Netflix’s Avatar the Last Airbender, Will It Fail?

When quarantine first began, many people scrambled to try to get back to a sense of normalcy and comfort. In doing so, people such as myself ended up rewatching many shows that they once enjoyed, whether it be from their childhood or a newer show that was just that good. This made streaming services very interpretive of what became popular in that time. Which is where we find Avatar: The Last Airbender, a Nickelodeon cartoon that ran from 2005-2008. 

According to Kevin Jeremiah Gaona, “The world is divided into four elemental nations: The Northern and Southern Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, and the Air Nomads. The Avatar upholds the balance between the nations, but everything changed when the Fire Nation invaded.” This series was a huge staple in animation. The story of how Avatar Aang defeats the Fire Lord with his friends Katar, Sokka, and Toph became a hit in the late 2000s. 

After the success of the animated show, it was announced that a live action adaptation of the popular story would be released as a feature length film covering the entirety of the first season. Fans were ecstatic. The thought of seeing characters that fans grew up with on the big screen, let alone in live action, was enough to get millions of people interested. The movie was released in 2010, and it was one of the biggest flops in movie history. Fans went in expecting an action packed homage to their beloved childhood TV show. What they came out with was a slow, unentertaining, and insulting to the original source material film. People were furious. They couldn’t believe something as appealing as Avatar could be butchered so much.

In this time of disbelief, the excitement for all things Avatar slowly died down until their spinoff “The Legend of Korra” released, which followed the Avatar that was born after Avatar Aang had passed away. Even with this series being nostalgic for viewers of the original show, the hype for the show just never seemed to come back. However, much like the Avatar, when we needed the hype, it returned. 

In 2020, Netflix added all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender which brought a new fanbase to the show. In the time of staying locked inside for weeks, old fans rewatched the show and fell even more in love with it and thanks to social media apps like TikTok, the news of the series dropping on Netflix blew up. New people began to binge the show, falling in love with it. At this all time Avatar high, it seemed it had reached its peak. Until, Netflix added the epilogue series, “The Legend of Korra ''. With this addition, TikTok did what it does best and the new series blew up much faster than Avatar did at first. Truly you’d think the energy and hype for Avatar couldn’t get any higher. However, we were gravely mistaken.

Later that year, more news of a new live action adaptation of the series was revealed. Soon the castings came out along with the reveal of “Avatar Studios” which is a studio dedicated to all Avatar content. They revealed that they had several new animated movies in the works that are set to be released later in the decade. 

With the release of Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender trailer on January 24th, fans are now excited for an amazing show!