Series / Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024)

aka: Avatar The Last Airbender

"Time is a funny thing. The past, the future, it all gets mixed up. There's only one way to keep it straight. Always remember who you are."

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a 2024 fantasy series. It is a Live-Action Adaptation of the animated show of the same name with Albert Kim (Sleepy Hollow) at the helm.

The show is set in a world where people called benders can manipulate the elements of water, earth, fire, and air. A powerful being capable of bending all four elements known as the Avatar traditionally maintains balance between the four Elemental Nations: the Air Nomads, the Fire Nation, the Water Tribes, and the Earth Kingdom.

But the Fire Nation's imperial ambitions have resulted in the genocide of the Air Nomads and a century-long war with the other countries. It now falls to the titular last surviving member of the Air Nomads, Aang (Gordon Cormier), to unlock his full potential as the current Avatar, defeat the Fire Nation, and restore balance to the world. By his side are his friends from the Southern Water Tribe, siblings Sokka (Ian Ousley) and Katara (Kiawentiio).

However, the task will not be easy, as disgraced Fire Nation prince Zuko (Dallas Liu) is on their tail, accompanied by his uncle Iroh (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee). Zuko intends to capture Aang and regain favor with his father, Fire Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim).

A Netflix production, the first episode premiered on the Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles on February 15, 2024, with the rest of the episodes debuting on the platform on February 22, 2024. A second and third season have been ordered.

Previews: "Water, Earth, Fire, Air" Teaser, Official Teaser, Official Trailer

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Avatar: The Last Airbender contains examples of:

• Actor Allusion: Katara and Sokka's parents are played by Rainbow Dickerson and Joel Montgrand, who starred in Beans as the parents of the titular character, played by Katara's actress Kiawentiio.
• Adapted Out: While most of the events of the first season of the original show are included (or at the very least referenced), there are some exceptions;
  • Haru and Tyro do not appear in the show along with the events of "Imprisoned".
  • Jeong-Jeong, and the events of "The Deserter" as a whole, are skipped entirely, so Aang ends the first season without his fear of firebending.
  • The Northern Air Temple. Instead, Teo and the Mechanist are inhabitants of Omashu, and the Northern Air Temple itself goes unmentioned.
  • While Azula appears early, Lo and Li do not, with their role as her instructors being taken up by random teachers, with Mai and Ty Lee doing double-duty as confidants and advisors.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Aang is a lot more flagellant to himself over going missing for 100 years and trying to avoid his responsibilities as the Avatar. This is not limited to him but many other characters call him out for not stopping the Fire Nation war in its infancy.
    • Gran Gran is the first to reveal to Aang that the Airbenders were wiped out, sharing how many have lamented the Avatar had vanished and there is an underlying resentment that his absence has allowed the conflict to last as long as it has.
    • Even the previous Avatars call out Aang for his mistake, Kyoshi in particular is quite hostile to him and issues orders on what he needs to do next. This is at least in part due to Kyoshi's personality, as Roku is explicitly much more friendly.
    • King Bumi in the original series was a goofy Cool Old Guy who only gave Aang the runaround during their first meeting to give him a new perspective on how he could face the obstacles in his future. Bumi in this series has become jaded and cynical from the events of the Hundred-Year War, giving Aang a hard time in part because he had legitimate grievances with Aang disappearing at the start of the war.
  • Azula getting more focus earlier on means more exploration of her "tutelage" under Ozai, and the effects it's already having on her psyche, which are made a lot more clear.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • On top of being less of a Butt-Monkey, Sokka puts up more of a fight when trying to fight Zuko, though he still loses the encounter.
  • As their numbers consist of more teenagers and adults than as shown in the animated series, the residents of Wolf Cove of the Southern Water Tribe put up more resistance to Zuko's forces when they attack.
  • In this adaptation, Zuko does end up putting up a fight against Ozai when the latter forces the former to duel him in Agni Kai, but loses due to refusing to follow through on a blow that would have burned Ozai's face, prompting Ozai to scar the Zuko the way Zuko would have scarred him had he followed through.
  • Downplayed slightly with Katara. The gradual progress of her waterbending over the course of the show lines up well with the cartoon, but here she never receives training from Pakku and remains entirely self-taught. Despite this she's still able to put up a good fight against Zuko during the Siege of the North, and in the end is strongly implied to be a certified master solely from her own talent.
• Adaptational Context Change:
  • Aang had no intention of running away after learning of his identity as the Avatar, despite still showing reluctance in taking the responsibility. He merely takes a midnight flight with Appa to clear his head and then tries to return home when a large storm suddenly begins acting up. Unfortunately, it was also the same night Sozin and his army invaded the Air Temple to murder the airbenders using the power of the Great Comet.
  • Sokka's conflict with the Kyoshi Warriors and Suki stems not from sexism but rather from his insecurity in his own combat skills, since his sworn duty was to protect the Southern Water Tribe. In turn Suki grappling him was not her deliberately humiliating him to prove that girls can be just as strong as boys but her being smitten with Sokka and trying to show off, only to be confused when Sokka was humiliated by her grappling skills.
  • The characters still spend most of the first season travelling to the Northern Water Tribe, but the reason why is different. In the original show they're looking for a waterbending master for Aang and Katara, but here they decide to head there after Aang is given a vision by Kyoshi showing that the Northern Water Tribe is in danger, with finding a waterbending teacher only brought up as a fringe benefit.
  • Katara and Sokka are the ones who go through the Cave of Two Lovers instead of Katara and Aang this time, with their subplot focusing on the platonic sibling love between them rather than the friendship/implied (and later official) romantic bond between Katara and Aang.
  • A minor example in the season one climax. Just like in the original, Yue must give her own life to revive the Moon Spirit to restore the bending abilities of the waterbenders and prevent an implied ecological catastrophe. Additionally, this version makes the Ocean Spirit’s possession of Aang a permanent consequence of its partner’s death, meaning that Yue has to sacrifice herself to stop its rampage and save the Avatar as well.
  • The Agni Kai between Zuko and Ozai is framed considerably differently than the original. There, Zuko completely refused to fight Ozai, and his refusal to fight was part of what made Ozai decide to banish him. This version has Zuko actually trying to to put up a fight against Ozai, and he does fairly well for a time, but hesitates and refuses to land a potentially serious blow, which displeases Ozai and causes him to consider Zuko weak for refusing to strike his own father.
• Adaptational Diversity: In the animated version, the Tale of Two Lovers has Omashu namesakes Oma and Shu as female and male respectively. In the live action, they are still lovers and both are referred to as women.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • In the cartoon, Aang buys a bison whistle from the market in "The Waterbending Scroll". Here he already has one after emerging from the ice, and uses it after awakening in the South Pole. And speaking of "The Waterbending Scroll", Katara ends up retrieving it as early as the trip to the Southern Air Temple, as Gran Gran gave it to her in a bag for the trip to save Aang.
  • In the cartoon, Avatar Kyoshi didn't make an appearance until after Aang and his friends left the North Pole. Here, she's the first previous Avatar whom Aang makes contact with, and he does so during his first visit to Kyoshi Island. She is also the narrator explaining the elements at the beginning, rather than Katara.
  • Azula, Mai (played by Thalia Tran), and Ty Lee (played by Momona Tamada), who didn't appear until the second season of the original show, make their first appearance in the third episode here (technically Azula did appear in the first season, but unidentified and only in cameos).
  • Wan Shi Tong (played by Randall Duk Kim) also makes his debut in season 1 here, when he was first introduced in season 2 of the original show.
  • Teo and the Mechanist are met at Omashu instead of the Northern Air Temple, and the Mechanist is the official court artificer for King Bumi.
  • Fire Lord Ozai shows himself as early as episode 2 in the remake, whereas in the original show he was The Faceless in both seasons 1 and 2 and didn't fully reveal himself until season 3.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • Sokka is more willing to hand Aang over to Zuko to get him to leave, only not doing so after being dissuaded by Katara, is more hesitant to rescue Aang after he surrenders to Zuko, and is more willing to abandon Aang on his journey after he enters the Avatar State for the first time, and scoffs at the idea of saving the world. That said, he does have a motive for this under Big Brother Instinct.
  • Ozai was emotionally manipulative towards Azula in canon and ultimately discarded her after she served her purpose, but he's actually even more overt about how conditional his love is here, openly comparing her unfavorably to Zuko after Zuko succeeds in locating Aang and coldly dismissing her attempts at flattery.
• Adaptational Job Change: Downplayed with Zhao; while he is still a commander, he's significantly lower in status in this version, heading a regional office in the Southern Seas and Ozai even notes that he's no one of any importance after receiving a letter from him informing of the Avatar's return. Because of this, he gets retooled into being a social climber who desperately wants to rise the ranks and will do anything to achieve this goal.
• Adaptational Modesty: The original show would often have the characters in different stages of undress, whether it be for a Beach Episode, Workout Fanservice or generally washing up. Due to differing standards with teenagers in a live action context much of that is missing aside from the occasional Shirtless Scene. Ty Lee is given a full-length outfit with a number of added layers.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Sokka lacks the sexist streak his animated counterpart had at the start of the series that had to be knocked out of him by the Kyoshi Warriors. His dismissal of Katara's waterbending also doesn't have to do with him fundamentally considering bending weird magic but rather him trying to protect her from the Fire Nation, who have been systematically wiping out the waterbenders in the Southern Water Tribe.
  • Incredibly downplayed, but Ozai in this series actually shows appreciation towards Zuko's determination to hunt down the Avatar and is willing to praise him from afar for eventually locating Aang, while in canon, he sent his son on a wild goose chase because he saw him as a disgrace.
  • Hahn in the original show was a sexist bully who only saw his betrothed Princess Yue as an accessory to make himself look better and relentlessly antagonized Sokka. In this show, he's a genuinely nice guy whom Yue broke up with due to her greater destiny. While he is clearly still upset about it, he doesn't hold the fact against her, nor does he bully Sokka for being interested in her. He gets a more noble and dignified death than in the animated series as well; standing in the face of certain death against firebenders to defend his chief (as opposed to tossed overboard by Zhao without a second thought afterwards after clumsily botching an assassination attempt).
• Adaptational Personality Change:
  • While Suki is every bit the Action Girl she was in the original cartoon, she also acts like an awkward Smitten Teenage Girl around Sokka, and also expresses a desire to see the world outside of Kyoshi Island, something that she never displayed in the original.
  • Zhao is initially much more weaselly and slimy, as opposed to the original Zhao's arrogance. However, as the season goes on, much of that arrogance starts to show itself.
  • Cartoon June thought Iroh was irritating and creepy. Here, she actually flirts at him. It's Iroh who has a problem with this.
  • Double-subverted with Roku. The first time he appears to Aang, he seems far more stern than his show counterpart ever was... until it turns out he's messing with Aang, something very unlike the generally stoic Roku.
  • Hahn in the original show was a sexist Jerk Jock who played the role of romantic rival to Sokka over Yue's affections. Here, he's a genuinely nice guy whom Yue broke up with due to extraneous factors.
• Adaptational Romance Downgrade: The series heavily tones down the romantic interactions between Aang and Katara. There's no Love at First Sight blushing when Aang wakes up (he doesn't even wake up in Katara's arms, but in a tent hours later). The season one episode that focused on their relationship the most, "The Fortuneteller", is cut, and the plot of "The Cave of Two Lovers" is reworked to focus on Katara and Sokka's bond as siblings, rather than Katara and Aang's budding romance.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • While Zhao is still as ambitious as his original counterpart, here he also intends to usurp Ozai as Fire Lord.
  • Ozai manages to be even more of an Abusive Parent than his original counterpart, mixing in psychological abuse alongside physical and emotional abuse: while in the original he had a clear favorite and unfavorite child (Azula and Zuko, respectively), here who his favorite is depends on whoever he thinks is the more accomplished of the two at the moment and he actively pits Zuko and Azula against each other for his very conditional love. This makes Azula even more desperate to please her father and fosters her increasing resentment against her brother, especially since Zuko is first in line to the throne.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • Due to budget concerns, characters engage a little more in regular martial arts in between the high-cost bending effects. The raw kinetic tone of the original show is much more limited here, which in turn means even highly skilled benders will struggle more against multiple opponents. Aang in particular was an exceptionally wily combatant in the original show, while here he more often will attack before running away.
  • Katara's waterbending is downplayed at the start, rather than being Unskilled, but Strong like in the original show she starts off unable to do more than create ripples in a small pool of water until Aang gives her some advice and even then can only levitate a sphere of water. But she does emulate a similar skill upgrade over the course of the season, she just starts off a lot weaker.
  • Koh the Face Stealer can no longer steal people's faces by just looking at them while they are expressing emotions, instead dragging victims to his lair, binding them up, and eventually feeding on them like some kind of spider.
  • As a consequence of most of his fights being Adapted Out, Zhao doesn't come off as the powerful firebender he was in the cartoon. The only time he's seen firebending is in his fight with Zuko at the end of the first season, where he is rather quickly and handily defeated. While Zuko also defeated Zhao during their Agni Kai duel in the original show, it was a much closer match.
• Adaptation Amalgamation: Elements of The Legend of Korra, The Rise of Kyoshi and Escape from the Spirit World are mixed with elements of the original series.
• Adaptation Distillation:
  • The cartoon had Katara steal a scroll with waterbending diagrams from a crew of pirates, who later served as antagonistic figures during the episode in question. Here, Katara is simply given the scroll in question by Gran Gran when she and Sokka first set off after Aang, Katara's mother having secretly left it in her care before her murder.
  • To compensate for the fact that the live-action show only has eight Season 1 episodes compared to the original's twenty, various episodes from the cartoon are either excised completely or get mixed up into one (for example, "Omashu" mixes up elements from "The King of Omashu", "Jet", and "The Northern Air Temple").
• Adaptation Expansion: While the reduced episode count means that a lot of distillation is in play, the show also does take some time to expand on a couple of things from the original:
  • The Air Nomad genocide is actually shown onscreen, owing to the fact that this show can get away with more violent content than the original could.
  • Iroh's Dark and Troubled Past as the fearsome Dragon of the West and his 600-day siege to Ba Sing Se is given more focus, with an Earth Kingdom soldier laying out his grievances towards Iroh for it in the fourth episode—during the siege, resources were so scarce that even water had to be rationed and Iroh is implied to have killed a lot of people during that time.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • It is very easy to mistake Katara as the older sibling in the original series due to her fiery sense of morality and justice; along with her acting as a mother figure towards Sokka; both in taking care of him and putting him in his place when needed. In this version, those traits are much more muted. Her more subdued personality paired with Sokka's arc of becoming a leader has them butt heads in which the viewer is made painfully aware of how she feels being treated like a little girl.
  • Ozai in the animated canon overtly favored Azula for her raw talent and only saw Zuko as a disappointment, only welcoming him back home after he believed Zuko had killed Aang. In this series, Ozai actually starts seeing worth in Zuko as soon as Zuko locates Aang and appreciates his son's determination. In contrast, he actually starts treating Azula as The Unfavorite due to her comparable lack of accomplishments.
  • Iroh's son Lu Ten being a Big Brother Mentor to Zuko is only briefly alluded to in the original, but here it's made clear that they had a close bond, with Zuko offering his condolences to Iroh during Lu Ten's funeral and remembering him as his beloved cousin.
• Age Lift: Sokka and Zuko are both one year older than their animated counterparts.
• Ambition Is Evil:
  • Initially seems to be played straight with Zuko, whose motivation is not to restore his honor but to return home and be recognized as heir to the throne again. However, as the show goes on more layers to this show up, not least that Zuko clearly has no plan for what to do after that.
  • Zhao is a low-level but very ambitious commander who, in his attempt to climb the ranks of the Fire Nation military, is willing to go behind the backs of his allies and knowingly endanger his own planet to further his own interests. This ambition is what makes him one of the season's main Big Bads.
• Artistic License – Military:
  • Two involving the 41st Division:
    • Zuko's crew is comprised of the 41st Division—the soldiers he spoke up for in the war room—, but by conventional numbers the entire 41st Division could not have been spared from their mission by becoming the crew of Zuko's ship. Per Wikipedia, a division consists of 6,000 to 25,000 soldiers while naval vessels generally consists of a few hundred sailors per ship.
    • The recruits of the 41st Division were presumably trained to be part of the Fire Nation's ground forces. It would take more time than was shown for them to be retrained to become sailors for Zuko's ship. It's unlikely they've had more than a few months of training as Zuko's scar is still healing as they are preparing to embark.
• Ascended Extra: In the original show Roku was the prior Avatar that Aang had the most interactions with, as he was most familiar with the situation Aang was dealing with. After that Kyoshi and her legacy was explored, with Kuruk and Yangchen given only token appearances. The show gives a lot more presence to the previous Avatars as a group, Kyoshi is the first he made contact with and explains the Avatar State while Kuruk provides vital warnings in the season finale, leaving Roku with comparatively less screentime and involvement than before.
• Badass Bookworm: Zuko's obsession with finding the Avatar means his room is crammed with all manner of notes, scrawlings and trinkets gathered from every corner of the world, and his learnings all compiled in a handy notebook. This actually does Aang a service, since thanks to the war and the Fire Nation a lot of information had been destroyed or passed out of general knowledge, and Zuko's meticulous eye for detail means it's a pretty handy source of information.
• Batman Gambit: The first episode has a pair of Earth Kingdom spies infiltrate the Fire Nation capital city and steal a scroll detailing supposed Fire Nation war plans. One of the spies escapes with the scroll, the other is captured and bought before Fire Lord Sozin, who reveals he wanted the scroll's contents to be leaked in order to direct the rest of the world's attention towards the Earth Kingdom, thereby allowing the Fire Nation to more easily carry out its genocide of the Air Nomads.
• Big Brother Instinct: Sokka's scorn for Katara waterbending has a different context here than in the animated series; rather than considering it as a weird form of magic, Sokka's dislike of her waterbending stems from a desire to protect her, as the Fire Nation has a habit of exterminating water benders from the Southern Water Tribe. In addition, his desire to abandon Aang early in his journey comes from his desire to return to the village to protect it and avoid risking getting his sister killed in the event Aang going into the Avatar State again.
• Bittersweet Ending: Heavily of the "bitter" part. After defeating Zhao's forces attacking the Northern Water Tribe and restoring the Moon Spirit, Team Avatar vow to work together to stop the war and help train Aang to master the other elements in order to defeat Ozai. Meanwhile, Zuko and Iroh are now alone, with no hope of rejoining their crew now that they're branded "traitors" by the Fire Lord, but are still alive and have each other. Unfortunately, it's revealed that Zhao's attack on the Water Tribe was merely a diversion; the Fire Nation's real target was Omashu, now taken over by Azula, who's taken Bumi captive. Not only that, but Ozai learns that Sozin's Comet is returning soon...
• Bloodier and Gorier: Owing to the TV-PG/TV-14 rating, the show features more violent content than the original cartoon could, including showing the Air Nation genocide onscreen (with some offscreen Death of a Child for good measure), several characters who are on the receiving end of a firebending attack get visibly incinerated and charred, and it's mentioned that the Fire Nation killed every waterbender in the Southern Water Tribe instead of just capturing them like in the original.
• Book Ends: The season starts and ends with the Fire Nation invading The Airbenders and respectively the Northern Water Tribe. Additionally, while the first part of the show has the Fire Nation misdirecting everyone else to the Earth Kingdom in order to invade the Air Nomads' festival, in the finale, they invade the Northern Water Tribe so their other forces can take down Bumi, and by extension, Omashu as a whole.
• Comet of Doom: The show opens with Sozin's Comet over the Fire Nation.
• Cosmic Deadline: The final episode of season 1 establishes Sozin's Comet, which appears in the skies once every hundred years, is coming back, and soon.
• Crescent Moon Island: A crescent-shaped island with an actively exploding volcano is seen in the teaser.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • When the bad guys use fire to kill people, this happens a lot. There are many deaths with people screaming as they burn.
  • The original show was (mercifully) vague on just what happened to Sokka and Katara's mother Kya. Here, it's shown she was in fact incinerated, right in front of Katara.
• Darker and Edgier: While the original series contained elements that were already quite dark for a children's show, the live-action show's TV-PG/TV-14 rating and appeal to a wider demographic means that it can push the boundaries even more. Along with featuring a good deal more onscreen violence and death than the original, some mild cursing is uttered here and there, and a bigger emphasis is put on how the war has affected the world, showing that most people prefer to stick to their own nation and have a distrust of outsiders and that everyone has been pretty worn down by a century of war and tyranny.
• Death by Adaptation: Katara states that the Fire Nation killed off the rest of the waterbenders in the Southern Water Tribe here, rather than capture them like in the original series.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: While Zhao is still thrown into the river like in the original, here it is Iroh who does so, not the Ocean Spirit, by turning his own fire whip against him.
• Doomed Hometown: The Air Temple is completely obliterated in the prologue by the Fire Nation. When Aang finally returns home at the end of the first episode, all he finds is ruins and the incinerated skeletons of his people.
• The End of the World as We Know It: While the original cartoon and 2010 movie are vague on the consequences of the moon disappearing when Zhao kills the Moon Spirit beyond people being hurt and the world being thrown out of balance, here Aang explicitly warns Zhao that this will cause the world to cease to exist. Not that this stops Zhao.
  Aang: You want to rule the world, but if you do this, there won't be a world to rule.
• Elemental Powers: Naturally, given the source material, characters in the setting can control the elements. Aang is seen airbending and Zuko firebending. During the show proper, Katara learns waterbending.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Was already present in the Fire Nation in the source material (being the only nation with women in their armed forces, albeit mostly on the home front), but it's played up here. Women are explicitly seen in the military, with two of the generals on Ozai's war council being female, and female voices being amongst the otherwise masked/armored soldiers; the Yu Yan Archers are also depicted as consisting entirely of women.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Azula is introduced infiltrating a group of Fire Nation rebels by pretending to be a new recruit, only to lead them into a death trap by tricking them into entering the Fire Nation castle, where they all get unceremoniously burned to death by Ozai while she looks on —she's a manipulative, cunning, and deeply unchildlike teenage girl who's been molded to follow in her father's footsteps.
  • Mai and Ty Lee's introductory scene establishes Ty Lee's fast-talking, enthusiastic Genki Girl personality when she asks Azula about a mission she went on, while Mai speaks in a deadpan monotone, casually plays around with her throwing knives, and expresses a particular fixation on Zuko.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Subverted. Zhao balks at the idea of killing the Ocean Spirit, not least because of the sheer impracticality of getting rid of the ocean and that it would kill every waterbender, and he draws the line at outright genocide... but he still wants to kill the Moon Spirit, which isn't any better.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: The series does not shy away from the implications of people being burned to death by firebenders, with multiple characters being visibly burned to death.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Much like the original.
  • The Water Tribes are fantasy Arctic indigenous, living in cities and villages throughout the Constructed World's polar regions and hunting cold-water animals.
  • The other nations draw heavily on East Asian culture and imagery for setting, though some of the iconography is tweaked — most notably, Omashu is a lot more South Asian-inspired than in the original show, and several of its inhabitants are played by Desi actors, most notably King Bumi himself.
• Final Solution: Sozin's idea of stopping the Avatar from being reborn among the Air Nomads was to kill every airbender in existence.
• Fire/Water Juxtaposition: Aang and Appa flying above the ocean in the middle of a powerful typhoon is intercut with scenes of Sozin and his army of firebenders massacring the Air Nomads from the Southern Air Temple. The scenes become even more impactful when Sozin kills Aang's mentor Gyatso at the same time Aang and Appa are hit by a giant wave and Aang forms an iceberg around them to avoid drowning.
• Fireball Eyeballs: A live-action version — Azula is seen in the teaser with the flames of the room reflected in her dark eyes, making her look like a conniving and imperious firebender.
• Fruit Cart: Guess who appears in Episode Three? He actually makes three appearances with his cart tantalizingly untouched for awhile... until, of course, the inevitable happens.
  "MY CABBAGES!!!"
• Ghost Extras: Zuko's ship supposedly has an entire crew, but the only one who ever speaks to him is Lieutenant Jee.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The Fire Nation's attack on the Air Nomads took place on one of their foremost festivals, precisely because that would be when all the Air Nomads would be in one place to be easily wiped out.
• Instant Expert:
  • Aang never demonstrates how to fly on Appa. The Gaang learn "Yip yip!" off-screen.
  • Sokka somehow knows engineering jargon, when he was never shown tinkering with whale-bone technology growing up.
  • The Time Skip at the Northern Water Tribe is cut. This makes the self-taught Katara an overnight master who is merely recognized by Paku, instead of one who improved immensely with weeks or months of his tutelage (to the point that Zuko noticed!).
• Kick the Dog: Ozai is an equal-opportunity puppy punter. His training for Azula includes making her fight against prisoners (implicitly to their death). Even when she wins, he refuses to praise her and makes her do it all over again. Exactly what would happen if the prisoners somehow won is unclear, but knowing Ozai? Probably better not to ask.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The show lacks the "water, earth, fire, air" opening, but Gran Gran Kanna recites the rest of Cartoon!Katara's speech in the first episode.
  • Kyoshi's Opening Narration in the first episode ends with Aang atop a cliff, much like the final shot of the original show's opening sequence.
  • In "Warriors", Aang is seen riding an air scooter before slamming into a statue, just like in the opening title sequence of the cartoon.
  • Azula's fire tends to be the same color as everyone else's... except for one instance where she gets really angry, and it burns blue. In the cartoon, her fire is usually blue.
  • While the events of "The Great Divide" are left out, Zuko and Iroh do overhear some people in a bar claiming they heard about Aang saving people from canyon crawlers.
  • The Stinger of "Legends" features a planetary calendar similar to the one found on Wan Shi Tong's library, and even calculates the arrival of Sozin's Comet.
• Named In The Adaptation: In the original, the Mechanist's real name was never revealed; here, he's named Sai. Several characters do still call him "the Mechanist", though.
• Never Trust a Trailer: One TV spot has a shot of Azula firing an arrow, followed by an explosion behind Team Avatar; this implies that Azula attacks the heroes with some sort of explosive arrow. The arrow shot is actually just Azula practicing archery, while the explosion is the result of a bombing enacted by the Freedom Fighters.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The actions of the past Avatars still cause trouble for their successors. Yangchen's mistakes led to Kuruk's own early demise, and he's still suffering for it centuries after, and Kuruk's attempts to fix things nearly lead to the end of the world.
• Not Always Evil: Was already present in the original series with the Fire Nationals, but it comes up sooner here. The third episode reveals that Ozai's reign is wildly unpopular amongst the citizens of the Fire Nation, as many are frustrated and angry about the constant waste of lives and resources on his wars of conquest, and some opposition groups have been emboldened by the Avatar's return.
• The Perfectionist: Azula, same as in the animated series, refuses to believe "almost perfect" is good enough. Unfortunately, even perfection isn't good enough for Ozai, and she pushes herself well into the night practicing.
• Playing with Fire: Several characters like the soldiers from the Fire Nation are seen bending fire as well as a few prominent figures like Prince Zuko, Uncle Iroh, and Fire Lord Ozai.
• Pose of Supplication: In the teaser, Zuko is seen kneeling with his face to the floor in front of his father.
• Power Tattoo: Aang's arrow-shaped head tattoos glow whenever he enters the Avatar State.
• Race Lift: In the original show, the major Earth Kingdom cities were largely East Asian-inspired, and the only major South Asian-coded character was Guru Pathik. In this version, Omashu incorporates a lot more elements from South Asia, and several of its residents are played by Desi actors.
• Ruder and Cruder: Minor swears have been added where there were none in the original animated series. The first episode has a member of Zuko's crew remark that they're freezing their asses off in the Southern Water Tribe.
• Shock and Awe: In episode 7, Azula finally reaches breaking point and lets loose the lightingbending.
• Shout-Out:
  • The genocide of the Air Nomads bears many similarities to the infamous Order 66 from Star Wars; much like the Jedi, the Air Nomads are wiped out via an ambush to pave the way for an evil and tyrannical power to rise, individual masters are overwhelmed by multiple opponents as they fight in vain to defend themselves and their students, their sacred temple is set ablaze and not even the youngest are spared.
  • The fifth episode of the series is literally called "Spirited Away".
• Shown Their Work: Beyond the examples from the original series that are adapted here, during Lu Ten's funeral, those present are dressed in white. While black has become an accepted funeral color due to Western influence, white is the traditional color to wear when honoring the departed in Asian cultures.
• Slipknot Ponytail: Katara's braid getting loose when she fights Pakku.
• Title Drop: In the pilot, Gran Gran refers to Aang as "the last airbender."
• Took a Level in Cynic: The events of the Hundred-Year War have done this to Bumi, turning him into a jaded old man who gives Aang a bigger runaround when he arrives at Omashu than in the cartoon and causing him to express his grievances with Aang's departure at the start of the war.
• Truer to the Text: The series is much more faithful to the original animated series than the 2010 M. Night Shyamalan film
  • Character appearances are much more faithful to the animated series than the 2010 film.
  • The series casts actors that are closer to the race of the characters unlike the 2010 film's whitewashed casting.
  • After being Adapted Out in the 2010 film, characters like Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors, and Jet appear in this series.
• Villain Respect: Unlike his canon counterpart, who expressed disgust with Zuko all the way until the start of season 3, Ozai here instead actually develops some degree of appreciation for Zuko's Determinator nature in hunting the Avatar and eventually successfully finding him. However, he also seems to show little regard for Azula in turn for accomplishing less than her brother and scorns her attempt to manipulate him with flattery to support Zhao with more resources, even if he supports the logic and agrees with her plan to do so.
• War Is Hell: This adaptation doesn't shy away from how a hundred years of war has a nasty effect on people, making them embittered and cynical.
• We Have Reserves: The Fire Nation under Ozai operates on this mentality. It doesn't matter how many soldiers will die in battles the Fire Nation knows it cannot win. They always have reserves to replenish their ranks, large enough to sacrifice an entire naval fleet and then some. Zuko once tried to argue against such a callous handling of the military... and got his face burned by his father who then banished him from the Fire Nation until he captures the Avatar.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Hei Bai, the spirit angered by the destruction of its forest and the reason why a search party was sent from the village in the first place, only makes a small appearance in its corrupted form attacking the Gaang, with Yue (in fox form) telling Sokka that it's in great pain. Otherwise, it's replaced entirely by Koh as the main antagonist of that arc. The arc about pacifying it thus never happens and we never seen it again, which also has the side effect of it never being seen restored to its true form of a panda.
• World's Best Warrior: At least from Prince Zuko's point of view, Aang is "the world's ultimate warrior", and he believes he needs to be prepared for anything if he wants to catch the Avatar.

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