What if Avatar: The Last Airbender was a spy thriller?

polygon.com:

Every Avatar story, from the original Avatar: The Last Airbender to The Legend of Korra and on to the Chronicles of the Avatar novels, grapples with the fact that the Avatar — a spiritual and political leader who is reincarnated endlessly in a revered cycle — is also just a human being with human emotions and flaws. They make mistakes, and they fail in their duties. And sometimes, they leave messes for their subsequent reincarnations to sort out.

In F.C. Yee’s 2019 novel Avatar, The Last Airbender: The Rise of Kyoshi, the teenage girl who eventually became the formidable Avatar Kyoshi has to pick up the pieces after the previous Avatar, Kuruk, dies young and leaves the world reeling. On the other hand, Kuruk’s predecessor, Yangchen, is still regarded as the pinnacle of Avatarhood, a gifted negotiator who enforced peace throughout the Four Nations.

After concluding Kyoshi’s story in the Rise of Kyoshi’s sequel, The Shadow of Kyoshi, Yee — with the involvement of Avatar creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko — moved on to telling Yangchen’s story in The Dawn of Yangchen, available now. But how do you create conflict in a story about the most beloved Avatar in centuries, one largely regarded as infallible?

You make it a spy thriller.

“I tried to look at the cyclic nature of successes and failures and triumphs and tragedies that [keeps happening] endlessly in ways that generate narrative,” Yee tells Polygon. This was the beginning of his creative process, particularly in finding flaws for the supposedly flawless Yangchen.

“She’s not going to give up her Air Nomad values,” Yee says, referring to that culture’s pacifist creed. “I wasn’t hugely interested in showing, Oh, here’s an Air Nomad who resorts to killing