Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation M. Night Shyamalan attacked.
All due respect to the director of such cinematic classics as The Sixth Sense, Signs, Old and Trap, but if you’re an Avatar: The Last Airbender fan, there’s a chance you’re still holding a grudge against M. Night. Life was good for the fandom in the late 2000s. The original animated series had recently wrapped up with a satisfying conclusion, and the future seemed bright. Then, Shyamalan’s universally hated live-action movie arrived and everything changed for the worse.
The Last Airbender (Paramount dropped the “Avatar” from its title to avoid any confusion with James Cameron’s 3D epic) was critical flop, although it still managed to rake in over $300 million at the box office on a budget of $150 million. So the fact that Hollywood never made a sequel should prove just how much everyone hated the film. The biggest issue was probably a last-minute decision to convert The Last Airbender into 3D, which forced the studio to cut about 30 minutes of footage. The script also completely ditches the comedic sensibility of the original cartoon for a deadpan adventure epic. However, the biggest strike against it was the choice to cast white actors as the show’s Asian-coded heroes, while casting Indian and Iranian actors as the villains, which led a public backlash and a boycott campaign.
“The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented,” Roger Ebert wrote in his review at the time. “The laws of chance suggest that something should have gone right. Not here.”
In the 15 years that followed, things haven’t exactly gone great for the franchise. Sure, the sequel series The Legend of Korra was a solid follow-up with great characters and plotlines, even if it’s sometimes a bit uneven and the studio ran out of money midway through the final season. But Korra was its own story separate from The Last Airbender (despite a few crossover characters and flashback sequences). In other words: Avatar fans were still hungry.
Meanwhile, any hope that another adaptation could redeem Shyamalan’s film was squashed when Netflix rolled out its extremely meh live-action TV show. This version was much more faithful to the original cartoon, following the plot closely and casting the major roles with Asian actors. However, Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender still lacks the humor that makes the cartoon such a joy to watch. It also looks like every other Netflix original: flat and framed to crop well in TikTok videos. Netflix renewed the show for two more seasons to finish the story, but nobody’s really expecting a major improvement in quality when season 2 arrives in 2026. (Although with a change in showrunner, anything is possible.)
with a change in showrunner
The situation looks bleak. However, after a brutally long winter, the ice is finally starting to thaw.
Avatar Studios, formed in 2021 as a division of Nickelodeon under original franchise creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, is currently working on both another sequel series and an animated Avatar Aang movie, the latter of which is expected to fly into theaters in October 2026. A first look at the movie (above) seems promising, continuing the art style of the original while exploring the adult lives of the beloved characters. (Meanwhile, the upcoming new series, Avatar: Seven Havens, is putting a clever spin on the franchise with a post-apocalyptic story starring a new Avatar and her twin sister.)
In the meantime, we’re just months away from getting a full-blown Avatar: The Last Airbender set in Magic: The Gathering, which is looking increasingly promising based on recent reveals. Magic publisher Wizards of the Coast showed off a few dozen cards on August 12, revealing the clever ways the game is set to incorporate the show’s core concept of element-bending. Earthbending, for example, involves turning your lands (typically used as a resource to play other spells) into creatures that can attack your enemy. It’s clear that Wizards put a lot of effort into this new set, and if the recent Final Fantasy MTG crossover is any indication, fans have a lot to look forward to.
After 15 years of setbacks and disappointment, it’s easy to be cynical, but for the first time in a while, things are really looking up for Team Avatar.
