It's the Stranger Things problem, showrunner Albert Kim explains about making a large-scale show with teen actors who are growing up on screen.
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| Gordon Cormier stars as Aang in 'Avatar: The Last Airbender'. COURTESY OF NETFLIX |
Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender has not been given the all clear for a second season just yet. And some of the creatives, quite frankly, don't seem to have room in their brains to even think about that. The behind-the-scenes team is preoccupied with finishing up the season 1 episodes before the Feb. 22 premiere date.
"There's still a lot of work that has to be done, and it's a race to the finish line at this point," showrunner Albert Kim told Entertainment Weekly. "So right now, that's all I'm consumed with. I don't want to think about tomorrow yet."
That said, there were certain logistical factors of making an epic fantasy drama of this scale that forced Kim to account for the possibility of more seasons: one, his core four actors are aging up on screen before his eyes, and two, it takes time to both film and produce a single season of Avatar.
Season 1 finished filming in British Columbia in the summer of 2022, and the crew have been entrenched in postproduction since. Gordon Cormier, who stars as Aang, auditioned for the part at the age of 11 and is now 14. Kiawentiio, who plays waterbender Katara, started her Avatar journey at 14 and is now 17. And so on.
“All three seasons of the animated series essentially take place in the course of one calendar year,” Kim says of the original Nickelodeon animated show. “There was no way we could do that. So we had to design this first season, especially, to accommodate the possibility of some time elapsing between the first and the second season.”
Part of that strategy involves Sozin’s Comet, which fans of the original series are already familiar with and newbies can spot cutting across the night sky in the trailers. “The comet was their ticking clock,” Kim explains. “We removed that particular ticking clock from our show for now because we couldn't know exactly how old our actors would be for the subsequent seasons. We definitely thought about that going into season 1 so that we can accommodate for puberty, adolescence, time passing — all of those fun things that happen to real-life human beings that don't happen to animated characters."
Perhaps it's something Kim and his team can revisit in a future season, but first things first: finish season 1 and see how viewers respond to it.
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| Kiawentiio as Katara, Gordon Cormier as Aang, Ian Ousley as Sokka in 'Avatar: The Last Airbender'. ROBERT FALCONER/NETFLIX |
There are other ways in which the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender will remix or reimagine the original source material, but it will still maintain the familiar beats. In a fantasy world inspired by ancient Asian and Indigenous cultures, there exist benders, those with the ability to manipulate either water, earth, fire, or air. Then there's the Avatar, a reincarnated being that emerges every lifecycle with the power to control all four elements in order to maintain balance between the spirit and human worlds.
Aang, the young airbender, is the next Avatar — only he's been mysteriously missing for 100 years, which has allowed for the Fire Nation to wage a war for global domination. To save the world, Aang must team up with waterbender Katara and her brother Sokka (Ian Ousley) from the Southern Water Tribe, while dodging the Fire Nation prince, Zuko (Dallas Liu).
The new Avatar: The Last Airbender will premiere its eight-episode first season on Netflix globally this Feb. 22.
Stream Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra on Paramount+ and Netflix! Try Paramount+ for FREE at ParamountPlus.com
Listen to the brand new podcast, Avatar: Braving the Elements!
Subscribe to the official Avatar: The Last Airbender YouTube channel!
Originally published: January 31, 2024.
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