Avatar: The Last Airbender

Yeah, we're talking about the upcoming Aang: The Last Airbender movie.

Ohh, I see, sorry.

Haven't the comics covered that area already to some extent, though?

Well, Long Feng was a major villain. And General Fong was a single episode one.

I'm curious if they will retread ground from the comics or not.

There's decades between the ending of the original series and the start of Legend of Korra.

The comics are still set in a time period when Aang is still a preteen.

So the movie isn't set directly after the series?

Long Feng would be a great choice, he and the Dai Li are a bit of a loose end.

Problem is, the Dai Li still exist come Legend of Korra. Expecting them to be destroyed in the upcoming Aang-centered movie isn't going to work.

However, the Dai Li could easily be reformed into a force for good until Hou-Ting gets her long fingernails on the throne.

Whoever the villain is, I don't want them to be a waterbender unless the film is exploring the origins of A. Firebender, waterbending serial killer.

What could be cool is another Combustion Person, especially after what the Yangchen books revealed about them

Edited by TheAirman on Apr 17th 2024 at 3:23:28 AM

Agreed, it's a long enough time span to allow for fluctuating loyalties like that. It's not like many of the current Dai Li would be around in Korra's time.

I don't think it's that implausible to suggest that four avatars could die in a hundred years under the extreme circumstance of the war. Kuruk lived to...what, 32? And the Fire Nation was pretty successful at eliminating waterbenders from the South. I think Aang dies in the attack -> Waterbender dies immediately in the raid on the South -> Earthbender comes from one of those small, undefended villages like Jet (and not Ba Sing Se) and dies 10-15 years in -> Firebender lives a prosperous life, but gets betrayed/executed at some point (maybe around 60?) -> Airbender has no one to learn from, and dies pretty young as a result -> Katara or Sokka becomes the Avatar is a workable timeline. Definitely pretty contrived—the fire and air avatars are a little harder to explain—but workable.

Edited by indigoJay on Apr 17th 2024 at 4:29:37 AM

If we go with the cycle moving on because Aang died, pretty much means the Airbender genocide was total. What would happen when the cycle got back around to air? Would it end because it's broken or just skip round back to Water?

Going back to Gran Gran is the Avatar, she grew up in the North, so she would have been trained there. (I assume the girls don't fight rule isn't impose on the Avatar), she'd have never gone south and Kya and Sokka and Katara would never be born, it would also presumably draw the Fire nation to attack the NWT a lot earlier. It would massively change everything.

Given what happened in Korra, I imagine an Airbender Avatar would be born in some random location to some random people. The universe likes balance.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Apr 17th 2024 at 3:08:15 AM

I think just because there aren't any airbenders living currently means that the air element itself won't manifest again.

I read a theory that the people that got airbending in Korra might have distant air nomad ancestry. I think some air nomads being in hiding in other parts of the world wouldn't be out of the question.

Edited by MacronNotes on Apr 17th 2024 at 6:44:11 AM

Depending on how common inter nation hookups were, someone could start as an airbender in any of the other nations. Good luck finding a teacher (human or bison), though.

Edited by Blueace on Apr 17th 2024 at 6:48:25 AM

There's an ATLA in Concert tour going around this year. This is one of those shows where a live orchestra plays music from the show along with clips from the show.

I think a new airbender spontaneously being born is plausible, given the events of Korra.

And a new airbender Avatar would have the advantage of being both inherently talented and having the previous Avatars to rely on.

Come to think of it, previous Avatars do have a way to manifesting themselves to the Avatar even without meditation, so it would be unlikely that an Avatar would remain undiscovered to themselves, at the very least, even in the absence of an active search.

The airbending only returned because of the Harmonic Convergence. And that still required Raava to beat Vaatu.

The universe wants balance, but it can only do so much without very special circumstances like that. The massive surge of spiritual power unleashed by the Harmonic Convergence was needed to restore airbending.

It would mean the Avatar would only be a master of three elements from that point. At least until the next Harmonic Convergence comes around and assuming Raava won.

Nope. The comics addressed this. The Fire Nation didn't stop with the initial slaughter at the Temples. They used Air Nomad artifacts to lure any Air Nomad stragglers that weren't at the Temples at the time. The Fire Nation created false safe zones with these artifacts and spread rumors about them. The surviving Air Nomads were then tricked into going to them and were then slaughtered.

Genocide campaigns are fucked up like that.

Edited by M84 on Apr 17th 2024 at 10:27:23 PM

"What would've happened if the cycle reached Air again before Harmomic Convergence" would definitely be an interesting question to ask Bryke.

Edited by lbssb on Apr 17th 2024 at 11:00:25 AM

As far as we know, the only thing that can truly break the Avatar Cycle is if something happens to Raava. Whether it's the Avatar being slain in the Avatar State or Raava herself being removed and slain, the Avatar Cycle dies if Raava dies.

Edited by M84 on Apr 17th 2024 at 10:59:22 PM

Where in the comics specifically? I haven't read any of them yet.

"Relics", a comic made available on Free Comic Book Day 2011.

Zhao re-used this trap to try to catch Aang. It worked, but Aang managed to escape of course.

Zhao: Take as much of that junk as you can carry. I don't need any of it anymore. They served their purpose—to lead a curious Avatar right where I wanted. The same tactic was used many years ago by Fire Lord Sozin. The few airbenders that escaped his first assault were too hard to hunt down. Instead, he laid traps for them. Places like these caves were made to look like they were inhabited by other airbender refugees. Sozin fooled them using their own everyday objects as bait, luring them far enough for our soldiers to close in. This old stratagem still works well enough to catch one last airbender. Your curiosity and lack of knowledge of our military history proved your downfall.

When Aang reunited with Katara and Sokka, it ended with this exchange:

Katara: What are you doing out here? We were looking for you. Wait, I think I know. This place reminds you of home, right? All these mountains ... airbenders would have loved to stay here. They would have been attracted to the place.

Aang: Yeah. A few of them probably were.

Edited by M84 on Apr 17th 2024 at 11:32:39 PM

I mean, the writers came up with Harmonic Convergence to solve the airbender genocide problem, too. There is no reason why they couldn't have come up with a similar solution in a scenario where there needed to be an airbender for the next Avatar.

A writer writing an alternative story doesn't need to be beholden to the original, just like the writer of the original is not beholden to follow the canon of how their story might have been different.

You were the one who referenced the events of Korra.

The point was that the events of Legend of Korra don't support the idea of airbending just returning spontaneously on its own. It took an extraordinary spiritual event to bring it back.

It highlights just how total the Fire Nation's genocide of the Air Nomads was, and just how much damage they inflicted on the world with it. It took a once every 10,000 years cosmic happenstance to restore the spiritual balance. And even then, the genocide's damage wasn't wholly undone. A lot of Air Nomad culture was still lost forever. So, no, the Harmonic Convergence didn't "solve" the genocide.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 4:02:28 PM

In-universe, sure, but in a meta sense, Harmonic Convergence absolutely was the solution to the problem of the air nomad genocide. The writers came up with it to solve the problem of there being no more air nomads around, and Tenzin could hardly be expected to repopulate the air nation all by himself.

Again, it didn't solve the Air Nomad genocide. Air Nomads are still over as a group and a culture. All that was restored was airbending itself.

Even the new Air Nation aren't the Air Nomads, but something new.

The writers wanted to bring in new airbenders, but they also didn't want to downplay the impact of the genocide. I'd say an extraordinary cosmic event that only brought back the bending form but not the people was a good way of doing that.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 4:32:06 PM