Nickelodeon makes the original, unaired pilot for Avatar: The Last Airbender available for all to watch! See what changed.
There’s been a lot of news about Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender recently, ever since all three seasons of the animated epic turned up on Netflix. Of course, most of the recent chatter has been disastrous, what with original creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko leaving Netflix’s live-action remake over creative differences, but there’s some good news out there too.
For example, Nickelodeon recently shared the unaired pilot for the show on its Twitch channel, which you can watch in full right here (the episode starts at about the 43-minute mark.
The episode isn’t one that actually ended up airing, although all the contours of a good Avatar episode are there: Aang, Katara and Sokka are on the run from Prince Zuko, and there are a lot of high-energy action scene with plenty of air-bending and fire-bending. The easy-going humor is very much in place, as well.
But there are differences. For one thing, Katara is named “Kya” in the pilot, and some of the voices sound different, especially Aang’s. I’m not sure if they hired someone new for the actual show or if the voice actor just changed their performance. The biggest difference for me is the intro, which has completely different visuals and a much longer narration from
Katara
Kya.
As for the episode itself, it’s not a bad watch. It’s cool to see how in place a lot of the characters’ personalities were even from this early stage. Plus there’s a chase scene between Momo and a hawk, which is pretty cool.
Meanwhile, in 2020, The Last Airbender creators still aren’t involved with Netflix’s remake, and now I’ve brought you back down.
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