Avatar: The Last Airbender creators reveal how Prince Zuko came to be

Avatar: The Last Airbender has made a comeback over the past year, starting with its return to Netflix and continuing with the creation of Nickelodeon’s Avatar Studios, which will develop more series and films set in the Avatar universe. Fans can also get their hit of Avatar content with Nickelodeon’s Last Airbender podcast.

Avatar: Braving the Elements is hosted by Janet Varney, who voices Korra from The Legend of Korra, and Dante Basco, the voice actor behind Prince Zuko. The pair have been joined twice already by Last Airbender creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino, who delved into some of the lesser-known aspects of the show’s creation and teased what fans can expect from upcoming Avatar Studios projects.

In one of the episodes, Konietzko and DiMartino reflected on creating Prince Zuko himself, recalling that the character fans know and love wasn’t always what they’d imagined for the show’s villain. Zuko as we know him owes a lot to producer Eric Coleman, who the two now refer to as the “godfather of Zuko.”

Coleman is the one who pushed the duo to look beyond the mysterious Fire Lord Ozai and consider putting a villain in the thick of things. According to Konietzko, Coleman wanted to see someone pursuing the Avatar and his companions (something Zuko does exhaustively for most of the series):

"We had our big Fire Lord, the big, bad boss at the end of the story. Eric was like, ‘Yeah, that’s cool, but you need some boots on the ground. You need someone who’s going after them the whole time.’"

The Last Airbender’s Prince Zuko was originally going to be an adult

It’s not just the creation of Zuko fans have Coleman to thank for. On the podcast, Konietzko and DiMartino revealed that, even after accepting they needed a villain “on the ground,” they’d originally planned to have that character be an adult. Coleman was the one who raised the idea of another kid pursuing Aang.

“Wouldn’t it be scarier if it was a kid who was really driven?” Konietzko recalls Coleman asking, planting the seeds for the character who would eventually become one of the show’s most popular additions. Zuko’s age likely gave younger fans someone to connect to, especially once he starts on his journey toward redemption.

And that redemption was always in the books…literally. Speaking about the series “Bible,” which contains all of the important elements of the story, Konietzko said that they’d written Zuko in as Aang’s eventual firebending teacher.

Fascinating tidbits like this are part of why Nickelodeon created the podcast. Hopefully we’ll learn more about the original series before the new content arrives. And who knows, perhaps the episodes will tackle the upcoming projects as well.

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