Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender Had To Remove One Big Thing From The Animated Show
Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series is set to adapt the first series in Nickelodeon's successful Avatar franchise. As with all adaptations, however, Netflix has opted to change some aspects of the story.
Avatar: The Last Airbender follows a 12-year-old boy, Aang, who wakes up after a hundred-year slumber. Aang finds that the world has descended to chaos, as the villainous Fire Nation has spent the past one hundred years attempting to conquer the world. Because he is the only person on the planet who can set things right, Aang embraces his destiny as the Avatar, master of all four elements. Along the way, however, Aang learns that he has a strict deadline to defeat the Fire Lord: should he fail to master all elements by the end of the Summer, the Fire Nation will be able to use a passing comet to enhance their abilities and finally end the war on their terms.
During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender showrunner Albert Kim said this deadline will not be featured in the live-action series. Although the comet was a major driving force in the animated series, the shift to live-action caused this aspect of the series to be changed. Kim said his change was made due to the timeline complications presented by an aging live-action cast.
The comet was their ticking clock. We removed that particular ticking clock from our show for now because we couldn't know exactly how old our actors would be for the subsequent seasons. We definitely thought about that going into season 1 so that we can accommodate for puberty, adolescence, time passing — all of those fun things that happen to real-life human beings that don't happen to animated characters.
The change allows the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series some breathing room. As Kim points out, the animated characters could stay the same age indefinitely — Aang stays 12 throughout the cartoon, as do his similarly-aged companions. Netflix's adaptation, meanwhile,
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