This piece contains spoilers for the Netflix Avatar: The Last Airbender and the original series.
Adapting Avatar: The Last Airbender was never going to be an easy feat. The beloved kids show has only grown in popularity since it debuted almost 20 years ago on Nickelodeon. Just as the audience has aged up since it debuted, the new Netflix series tries to put a darker, more mature spin on the joyous cartoon, leading to a crisis of identity that makes the live-action adaptation occasionally hard to stomach.
The power of the original Avatar series was that, while it took place in a world that was impacted and devastated by war, it also focused on those who had survived it and how they live day-to-day. What makes them happy? What keeps them going? And what sometimes drags them back into the darkness of battle? In the Netflix series, however, those bloody battles and off screen genocides are enacted with brutal force, leaving the show in a strange limbo space between adult prestige programming and an adaptation of a kids TV show.
Both the animated series and live-action adaptation center on a young boy named Aang (played here by the charming Gordon Cormier) who will grow to have the power to control all four elements. It's a huge destiny for an 11-year-old, and Aang runs from it only to eventually find himself trapped for 100 years before awakening and befriending a young water bender named Katara (Kiawentiio) and her brother Sokka (Ian Ousley).
Even before that introduction, the new show has made its grimdark twist clear by showcasing the genocide of the Air Nomads in real time, opening the show with numerous deaths that might leave some viewers reeling. This is a vast difference from the animated series where we met Aang as a friendly, troublemaking, otter penguin-riding little kid. While Cormier channels that spirit, live action Aang rarely gets to experience the hijinx he's known for, instead becoming a mission-driven macguffin on a quest for peace, but even then the series basically ignores the character's vibrant and often referenced pacifism and veganism, making Aang less whole.
Of course translating a long form cartoon into an eight episode series means some things will be cut, but what it really suffers from is the desire to turn a joyous kids TV series into a Game of Thrones style drama. There was no need for Avatar: The Last Airbender to be turned into a prestige TV series, it would have been fine — and maybe even delightful — for it to be a fun, action driven adventure like the recent One Piece adaptation. But in an effort to seemingly respect the impact of the original, the show takes a dark, dramatic, and overwrought turn.
In the season's second episode that all seems to change and we get a dynamic, sweet, and exciting adaptation of the animated series. In "Warriors," Aang, Sokka, and Katara visit Kyoshi Island and meet Suki (a breakout performance by Maria Zhang). It's a noticeable tone shift from the gloom of the first episode, and it feels like the series is getting into its groove, balancing the beloved tone of the original with the demands of modern television. Even though Aang is still more serious and the show brings its deep interest in the devastation of war, there's a glimpse here of what a more balanced and light version of the series might have looked like.
Despite the changes to Sokka's character — removing his clear arc of disrespecting women and rightfully learning he's wrong to do so — he's still delightful alongside Suki, and we get a sweet ensemble adventure that feels true to its roots. Sadly, the success is fleeting. It's this juxtaposition that the series never manages to maintain. Despite really great performances from the kids at the heart of the story, the series' tendency to minimize humorous, kind moments of the original show and maximize the grimdark, severe, and even bloody violence leaves us wondering just what story this version of Avatar is trying to tell.
As someone who's lived through the often painful grimdark era of comics, it's disappointing to see the same trend come to TV. While I adore many violent, explicit, and adult shows and movies, it's exhausting to see kids series like Avatar subjected to the enforced maturity of prestige TV. There are moments in the Netflix series that feel akin to a sketch from SNL or the like, satirizing the trend of making everything gloomy and depressing. Nickelodeon's Avatar used the shadow of unseen violence and genocide to bring emotional moments to bare. Who could forget Aang discovering the skeletons of his former friends in the temple after he awakens in the original? It's a massive moment that alerts you to the realities that Aang and his friends are up against while grounding their often frantic, comedic adventures. But in Netflix's version we must first watch the murder of the children and Aang's entire community of Air Nomads that raised him. It's brutal, unnecessary, and sets up a dedication to showing violence and death as a shorthand and substitute for mature storytelling. But it was always what this creative team was going for.
As Albert Kim told IGN, "it was about striking that right balance, of making sure you were true to the D.N.A. of the original. But at the same time, we had to make it a serialized Netflix drama, which meant it couldn't just be for kids. It had to also appeal to the people who are big fans of Game of Thrones. And so, it had to feel grounded and mature and adult in that way too.”
My first reaction to that quote was and still is, "but why can't it just be for kids?" And even then, that doesn't recognize the huge audience of the original show. Great kids programming has always appealed to viewers of all ages, and in Avatar's case it was the charming characters, action-packed adventures, and fantastic writing that drew in not only kids, but their parents, aunts and uncles, and family friends. That came from a balance of humor and gravitas, of memorable gags like "my cabbages" and heartbreaking episodes like "The Tales of Ba Sing Se" basically, if you respect your young audience and give them great TV, then likely other people will see that and find a passion for it too. We've seen it time and time again with series like Adventure Time, Steven Universe, and more recently Bluey.
There seems to be a fear of respecting kids as an audience and refusing to make a kids show, instead forcing a series like Avatar to almost abandon that original viewership and mindset in an attempt to appeal to older viewers of an entirely different type of show. Ironically, the HBO-inspired prestige TV format seems like a perfect way to explore these characters in more depth than we may have gotten in the constraints of a 22 minute cartoon, but instead the main trio is stripped down, lacking much of the important journeys and exploration that kept audiences engaged when the show first aired and in the two decades since.
The modern series' creators spoke about choosing not to include vital character arcs for Sokka and Katara that they felt had aged badly. While Sokka's arc is a complex one to bring to life well, the idea that Katara was too maternal or motherly in the original series and was somehow dated or too gendered misses the entire point of her arc. Her caring nature comes from losing her mother, and the idea that a woman being maternal is somehow misogynistic or makes her weaker is also a frustratingly flawed vision. The worst crime in Katara's case is that they removed a core aspect of her story but didn't add anything to fill the void, pushing her to the side of the adaptation when in the original series she's not just a main character, but our entry point to the entire world of Avatar. Here she's a tertiary player at most who is less involved with Aang's journey than ever before, a mistake that echoes through the eight episodes. It's especially disappointing as Kiawentiio is a wonderful, warm performer that we'd love to see doing more.
"Into the Dark" acts as a great example of the issues that the series struggles with in both centering the core trio and staying true to the tone of the original. The second of two Omashu set episodes unnecessarily splits the core trio up in order to try and fit in multiple iconic moments from the original season. This means that Katara and Sokka are absent during the iconic dinner party that King Bumi (Utkarsh Ambudkar) throws Aang, and that leads us to the strange rewriting of the eccentric fan favorite character, who here becomes an enemy for Aang for a time. Bumi is bitter and furious that his friend abandoned his post as Avatar rather than the impactful, funny, and well timed reveal that he's actually an ally. We do eventually get to a similar point, but it takes overwhelming, pointless cruelty from Bumi before we can get there.
This narrative change also means that we don't get many of the arc's funniest moments, like Aang disguising himself as Bonzu Pippinpaddleopsicopolis the III, or the mystery party vibes of Bumi's feast. While we get a fun call back to the show as the episode comes to an end, it again feels like a struggle between two versions of the series: a fun, family friendly adventure, and a grim treatise on the impact of war. Ironically, the animated series achieved both thanks to smart, subtle storytelling. Instead of building off of that already great foundation, the Netflix adaptation goes for the pointlessly grim.
Uncle Iroh (a perfectly cast Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) also ends up a victim of the show’s tonal identity crisis. Here he is more of the hard-edged general than the kind, loving, and honestly iconic character that fans have always loved. It's an understandable change for the tone of the series, but also falls into the idea that mature storytelling can only center on repressed, angry, or isolated characters. That's just not who Iroh is, and the story often struggles to find its emotional core because of that. There's a sense that perhaps Iroh will go on that journey in future seasons, but as the show comes to an end in a shockingly bleak finale, the story leaves us with little hope that future seasons will solve its problems.
Without getting into recap territory, the finale attempts to craft a sort of "Battle of the Bastards"-esque big Game of Thrones moment, for this iteration of Avatar, pushing into the death, destruction, and loss in a way we've never seen on the series. The episode ends with Aang, Sokka and Katara walking among the war dead, closing the eyes of their dead comrades. It's unsettling and also feels relatively unearned in the rushed compression of adapting 20 episodes into eight. But the true issues begin moments later Sokka is making jokes as Aang and Sakara laugh along. The last moments of the finale try to bring us back to the warmth and heart that made the source material so special. But it does so literally minutes after they've seen the bloodied, recently deceased faces of their close friends. The mishandled juxtaposition of tone makes everything feel out of place and forced, by no fault of the talented actors tasked with taking on these huge characters with an immense fanbase.
There was a worry among fans that the show might not try to bring that sense of joy to the series, and that wasn't totally unfounded. But it turns out the real issue that Avatar has is trying to balance that with a creative drive for darker, more violent storytelling. It's a shame, because in some ways the approach brings out something interesting, for characters like Azula — who is introduced early here — and Fire Lord Ozai. The serious tone fits with and expands on the original in a way that feels organic and natural. But when it comes to Aang and his adventures, which are literally the most important part of the show, we lose something vital: the fun, hopeful hero at the show's center. Aang is supposed to represent the maturing of a young child who is weighed down by the responsibilities that life has thrown at him but learns how to take them one with his friends, instead we see a young boy, who quickly becomes ground down by the war until he becomes an active part in it. All of that is to say, let this boy ride an Elephant Koi.
Rosie Knight is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything from anime to comic books to kaiju to kids movies to horror flicks. She has over half a decade of experience in entertainment journalism with bylines at Nerdist, Den of Geek, Polygon, and more.
