The Lasting Legacy of Avatar: The Last Airbender
How one 2000s cartoon continues to shape entertainment
Avatar: The Last Airbender arrived on Nickelodeon as an anomaly. On a channel most known for the childish antics of SpongeBob Squarepants, Fairly OddParents, and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, it was apparent from the very pilot that I’d stumbled onto something new and different.
Too young to know what an anime was, I didn’t understand how the show was different than the ones I’d spent my childhood watching. But I could see almost immediately that it was attempting to build an entire world. Created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, it was a story that captured my imagination like none other before it. It was the first show to make me wonder what was coming next.
It set a plot in motion within the first episode that I was ready and eager to watch unfold chapter by chapter, week by week. As each new part of the saga was released, I’d stare at my screen with a sugary snack and struggle to conceal my excitement. During commercial breaks, I’d leap into the air and try to command the four elements just like my favorite new character, Avatar Aang. Water, earth, fire, and air were the tools of his trade, and even as a budding young bender, his prowess filled me with envy.
With explosive kicks, jabs, and karate chops, I’d quietly pray with each new motion that the world-manipulating powers of the Avatar might suddenly manifest in me, too. I’d emulate his every move, half-expecting the elements to heed my call. Delivering a full battery of sound effects, I’d jump and flail my limbs — hoping to see just a mere gust of wind emerge from my wrist. I would have settled for even a dying ember to feebly shoot from my fingertips in those early days watching the show. And though my magical powers never arrived, my interest in the show never dwindled.
For the next few years that followed, every Friday at 8 PM I’d tune into the spell-binding show with rapt anticipation. And each subsequent day at school, I’d walk into classes filled with students practically bursting at the seams to discuss each new episode’s details. We’d speculate with bombastic charades about where the plot could be headed next.
As with the Harry Potter kids who long-hoped to receive a Hogwarts letter in the mail, Avatar: The Last Airbender tapped into something innate. There’s a primal sort of thrill and intrigue to the rules of its universe, and there’s a poignant symmetry and circularity to the story. There’s a magnetic quality to every creature and character it contains.
For the kids and teenagers who grew up watching, there’s no denying that there’s a distinguishing factor to the beloved children’s cartoon.
After M. Night Shyamalan’s famously reviled attempt to bring the element-bending realm of Aang and his companions to life, though, the world fell into an Avatar-less dark age that even a fully realized cartoon sequel failed to lift. By the time The Legend of Korra came out, so many of the children who grew up watching the original had moved on to other things. When I got curious to watch it for the first time, I was put off by the first episode. (Years later, I would understand the error of my ways.)
In the early days of streaming, there wasn’t a single platform that reached out an olive branch to the storied animated TV show. For the better part of a decade, peoples’ best bet at catching a glimpse of the earth-bending cartoon was the occasional rerun — or god forbid, a Blu-ray/DVD box set.
As COVID-19 swept the globe, I finally caved. I bought the DVD anthology and began cycling through an entire series worth of Avatar CDs. Yet, before I could even fracture a single disc carefully wrestling it from its fragile casing, Netflix made a momentous announcement.
In what many consider a decision to ease the burden of the pandemic, the streaming giant welcomed the Avatar and his friends onto the platform with open arms. Within weeks, it was clear that the floodgates had opened widely enough to make even the water tribe tremble.
Whether it was the long-held desire for Aang’s return, the cheers of a million millennials, or a population ready to move on from the clench-fisted throes of Tiger King addiction, Avatar: The Last Airbender quickly became the most popular entry across the entire streaming giant. It’s danced in and out of Netflix’s top 10 list for entire years and has even now celebrated an enduring tenure on Paramount Plus.
With a new live-action Netflix series on the horizon, the story of Avatar: The Last Airbender remains as relevant as ever before. There are even plans to revitalize the animated series and continue the plot arc established nearly two full decades ago.
Looking at the show’s newfound popularity, it’s hard to believe that entire generations almost never knew about Avatar: The Last Airbender. As weird as it is to say, millions owe its discovery solely to its arrival on streaming platforms. But just why it resonates so widely is at once obvious and mysterious.
For an adult going in blindly, at a cursory glance, they’ll likely see no more than a kids’ show. For the first ten episodes, it feels like an animated undertaking without a concrete sense of identity. It wobbles under the weight of its lofty ambitions and seems a little unsure of its role in the land of cartoons. It seems like a Nickelodeon show that wants to blossom into something more.
But rounding the final bend of its pilot season, that something reveals itself. As the last episode closes, it’s clear that its creators had found their footing as storytellers and begun carving out a path all their own.
The four elements provoke a natural curiosity. And there’s an elegant balance in this universe connected and divided by the ability to bend them. The symbols on almost every wall give the feeling that it’s a lived-in world. The show is also incredibly well-choreographed. Because real martial artists helped to craft the fighting styles associated with each specific element, there’s a grace, balance, and congruity that permeates every conflict.
By the time the second season concludes, it approaches a philosophical depth that few cartoons have ever attempted. It explores grief and letting go in a way that even movies meant for adults scarcely manage to handle so meaningfully.
One particularly tear-jerking moment involves a tribute to the show’s departed cast member, Mako. The song “Leaves From The Vine” is one most viewers still remember with a bitter-sweet pang. In its simple melody, and the broken manner in which the character attempts to sing it, the song drives home an emotional blow that few cartoons have achieved.
By the end of the final season, Avatar enters into the pantheon of truly masterful storytelling. The finale stands for me as one of the most impactful and well-conceived conclusions in television history. It’s soulful, solemn, surprising, and quintessentially well-animated. It’s conclusive enough to leave the sprawling story feeling complete, but leaves enough ambiguity to hold the door open to the future of Avatar stories that’s now looming on the horizon.
In its three season duration, the show tackles war, imperialism, genocide, spirituality, mercy, and identity with a nuanced sensitivity. It’s delicate but hard-hitting.
The characters of the show are one of its greatest strengths. The Zuko character, voiced by Dante Basco, boasts what’s still lauded as one of the great redemption arcs in TV history. The chemistry between Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Toph, voiced respectively by Zach Tyler Eisner, Mae Whitman, Jack De Sena, and Michaela Jill Murphy, cement them as one of the most memorable bands of misfits in the world of cartoons.
But likely no character lives on in hearts more deeply than Uncle Iroh. Voiced by Mako and lovingly replaced by Greg Baldwin, Uncle Iroh stands as an unfailing beacon of kindness, warmth, wisdom, and tea. There’s certainly no character from the show that’s meant more to me over the years than the restrained and fiery force for good that is Iroh.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the most prominent examples for me of a TV show that means different things at different ages. As a child, I reveled in the action and wanted Aang and his friends to prevail. As an adolescent, I began to glean some of its deeper thematic depths.
But as an adult, I see a show that provides a service for kids that is simply unprecedented in the world of Nickelodeon cartoons. Avatar: The Last Airbender is an aberration that defined a generation. To schedule a show like that to air one night instead of Jimmy Neutron was a risk I’ll always be thankful that Nickelodeon was willing to take. Nearly 20 years later, it’s certainly paid off.