrath from the original series' loyal fanbase.
Here's everything we know so far about the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender series coming to Netflix.
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Avatar: The Last Air Bender Release Date
The live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender premieres globally Feb. 22, 2024.
How Many Episodes in Season 1?
The pilot season consists of eight, hour-long episodes. All eight episodes will be available to stream on Netflix when the series debuts Feb. 22.
Latest Trailers
The full trailer for Avatar: The Last Airbender was released Jan. 23, and it's nothing short of a two-minute spectacle that the producers felt the need to dive into further. Most notably, fans get an up-close look at the series' dazzling special effects that take bending to the next level. The preview also shows off fan-favorite minor characters like June and Jet, who had previously only been seen in a series of first-look images that Netflix unveiled in late December.
"YIP YIP!" Netflix captioned a post on X/Twitter celebrating the trailer's debut. "The Avatar: The Last Airbender trailer is HERE!"
The official trailer arrived about two and a half months after the debut of the initial teaser for the live-action adaptation, which was released Nov. 9 at Netflix's Geeked Week. With a runtime of one minute and 39 seconds, the teaser trailer offers additional glimpses at the members of the main cast in full regalia.
Always remember who you are. AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER, coming to Netflix on February 22, 2024 #GeekedWeek pic.twitter.com/37iIRhqzDG
— Netflix Geeked (@NetflixGeeked) November 9, 2023
ATLA Live-Action Cast
Gordon Cormier as Aang
Cormier stars as Aang, the Avatar incarnate and master of all four elements, in this live-action adaptation of the hit television show. The 14-year-old actor is best known for his recurring role on The Stand, a Paramount+ original mini series.
Cormier's character, Aang, is best characterized by his playful spirit and youthful awkwardness — traits that keep him down to Earth despite the fact he possesses several lifetimes of knowledge. And if there's one thing that's clear from Cormier's interviews with the press, it's that the child actor has no issue channeling these same attributes, oftentimes without even realizing.
"'I think the airbender genocide is really cool… Well, no! No! Not like that,' Cormier says, quickly correcting himself," journalist Nick Romano wrote in a Jan. 29 article for Entertainment Weekly. In the interview, Cormier continued, "I mean, yeah, my whole family's dead, of course. It's not a good thing, but watching it is going to be sick!"
"(He means for the airbending effects.)," Romano clarified immediately after the quote.
And yes, Cormier really did shave his head for the role.
Kiawentiio as Katara
Kiawentiio plays Katara, the last of the water benders among the Southern Water Tribe. With the help of her brother Sokka, the two take Aang under their wing on his journey to master the elements and defeat Fire Lord Ozai.
Born on the Akwesasne reserve that straddles the Canada-U.S. border, Kiawentiio is a member of the Mohawk Nation. Prior to her work on Avatar: The Last Airbender, she played Ka'kwet, a young Indigenous Canadian featured throughout Season 3 of Anne with an E. Most recently, Kiawentiio voiced Wáhta, a young Mohawk boy, in an episode of Marvel's What If...
In an interview with IGN, showrunner Albert Kim revealed that the adaptation will be taking a slightly different approach to Katara's portrayal — making decisions that "aren't really changing a character as so much as updating them a little bit."
"There are certain roles I think that Katara did in the cartoon that we didn't necessarily also do here," Kim told IGN. "I mean, I don't want to really get into a lot of that, but some gender issues that didn't quite translate from the cartoon."
Ian Ousley as Sokka
Ian Ousley closes out the main trio as Sokka — an accident-prone character whose over-confidence and quotable one-liners provide comic relief throughout the original series.
Like his co-star, Ousley also got a makeover for the part. "Haircut day," as he called it, was one of his favorite memories from shooting, according to an article from the Tudum website, because the cast "really got to transform into the characters for the first time." "That day was a little easier for some than others," the actor joked.
The character is well-loved because of his deadpan humor, but as Ousley and Kiawentiio pointed out in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, those jokes are sometimes mysoginistic at the onset of the original series. A major adjustment to Sokka's attitude toward women can be expected in the upcoming live-action adaptation.
"I feel like we also took out the element of how sexist [Sokka] was," Kiawentiio told Entertainment Weekly, reflecting on how each of the characters have changed in the new series. "I feel like there were a lot of moments in the original show that were iffy," Kiawentiio said.
Ousley agrees: "Yeah, totally. There are things that were redirected just because it might play a little differently [in live action]."
Daniel Dae Kim as Fire Lord Ozai
Daniel Dae Kim is no stranger to the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe. Having voiced General Fong in the original show and Asami's dad in The Legend of Korra, it's no surprise he was the top pick to play Fire Lord Ozai, the formidable villain of the Avatar series.
"He's deliciously a villain, and that's what I sank my teeth into," Kim said in an interview for an Entertainment Weekly cover story. "That's one of the things that I was really looking forward to doing. He reminded me of the Darth Vader of this show."
The Hawaii Five-0 star went on to dub the character as "the Darth Vader" of the Avatar franchise — a fitting comparison given Star Wars' Mark Hamill voiced the tyrannical Fire Lord in the original series.
Dallas Liu as Zuko
Dallas Liu will bring the heat as Zuko, Prince of the Fire Nation and son of Fire Lord Ozai. The teenage firebender is obsessed with capturing the Avatar to prove himself as rightful heir to the throne. Zuko is scarred in more ways than one; he has a tendency to explode in a fit of anger that can only be tamed by the stubborn kindness of his Uncle Iroh.
Before securing a part in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Liu held a recurring role on Hulu's PEN15 and appeared in 2021's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
"Because it is such a beloved show I feel like there is some pressure to do a great job and not that I'm doubting anyone or the project at all, but this is the biggest project and the biggest role that I've been able to take part in," Liu said of the project in an interview with ComicBook after getting cast. "This is like a dream, but at the same time, it gets a little nerve-wracking."
Supporting Cast
James Sie is yet another voice actor from 2005's Avatar: The Last Airbender that will return to the recording booth for the upcoming adaptation. Better known as "The Cabbage Merchant," Sie will reprise his role in the new series.
Fans will no doubt recall the running gag of the original Avatar series, wherein the unfortunate cabbage salesman finds himself frequently in the wrong place at the wrong time. As is a recurring theme, whenever his cabbage cart is destroyed (often as a casualty of Aang and the squad's mischief), the vendor yells, "My cabbages!"
Key players among the supporting cast include Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Uncle Iroh, Elizabeth Yu as Azula, Casey Camp-Horinek as Gran Gran, Maria Zhang as Suki, Arden Cho as June, Sebastian Amoruso as Jet, Tamlyn Tomita as Yukari, Irene Bedard as Yagoda.
The extensive cast list for the live-action series also features Utkarsh Ambudkar as King Bumi, Hiro Kanagawa as Fire Lord Sozin, Ken Leung as Commander Zhao, A Martinez as Pakku, Danny Pudi as The Mechanist, Amber Midthunder as Princess Yue, Joel Oulette as Hahn, Nathaniel Arcand as Chief Arnook, Meegwun Fairbrother as Avatar Kuruk, Yvonne Chapman as Avatar Kyoshi, Lucian-River Chauhan as Teo, Ruy Iskandar as Lt. Jee, Momona Tamada as Ty Lee, Thalia Tran as Mai, Ryan Mah as Lt. Dang, C.S. Lee as Avatar Roku, François Chau as The Great Sage, Lim Kay Siu as Gyatso, George Takei as Koh, and Randall Duk Kim as Wan Shi Tong.
The full cast list of Avatar: The Last Airbender is available for viewing on the Tudum website.
The Plot
Per the official logline for the show, “Alongside his newfound friends Sokka and Katara, 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. But with a driven Crown Prince Zuko determined to capture them, it won’t be an easy task.”
The upcoming series is the latest attempt to adapt Avatar: The Last Airbender for live-action. Similar to its predecessor, the show is set in the aftermath of a brutal Fire Nation attack that wiped out all of the Air Nomads in existence. When the show begins, Avatar Aang awakens from a 100-year-long slumber, during which he was frozen in ice, only to be confronted with the brutal reality that he is the last of his kind.
As a reincarnation of the Avatar, the 12-year-old airbender is capable of all forms of bending — with thorough practice, of course. Motivated to restore peace to the world's Nations and seek justice for his people, Aang embarks on his journey to master the four elements in time for a battle that could determine the fate of humanity.
The pilot season of the live-action series is based on Book 1 of the original show, during which Aang is focused on mastering water-bending, with the aid of Katara's teachings.
Kiawentiio revealed that fans can look forward to Episode 5 of the upcoming series, describing the episode as a "personal favorite."
"As soon as I read it, I couldn’t wait to film it, Kiawentiio said in an interview at Netflix's Tudum Theater in June. "The characters go through a lot of different things, and they see their situation through different perspectives, and I just can’t wait for you guys to see that.”
What's Different?
Well, to start, the original creators of Avatar: the Last Airbender aren't a part of the new series.
But it wasn't intended to be that way. Co-creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino spent two years developing the adaptation before the duo decided to abandon the project over creative differences, according to Variety. Following their departure, Albert Kim took the reigns as showrunner, writer, and executive producer of the new series.
Though viewers may very well still feel the absence of Konietzko and DiMartino's presence, Kim admitted in a Dec. 19 interview with Entertainment Weekly that he made sure to sit down with the co-creators before they left to ask detailed questions about all things Avatar.
"It ran the range of really nerdy little things that no one except for diehard fans might wonder about — questions about Katara’s mom or Aang’s parentage — to bigger picture stuff about how to translate what made the original so special into a live-action version," Kim said. The showrunner then clarified that, "This is Avatar: The Last Airbender, but it is our version of Avatar: The Last Airbender."
It's safe to say viewers can expect some slight changes from the original Nickelodeon series, for better or for worse, and a complete overhaul of 2010's The Last Airbender. In fact, Kim hasn't even seen the Shyamalan adaptation — a fact he conceded in a Dec. 20 interview with Entertainment Weekly.
"I'll tell you something, I never watched the Shyamalan movie," Kim said. "There was a period of time where I thought I should watch it, but then I thought, I don't really want those images in my head as I start to go forward with our version of this project. So I avoided it purposefully."
The most obvious change in Kim's version of the hit series is episode runtime. The original series consisted of a 20-episode pilot season, with Avatar: the Last Airbender episodes each spanning about 20 minutes in length. That's just under 7 hours of content.
The achilles heel of Shyamalan's The Last Airbender was its abbreviated runtime: an hour and 40 minutes is simply not long enough to fully cover the events of the original show's first season. The live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender steers clear of this issue entirely by returning to an episodic format: eight, hour-long episodes means there's more than enough time to stay true to the source material.
Another foibles of The Last Airbender was its inaccurate casting for characters of color, like Katara and Sokka. Despite having never watched the Shyamalan film, Kim told Entertainment Weekly he had heard about how the film was criticized for selecting white actors to play Indigeneous and Asian roles, which he took into account when casting the new series.
"Those kinds of pitfalls weren't hard to avoid," Kim told Entertainment Weekly. "An authentic version of the casting, that's something that we would've done regardless."
The upcoming series is also poised to put The Last Airbender to shame in the special effects department — the show used a massive virtual stage comprised of 3,000 LED panels so visual effects artists could work in real time while the cameras are rolling. The same technology was used to create The Mandalorian, which has received two Emmys for Outstanding Special Visual Effects.
For more info on Avatar: The Last Airbender, check out these first-look images at fan-favorite minor characters or watch the producers of the series break down the latest trailer in our recent exclusive.
Katie Reul is a freelance journalist whose entertainment reporting has been featured in IGN and Variety.
