New ‘Avatar’ Projects Are Everywhere — but the Best One Succeeds by Leaving ‘The Last Airbender’ Behind

The latest entry into Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko's fantasy series is the first that takes any baby steps away from its IP anchor point.

If there’s an object lesson right now in the different paths that franchises can take, and their varying levels of success, it’s found in the year that “Avatar” is having. “Avatar: The Last Airbender” was a project of Nickelodeon Animation Studios back in 2005, created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and its omission from the New York Times Best TV Shows of the 21st Century is so egregious that ten different friends yelled at me, a person who has never worked there, about it.

(IndieWire would never make such an error).

The series ended in 2008 after three seasons (or “books,” as the show puts it) and a four-part finale that is one of, if not the, most structurally flawless series wrap-ups in television history, animated or otherwise. The style, influenced by the expressiveness of anime but very much shaped in boldness of line and color by the very different martial arts disciplines behind elemental “bending.”

Lots of people can bend one of the four elements, of course, and are therefore known as Earthbenders, Firebenders, Waterbenders, etc. But only the Avatar — sing along if you know the words — can master all four elements and bring balance to the world. The animation of the original series was overseen by three South Korean studios, chiefly JM Animation in the early seasons and MOI Animation in the latter ones. The unified look that they all achieved was a fantastic kind of balance in its own right.

“ATLA” could be as exuberant and imaginative and chaotic as its protagonist, Aang (Zach Tyler Eisen), the titular last airbender, and his best buddy, the sky-bison Appa (Dee Bradley Baker). It was also capable of soulful, luminous landscapes that made the world of the show, the “Four Nations,” feel fascinatingly complete and distinct.

Much is written, and rightly so for a series such an unapologetically, joyfully Asian and Aboriginal world, about the influences on “The Last Airbender.” The Earth Kingdom is very height of the Chinese bureaucracy-coded, for instance, while the Fire Nation simmers with the sharp industrialism of Imperial Japan. But “ATLA” has had its own influence on the direction of animated series, too — from the visual lushness of something like “Blue Eye Samurai” to the incredible action of a “Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood,” to the deep friendships and tectonic character growth in shows like “She-Ra: Princesses of Power” or “Star Wars Rebels.”

All that doesn’t scratch the surface, let alone under the Secret Tunnels, of what makes “Avatar: The Last Airbender” great. Which perhaps explains why people keep trying to run it back.

There’s the M. Night Shyamalan “The Last Airbender” live-action film adaptation of the original from 2010, and the less said about that, the better. Netflix has tried a live-action series reciting chapter and verse of its animated ancestor, “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” and while Dallas Liu has somehow found a way to become Prince Zuko, the show has also run into a number of similar problems of live-action adaptation. There’s this desire, understandable on its face, to make the design and aesthetics of the live-action world recognizably similar to the animated world. But animation is just so much more expressive, so much more information can be carried through color and line size and boldness and the kind of unreal physicality that nonetheless conveys real emotion. Neither live-action project has found ways to do the things that only animation can.

On the animated front, DiMartino and Konietzko first made a direct sequel, “The Legend of Korra,” which ran on Nickelodeon for 2012 to 2014 and focused on the Avatar directly following Aang, following the Water Tribe’s own himbo princess/Avatar Korra (Janet Varney) as an older teen compared to the 12-year-old Aang. This is in part to account for a slightly older audience, already familiar with the original series, and also to make some truly awful (complimentary) silent film jokes in Season 2.

“Korra” builds complexity onto the animation style of “ATLA,” which fits the main metropolitan setting of Republic City where the story takes place. Everything is a little bit more rivets and angles, a little bit less wide expanse. The animation is, perhaps, less careful and clear, relying more on weight and impact, and larger explosions that the intricate choreography of “Avatar.” But it feels very much like a companion piece.

Or it did, until the “Avatar” franchise started spinning up so many other companions. Leaving aside the comics, tie-books, video games, and other ancillary delights of exploiting successful IP, there’s the Netflix show, of course. But in 2021 DiMartino and Konietzko spun-up Avatar Studios, to manage the many, many other animated projects still gripping the original harder than a turtle crab.

It’s a sign of how Paramount+ wants to proceed as Hollywood’s new Lion Turtle that there is a new animated film, out earlier this year, called “Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender,” which follows a now-grown Aang and tries valiantly to be more than a bit of fan service to adults who are also now grown past the most interesting part of the Avatar’s story. There is also a spinoff devoted to another previous Avatar, Kuruk, although “Avatar Kuruk: Wave of Chaos” will probably not involve as much monster-fucking as Kuruk’s furs in flashback have promised.

Again and again, the creative team behind the original and newcomers have looked at “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and decided not to overthrow the Fire Lord of design aesthetic, overall time period, focus characters, and tone. And as a result, none of those projects are as good as the original.

Neither is the newest effort set in the world of “ATLA,” at least not yet. But “Avatar: Seven Havens” is at least a breath of fresh (irradiated, post-apocalyptic sandstorm-y) air because it really gives itself the room to be its own thing in animation style, storytelling framework, and themes.

Set hundreds of years after “Korra” in a world that looks vastly different to the Four Nations we’ve known and loved, “Seven Havens” has kind of a “The Force Awakens” relationship to its ancestor series — young protagonists with cute animal sidekicks, a very similar spin on the opening voiceover announcing each episode, big fighting set pieces, and heavier themes paired right alongside kid-appropriate hijinks. There is a fun, as-yet-underexplained mystery as to how Korra did or did not create a cataclysm that rendered most of the world uninhabitable, and a fun, as-yet-underexplained double-down on the number of Avatars in existence. But it gets away with hewing closely to the original in plot and tone because it looks different.

The animation of “Seven Havens” comes mainly from French studio La Chouette Compagnie. While some of the colors and cultural touches in shapes and fighting style still align with the original animated shows, much of “Seven Havens” is really different — to use a Ghibli analogy (a Ghibnalogy?), “Seven Havens” looks to “Nausicäa of the Valley of the Wind,” instead of the original’s eye on “Totoro” or “Korra’s” kinship with “Howl’s Moving Castle.”

On the one hand, the show’s eye for creative destruction and interesting critters and a kind of broken stained-glass feel to the world beyond the Haven (one of the seven) of Ellora is just another reminder that “Scavengers Reign” looked really cool. On the other hand, though, by pulling in more Hindu and Jainist influences into the design of Ellora and remixing those with the existing world of “ATLA,” “Seven Havens” feels richly evolved from that existing world, rather than a pale shadow.

The show has already proved that doing something that looks radically different is maybe the only way for a franchise like “Avatar” to survive.

The first three episodes of “Avatar: Seven Havens” are now streaming on Paramount+.