It’s hard to believe that Avatar: The Last Airbender began life back in 2005. The animated epic has attracted an entirely new legion of fans who found it through Netflix, and they’re hungry for more. Even though the show already has a spin-off series, novels, comics and one (bad) movie, there’s never been a musical…until now.
Aptly titled, Avatar: The Last Musical, the project is spear-headed by 17-year-old TikTok star and Last Airbender fan Katherine Lynn-Rose, who has been working on it for some time. It all started in 2020 when TikTok creators began sharing ideas for an Avatar musical. Since then, the supergroup of creators has teamed up in the hopes of creating a full stage production. Even voice actors from the show have been impressed!
There’s plenty of talent to go around here. Currently, Lynn-rose is working with Daniel Mertzlufft (Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical), Jon Maltz, Lilianne Coeverden, Amari Anaya, Jasmine Rochelle Goodspeed and Joshua Turchin. Lynn-Rose explains how this project came to be below:
Besides telling the stellar story of Avatar through music, Lynn-Rose also has an honorable goal. “There is such a lack of mainstream representation of Indigenous and Asian cultures on Broadway,” she says. “And we really want to combat that and make sure that our voices are being heard. As for Asian representation in musical theater, I’m hoping that Avatar: The Last Musical can become one of the first mainstream musicals that features a largely Asian cast where the story being told isn’t some white savior trope or another way to perpetuate racial stereotypes.”
Hear some of the music from Avatar: The Last Musical
Let’s listen to some Avatar music. Many of Lynn-Rose’s TikTok’s have already gone viral across social media — one video racked up over 70,000 likes on Twitter. Check out this one, for example:
THIS 17 YEAR OLD GIRL IS MAKING AN ENTIRE AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER MUSICAL ON TIKTOK?! OH MY GOD?!! follow @ katherine.lynnrose, she’s written a lot of songs already oh my god pic.twitter.com/rJ1e2cvyba
— klaudia (@kaludiasays) July 15, 2020
It’s definitely worth keeping an eye out to see where this project goes. These are exciting times to be an Avatar fan.
It’s not just fan-made musicals in the works. The entire franchise is expanding. Earlier this year, it was announced that Nickelodeon was forming Avatar Studios, with original creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko overseeing the whole thing. In the near future, they plan to create an animated feature film as well as launch other exciting Avatar-based things! Moreover, Netflix has its own live-action Avatar show in the works.
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