Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series is getting another major leadership shakeup that will see the departure of showrunner Albert Kim.
Stepping in to fill his role for Season 2 are Christine Boylan and Jabbar Raisani, who will serve as executive producers on the show. Boylan previously aided as co-executive producer and writer for Season 1 and served on other Netflix shows like The Punisher and Poker Face. Raisani served as an executive producer, director, and visual effects supervisor on Season 1 as well.
The Hollywood Reporter’s sources say that Kim’s initial intention was to lay the groundwork for the show moving forward. Season 1 took years to finally hit the streaming services, though, and with chapter one finally in the books, Kim is “ready to move on to new opportunities,” including working on Disney+’s Percy Jackson series as an executive producer. While his duties as showrunner are being offloaded to Boylan and Raisani, he will remain attached to Avatar: The Last Airbender as an executive producer.
Avatar: The Last Airbender hit Netflix in February and, to no one’s surprise, has been divisive among fans. The live-action take on the Nickelodeon classic cartoon was bound to displease those who grew to the love source material over the last two decades. The odds were stacked against it from the moment it was announced in 2018, and it didn’t help when die-hards learned that original creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko were departing the project in 2020.
Still, Netflix’s Avatar was able to find its own success. The series managed to pull in enough interest by March for the streamer to renew it for not one but two additional seasons. Should the plot continue to stick close to original story it’s based on, the two-season renewal means viewers can likely expect to see the entire narrative covered in live-action.
We liked this new take on Aang, Katara, and Sokka’s journey, giving it a 7/10 in our review. For more on Netflix’s Avatar, be sure to check out our interview with Kim and Raisani, where they talked about how they planned to give a fresh take on a beloved show. You can also check out our experiences from the time we got to visit the series’ set.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.
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