Netflix announced that it will bring Aang’s story to a close, adapting the entirety of the original 2005 cartoon in live-action in order to conclude the story across two more seasons.
The first season had disastrous problems, with our own Jeremy Mathai’s review calling the live-action “The Last Airbender” iteration “a greatest-hits collection with little of the heart, humor, and soul fans came to expect.” Regardless, the knowledge of having two more seasons can potentially help the writing team break down the narrative more easily and find more cohesion in the storytelling — and hopefully give us some proper character arcs this time.
More importantly, the two-season renewal should hopefully help with the mismatch of tones. Seasons 2 and 3 of the cartoon are significantly darker and more mature, and they bring forth a lot more serialization and lore than the first season. With any luck, the live-action remake can at least capture some of that without also losing the joy and fun of the original, or the moments of downtime that made the big moments shine brighter.
Worst case scenario, we still have an “Avatar” animated movie coming out in 2025 to look forward to.