Fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender have been worried about the Netflix remake ever since the original creators — Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino — left the project, citing an inability to control the creative direction of the series. Now, The Illuminerdi gives us a glimpse of the kind of thing they may have been talking about.
Before we go any further, mind that this isn’t gospel. The Illuminerdi has been right when it’s gotten scoops before, but it’s also been wrong.
Still, it’s right often enough for us to talk about it. So what does the new report say? That Sokka and Katara, who are 15 and 14 years old in the much-beloved Nickelodeon series, are being changed to 16 and 14 in the Netflix remake. This would make Sokka the younger brother when he used to be the older. Aang, the titular last airbender (and the titular Avatar) will still be 12…although I guess he was frozen in ice for 100 years when Katara and Sokka find him in the first episode, so technically he’ll stay 112.
If true, this decision seems…odd. We’d heard before that Netflix may be considering changing the characters’ ages, but I assumed that meant they wanted to age all of them up to avoid the unpredictability of working with child actors. But this just seems like changing the ages round in arbitrary ways that alter the group dynamic. For instance, in the original show, Aang and Katara have a very chaste romance subplot, which is cute when one of them is 12 and the other 14. But at 12 and 16? At that age a couple of years makes a big difference.
Also, it ruins the irony of Katara being younger than Sokka but being the responsible “mom” of the family, having stepped into the role when their own mother was killed by the Fire Nation. In fact, I wonder if Netflix changed the ages of the siblings to give Sokka license to be more immature and Katara to be stern and grown-up, missing that the disparity was part of what made the characters interesting in the first place.
Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender remake may have a new showrunner
The Illuminerdi also reports that the remake has a new showrunner in place of Konietzko and DiMartino: Albert Kim, a veteran of shows like Leverage, Nikita and Sleepy Hollow. He’ll have his work cut out for him convincing fans that this is a series to get excited about, but we’re still hoping for the best:
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