Was there going to be a fourth season of The Last Airbender? Creators and writer disagree

Was there ever going to be a fourth season of Avatar: The Last Airbender? It depends on whether you ask the creators or the head writer.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is back in the news lately. Nickelodeon’s animated epic has become one of the most popular shows on Netflix despite ending over a decade ago, and that’s before we get into all the drama surrounding original series creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko walking away from Netflix’s upcoming live-action remake over creative differences.

For Avatar fans, the past is now looking rosier than the future, which brings up the question: what about the oft-discussed-but-never-made fourth season of the show? Last year, head writer Aaron Ehasz (who went on to create the Last Airbender-like The Dragon Prince for Netflix) claimed that the team was looking into making a fourth season before M. Night Shyamalan’s reviled 2010 live-action movie came along and torpedoed things. Ehasz himself had plans for a redemption arc for Prince Zuko’s unstable sister Azula.

“They originally planned on 3 [seasons],” Ehasz wrote. “We discussed a 4th and seemed like we were going to do it. Then M Night came and they reverted to original plan. That’s what happened!”

BUT WAS IT? Speaking to Polygon, DiMartino and Konietzko disputed Ehasz’s version of events.

“There was never going to be a season 4, not from us and not from Nickelodeon,” Konietzko said. “Mike and I planned [The Last Airbender] to be a three-season arc as far back as our initial pitch in 2002, and in 2008 we finished the story we set out to tell.”

DiMartino agreed: “We finished the show exactly as we had intended,” he said. “We hadn’t considered continuing Aang’s story until Dark Horse Comics approached us with the idea of returning to ATLA in graphic novel form. And at that point we worked with writer Gene Luen Yang to expand the story beyond the animated series.”

At the same time, DiMartino hinted that there’s plenty of room for the series to expand if someone has the will. “There are many seeds we planted through both series and in the graphic novels that could be expanded on and explored,” he said. “The Avatar universe is a big place and has a long history so there’s a lot of potential for new stories.”

So is Ehasz right that a fourth season was at one point on the table, or are DiMartino and Konietzko right that it was never even considered? This will be settled in the Thunderdome. I will also accept a Zoom chat.

In the meantime, Avatar: The Last Airbender and its successor series The Legend of Korra are both available to watch on Netflix!

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h/t Games Radar