Avatar: The Last Airbender: Every confirmed change to Netflix's remake

7. Sokka's "iffy" sexism

During an interview with EW, Kiawentiio — the actress who will portray Katara in the Netflix show — confirmed that a lot of the sexist aspects to Sokka's character will be removed from the remake. "I feel like we also took out the element of how sexist [Sokka] was," she said. "I feel like there were a lot of moments in the original show that were iffy."

It's true that Sokka holds backwards beliefs about the roles of men and women at the start of the original show, although the character quickly evolves, sees how wrong he was, and leaves those beliefs behind. These comments have since lit the Avatar fandom on fire with many disappointed that a main part of Sokka's character in season 1 will be removed. I can't really think of a good reason that the showrunners would do this other than to avoid offending people. Unless there is some other reason, I think it's kind of silly to remove this because it's important to include character flaws.

The showrunners also talked about this issue. "The cartoon, for as great as it was, was 15 years ago," Albert Kim said. "And so, things have changed. There are certain roles I think that Katara did in the cartoon that we didn't necessarily also do here. I mean, I don't want to really get into a lot of that, but some gender issues that didn't quite translate."

Sokka's sexism is repeatedly addressed and called out by various characters in Avatar, and his viewpoint eventually changes. The message of the show is that his attitude was misplaced and wrong. I don't see the value in removing this arc altogether and it may make Sokka a weaker character as a result. I suppose we won't know until the show comes out. Some fans theorize that changes like this may be part of the reason why the original creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender — Brian Konietzko and Michael DiMartino — exited the Netflix show fairly early in its production, citing creative differences.