Avatar: The Last Airbender is having a moment. Not only is Netflix remaking the classic animated series in live-action, but original creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko are making a series of animated movies, starting with one that picks up with Aang and friends as adults. Suddenly there's an Avatar arms race, and that's all without mentioning those movies with the blue people.
Speaking to The Direct, Jabbar Raisani — who will serve as showrunner on the live-action show for the second and third seasons — said that the animated movies from DiMartino and Konietzko won't affect what he and his team do at Netflix. "No, not at this point. We are really looking at the animated series at what came before and less of sort of what they're currently doing on the new movies." Still, a little competition never hurt anyone. If nothing else, it'll be fun to watch fans compare and contrast once the animated movies start coming out.
If one Avatar camp wants to get a leg up on the other, they could turn to The Legend of Korra, the Avatar sequel series that ran for four seasons in the 2010s. "Certainly, I'd be interested in anything that is in this [Avatar] universe," Jabbar said about the possibility of a Legend of Korra series. Any arrow you can put in your quiver...
Season 2 of Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender remake will be condensed from the original show
But we're getting ahead of the game. The first season of The Last Airbender remake is in the tank, and Raisani is getting moving on the second. The original animated show had around 20 episodes per season, all of them a half-hour long. The first season of the live-action remake had eight episodes at around an hour long apiece. That required some restructuring; storylines were combined and streamlined in ways that pleased and displeased fans in about equal measure. For season 2 of the remake, which is based on probably the most beloved season of the original show, we can expect more of the same.
"I think it's a lot like season 1," Raisani said. "There's a lot of content in the animated series. And we will be looking at all that content. But we don't have the number of episodes that we have in the animated series. So, certainly, there will be some condensing that has to take place."
Hopefully they can take the lessons they learned making the first season and apply them to the new episodes. We don't know when season 2 might be along, but hopefully they can get it ready in time for 2025; no one likes a gap year between seasons. Netflix renewed the show for seasons 2 and 3 at the same time, so the wait between those should be even shorter. Season 3 will draw the series to a close. And after that...Korra? You never know.
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