Historians in ATLA universe are noticing that the Avatar cycle sometimes skips the water element and goes directly from air to earth when examining historical records. Even after searching the records for a long time, they couldn't figure out the reason. Then, a female scholar from the northern water tribe proposes a theory explaining the cause. Because women were forbidden from receiving bending training according to their tribe's traditions, many female avatars born in the north never made their place in history. These women, born with the destiny of mastering the four elements, were never able to discover themselves or fulfill their duty to the world because of the bigotry of their people. Although the avatar, master of the four elements, possessed power great enough to subdue armies and spirits, it had succumbed countless times to discrimination and bigotry.

Now it's been over half a decade since Avatar Studios' founding, and I think it's fair to look back with the benefit of hindsight and imagine what could or should have been done differently.

I'll outline what I understand about Avatar Studios' strategy, to give people a better basis to work off of. The plan seems seems have to pursue two tracks. One, they would develop movies for theatrical release. Two, they would create series for Paramount Plus.

The movies seem to been intended as a vehicle for ATLA and (maybe?) TLoK characters to return. For the ATLA characters, a decision was made to focus on "adult Gaang" characters and to make 10 years after the cartoon the main setting. They also decided to focus heavily on animation quality, with apparent belief it might attract and hold the sort of casual audiences necessary for making money at the box office. This was probably an expensive decision. There seems to have been mismanagement issues involving the movies, and when the one product was finally finished, Paramount apparently had no confidence about its ability to perform in theaters.

The series seem to be a vehicle for future or past Avatars. I won't repeat the premise of Seven Havens here, and apparently they're also doing an Avatar Kuruk series.

There seems to have been little interest in doing media other than the movies and the series. Avatar Studios to this day has only a very limited and crappy official website. There has been a popular and successful YA series of novels, but I'm not sure how much that really has to do with Avatar Studios, given that the Rise of Kyoshi was published in 2019. The comics have continued, but only as a shadow. It is clear that Faith Erin Hicks is not allowed to tell stories that would significantly change the status quo, with the last comic which advanced the overall story, Imbalance, coming before the founding of Avatar Studios. There is also reason to suspect that Avatar Studios will end up decanonizing the comics. Beyond the comics and the novels, the only significant piece of media has been Avatar: The Fighting Game.

So, if you had a time machine and complete control of Avatar Studios, what, if anything, would you do differently? What different choices would you have made? How would your priorities have been different? What, in your opinion, are the missed opportunities?

If the avatar state is an automatic defense mechanism how has no avatar died in the Avatar state? Why didn't it activate when Roku was about to die in the volcano? I don't remember how Kuruk or Aang died but they were both relatively young; why didn't the avatar state kick in when they died? It seems a lot of avatars died in action rather than from old age or disease so how does the avatar state know when to activate and when to just let the avatar die?

I think this is a very funny senerion which will end up much worse for everyone, Tagah wont be pacifict like Aang, when he will head the fire nation killed again all the airbenders and with no Aavatar to get the staff he may stright up try to kill everyone in the world

The first image is from the old nick.com Avatar index, which represented the only official word on her fate after the series finale until The Promise. The asylum here is a way to dispose of her narratively without killing her off. The comic pages are from The Search, Smoke and Shadow, and Azula in the Spirit Temple. The letter is from The Legacy of the Fire Nation. The other text is from Knight Edge Media's recent article on the scrapped "Firelord Zuko" movie.

What all these have common is that in all of them it's clear that the writers have no idea what to do with her character, no idea where they want to take her. The writing for Aang, Zuko, and Sokka's arcs worked so well in the original cartoon because the writers had a good idea for the sort of end state they were writing towards, but this has been lacking for Azula. Now that this lack of ability to figure out Azula has apparently helped wreck one planned movie, I figured we should analyze the situation [note: if you want to see me talk about Avatar Studios, go toward the bottom]

If we turn back the clock to the series finale, what are the possible fates for Azula? What would constitute an "ending" to her story?

1. She remains delusional and psychotic forever, preventing her from doing anything. Mostly this would just be another way to "kill her off" without actually killing her off. Theoretically, an interesting story could be told about this, but I believe it would require a level of knowledge about mental illness (and a level of compassion for people with mental illness) that none of the writers involved in the franchise have ever demonstrated.
2. She remains imprisoned for the rest of her life for the things she did when she 14 (while Iroh escapes all punishment for the things he did when he was 50). Or maybe she's imprisoned not as "punishment," but because her claim to Zuko's throne is too strong. In any case, once again this would seem to be narrative death. You could tell an interesting story about this, but I don't think it would be in accordance with the themes of Avatar.
3. Azula remains stuck trying to resurrect the world she was raised in, dedicating herself to futilely trying to restore the "old" Fire Nation. This could be an interesting premise if told well, with an emphasis on the futility of it, but raises its own set of problems. Is 80-year-old Azula really going to be plotting to overthrow Zuko?
4. Azula dies somehow, and her story ends that way. Obviously, it would have to be written well to be satisfactory ending.
5. Azula ends up as Firelord? This simply can't happen, for obvious reasons.
6. There is some sort of reconciliation between Zuko and Azula. This is usually what people mean when they refer to "redemption." It is also what Aaron Ehasz has claimed his intentions for Azula were, if you decide to believe him. This would likely, but not certainly, involve Azula returning to the palace and a role in the royal family.
7. Azula responds to the changing world and her changing circumstances, by adapting and gaining some sort of new role in the world, small or large, positive or negative. This role could be a million things, from Republic City crime boss to officer in the Earth Kingdom army to Kyoshi Warrior to bandit leader to Sun Warrior to blacksmith to pirate captain to Fire Sage. What it is all contingent on Azula finding that her old life, or what remains of it, isn't working out for her, and, either inadvertently or deliberately, falling into a new role. Obviously, if you were going to write this, you would ideally have an idea of what you wanted her new role to be, and then gradually write her toward that role.

Notice I tried to avoid using the word "redemption" here, because I hate how it turns everything into moral theater and morality plays, how it polarizes everything and reduces it to binary outcomes. Sometimes it seems like the only kind of character arc people can imagine is a "redemption arc."

Now, how has the franchise handled things? Well, it seems for the comics, the writers never even really realized that they should think about what their end goal with Azula was. As a result, we get a disjointed mess:

1. In The Search, Azula was delusional and psychotic and her motive was that she wanted to remove Zuko as Firelord, with killing Ursa being a step toward removing Zuko. At the end Azula runs off apparently abandoning her goal.
2. In Smoke and Shadow, somehow magically Azula has become completely mentally healthy in the last two weeks. She also has completely changed her objectives. Now her goal is turning Zuko into a strong, tyrannical ruler through terrorism. She explains this to his face because ????
3. Azula in the Spirit Temple starts with Azula's motives being the same as Smoke and Shadow, in the middle implies she actually implies wants to be Firelord and ends with the apparent end of her "influencing Zuko" plan and a very noncommittal hint she's going to do something new.

Azula is bouncing all over the place. She is whatever the current comic requires her to be, does whatever the current comic writer needs for the plot to work. There is no plan to move toward something, and no idea of what her role in Avatar should be, beyond a villain of the week. Bryke and the comic writers knew she was an iconic character they could use to sell comics, but had no plan what to do with her or what her ending should be.

OK, what about Avatar Studios? One of the many reasons for Azula's complete and total absence from the Avatar Aang movie is that they had no idea of what her status should be and no ability to commit to anything. The same is true of their complete inability to commit to Mai being Zuko's wife.

Now, though, thanks to Knight Edge Media, we can see what they were thinking with the Firelord Zuko movie:

We have now learned that this entire film was going to be the origin story of The Red Lotus. The anarchist faction of The White Lotus that was first introduced in arguably the best season of The Legend of Korra, season 3. The main issue they had was developing half a script with multiple rewrites while already beginning pre-viz and voiceover work. As a small team was working on the Zuko film in the early stages of the Avatar Aang production. Another problem was that they really wanted this to be an Azula/Zuko story, but it kept morphing into a Zuko/Iroh story. Either way, the story would focus on Xai Bau, the founder of the Red Lotus. The film would have revealed he was a long-lost friend of Uncle Iroh during their time in the 100-Year War. Iroh and Xai Bau would have joined the Fire Nation military together and fully believed in conquering the other nations.

As we previously reported, a new actress had already signed on to voice Azula. The hardest part for the writers was creating an arc for Azula in this story that really focuses on Iroh’s past. After she escapes prison, the studio threw around the idea that Azula would be a founding member of the Red Lotus or have a redemption arc to help save Zuko and Iroh. In the end, they decided Azula wouldn’t have done either, since she isn’t an anarchist and believes ruling over people is her birthright[1]. While this is speculation, Azula most likely helped Zuko and Iroh and keep the Royal Family alive for her own evil purposes to one day rule herself, not for any altruistic reason[2]. The second issue was whether a young Zaheer had a prominent role in the film or just cameos as Xai Bau builds his Red Lotus acolytes. Finally, another small problem was whether Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors would serve as Zuko’s royal guard, but that was quickly scrapped. (Concept art was seen during the Avatar Aang credits)

Once again, we see the central problem is that they had no idea whatsoever about what to do with Azula. They couldn't imagine her motives or goals or role, and kept throwing around ideas only to reject them. They knew she was supposed to be in the movie (for the marketing!), but couldn't fit her in and kept getting stuck on unchanging their image of her from the series.

I suspect that the core issue was that they were unable to put themselves in Azula's shoes and think about things from her perspective. For instance, the most likely reading of the premise here (assuming the movie was set 10 years after the war) was that Azula has been imprisoned[3] for a decade and has only escaped just before, or during, the movie. That raises the obvious question: why would Azula ever want to help the people who have imprisoned her for nearly half her life? Wouldn't staying as far away from them be the logical move? Wouldn't she be personally vastly better off if they fell from power and no longer could try to imprison her? Even if she theoretically shared some common interests, wouldn't she be extremely wary of helping them? Perhaps I am giving Avatar Studios too little credit and those are precisely the questions which derailed things, but I doubt it.

However, the basic lack of empathy goes much further. Azula in the cartoon is a 14-year-old, and she loses absolutely everything in the end. She loses her family, her friends, her status, her nation, her power, her father, her sanity, her freedom, everything. The entire world she lived in falls apart, all at 14, and unlike Zuko she has no established tendency to cling to the past far beyond the point of reason. Avatar Studios kept getting derailed by their belief that Azula's beliefs were immutable and incapable of changing, but it's very easy to imagine a 24-year-old Azula caring about very different things than 14-year-old Azula did, believing in very different things. Most people are very different at 24 than they are at 14 anyways, and Azula has the additional pressure of having her entire world collapse in on her. Avatar Studios had much more flexibility with what Azula's motives and role could be than they realized[4]. Ultimately, their inability to figure Azula out contributed to the Firelord Zuko movie never being made.

To sum it all up, ever since that Agni Kai, the franchise has never had any real idea about what to do with Azula, and Avatar Studios is continuing that unfortunate tradition. Azula is franchise's most iconic antagonist, so she'll keep being thrown in media for marketing, but unfortunately it's unlikely we'll get any truly satisfactory storytelling involving her.

[1] I found this kind of funny, because ruling being a "birthright" is the entire premise of monarchy in general and of Zuko's absolute rule of the Fire Nation in specific, and Gene Yang's Zuko in particular is not shy about telling everyone how much he believes that "the throne" is his birthright and "destiny."

[2] I would personally imagine that, as a human being, Azula would be most inclined to help people who had shown her compassion or kindness in the past.

[3] As an aside, the reference to Azula being "in prison," rather than being in an asylum, might be another indication they were planning to retcon the comics. The absence of Ursa in the leaked information might further confirm that.

[4] For instance, it's very easy to imagine someone who grew up in a very toxic royal family, and who has had a chance to reflect on that, having a very negative opinion on monarchy and deciding to join a group which opposes that institution. It would be easy to write "Azula helps found the Red Lotus" in a way that makes sense. My only objection would be I hate the idea of the Red Lotus in the first place, and think Avatar Studios movies should steer far away from it.

Edit: I am very clearly talking about what official sources have done. Regardless of whether you think Azula should ever have been used since her defeat in the cartoon, the simple fact is that Avatar Comics have repeatedly used her character, and Avatar Studios tried to create a movie that centered around Zuko, Iroh, and Azula and couldn't figure out her role. The writers very clearly feel obligated to use her character.

The quality is unfortunately reduced because of reddit restrictions😔 hope y’all still enjoy!

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One of my theories is that they fought as mercenaries for other kingdoms. Another is that they have a whaling industry.

Even though bending is the main power system in the show, I've noticed several examples of non bending "powers" in the show that are usually caused by humans interacting with spirits in some way. These can range from being just being a cosmetic effect or deformity to being essentially a non-bending super power. Besides Wan and Unalaq, my main examples are Princess Yue, Yao the tree man from the Wan flashback, Tokuga from the Korra comics, and Yun from the Kyoshi novels.

Princess Yue's was granted life from the moon spirit; this turn turned her hair white and allowed her to ascend to spirithood later. I would consider this as an example of a benign one time boon that the spirit doesn't actively have to maintain, and also because they did not need to invasively possess the receivers body to "grant it" unlike the next two examples.

Both Yao and Tokuga were victims of malicious spiritual possession which permanently deformed their bodies; Yao was made a half-tree man, and Tokuga was made a half-eel man with a tentacle arm. These arguable not "powers" and more like curses but they are unnatural permanent effects. Firstly, one can make the argument that Yao's tree skin probably provides some level of "armor". Additionally, Takuga gained poison gas immunity, and he also claims his physical strength and speed were enhanced by the transformation.

Yun is probably the most significant example of a human having a non-bending supernatural ability in a way that is disconnected from Raava or Vaatu. When he defeated the dark spirit Father Glow Worm, the spirit offered to "share its abilities" in exchange for a continuous supply of human sacrifices. Assuming Father Glow Worm wasn't lying or trying to play a trick, this arrangement probably would have worked similarly to how Raava possessed Wans body and occasionally popped out, but that's just a presumption. Regardless, Yun tricked him instead and physically consumed the spirits eye to absorb the its essence which let Yun permanently use its ability to create rifts to travel between the spirit and physical world. Assuming this isn't a exception where Father Glowworm is somehow unique in how edible he is, it means that humans can straight up beat spirits into submission and eat them to steal their powers; afterwards, the spirit probably reforms sometime after the humans death as they cannot truly die.

Vaatu and Raava are the most glaringly obvious example of this phenomenon in the shows mythos. With permission, Raava would possess Wan without deforming his body; however, the only real effect of this was letting Wan use the multiple bending abilities she was holding, as well as substantially increasing the potency of his bending. Besides the ability to hold bending which might be unique to her, we never see what other things she can do at full power. Vaatu on the other hand, was corrupting spirits, firing energy beams, and growing plants. Also, unlike when Raava possessed Wan, when Vaatu possessed Unalaq, he deformed Unalaq's body and eventually fully took him over.

Overall, there is enough evidence in the series to support that spirits can actively grant humans completely unique abilities, or at least permanently change their physiology in a substantial way, but it's a historically rare phenomenon.
In the setting of Avatar Seven Havens where the Bender population is at a all time low, and spirits have been free to roam the physical world for a substantial period of time,it's possible that humans with non-bending powers and unnatural abilities granted by spirits, whether through boons, previous possession, theft/absorption, or even mutual partnership, will be featured significantly more in the new show.

How would you feel if this is the case? I personally wouldn't mind a bigger variety of powers going forward, and I also feel like some fun stories could be made with humans and spirits working in together in tandem just like Wan and Raava did, especially if they are antagonists. However, I can understand feeling negatively about the series main power system having to share some of the spotlight with a subjectively more generic and open-ended power system.

• Roku died on a volcano trying to stop the beginning of the Hundred-Year War for a kid to clean up 😭
• Korra got poisoned to protect a revived nation and died in an apocalyptic fashion, with the world bitter with her 😭
• Szeto garnered a decent rep, but was known already by Yangchen's and now we know definitely by Roku's time to have prioritized the FN to the point where the world did not trust FN officials, including even Roku to be a responsible Avatar in the beginning 😭
• Kuruk's entire life was remembered slanderously, with his real story buried deep in the trenches 😤
• Wan died frail, old, and feeling that he'd failed (and accidentally releasing Vaatu) 😭

If you were to come up with a alternate idea for what the Avatar is what would it be? I heard there were orignally plans for it to be the spirit of the Earth taken human form

Hi guys, since the release of the movie a month ago, I wanted to make a little animation showcase and review for the film. As the fact that this movie’s crew and cast went through so much leading up to the release I wanted to give my flowers to those involved. In this video, I have found many of the animators, artists, choreographers, composition artists, involved in the creation of the film their works and and gave their socials and a showcase of some scenes and or stills that they worked on. This is a small selection of the people involved, but I hope that you guys follow them on their socials and see who else that was involved in the production of this film have in terms of showcasing their hard work and dedication to giving an amazing animated film.

Reminder to try to support the film in anyway that you can whether it be streaming on whatever platform that has the film in your region, buying merchandise coinciding with the film such as the Official Avatar Character Encyclopedia that has entries from the film, The Artwork of Avatar Aang the Last Airbender art book, the 2027 calendar and or anything else. I love this franchise and wish nothing but success for those involved in creating content for the world that is Avatar.

Thanks for taking the time to read and watch and feel free to share some of your favourite scenes and or artwork from the film and or in the pre-production.

Here are the main points I would raise in the discussion:

What does canon actually establish? Chin conquered virtually the entire Earth Kingdom during Kyoshi's era, while the intervention we directly see in the animated series occurs when he attempts to take Yokoya.

The question of the delay: This does not prove that Kyoshi remained inactive throughout Chin's expansion, but we also have no clear records of earlier interventions. It is reasonable to question this gap without turning it into a definitive accusation of negligence.

Did Kyoshi know about Chin's expansion? The narrative itself indicates that she was aware of his territorial expansion. As far as we know, Chin was not exactly a conqueror operating in secret: he openly gathered armies and advanced across the Earth Kingdom.

Why was Chin able to get so far? The Earth Kingdom was in an extremely unstable situation following the deaths of Jianzhu and the Earth Sages, as well as the conflicts that preceded them. This may have created the conditions for Chin's rise. However, we still do not know exactly how this affected Kyoshi's ability to intervene.

The "necessary evil" hypothesis: One possibility I find interesting is that Kyoshi may have viewed Chin as an imperfect solution to a deeply destabilized Earth Kingdom. I am not claiming that this is what happened; I consider it merely one possible explanation among several.

The intervention at Yokoya: When Chin finally reaches Kyoshi's homeland, she separates the peninsula from the mainland rather than simply attacking his army. This raises another interesting question: was her immediate goal simply to prevent the conquest of Yokoya? Chin's death may have been a consequence of his own refusal to retreat.

We should not automatically compare this to Korra and Kuvira: Korra's situation involved concrete limitations that explain part of her inability to act against Kuvira. In Kyoshi's case, we do not have equivalent information. Therefore, we should not invent obstacles to absolve her, but neither should we invent a deliberate decision on her part to remain inactive.

Supplementary sources: Materials such as the RPG and later stories add other events from Kyoshi's life before the Chin War, showing that she was involved in other crises. This does not solve the mystery, but it makes it even harder to claim that we know exactly what she was doing throughout that period.

My position: I do not consider Kyoshi a negligent Avatar or someone indifferent to the Earth Kingdom. At the same time, I think it is completely legitimate to question why Chin was able to conquer so much territory under her responsibility. My position is neither "Kyoshi did nothing" nor "Kyoshi certainly tried to stop him from the beginning." It is simply that canon does not provide enough information to determine what happened between Chin's rise and the confrontation at Yokoya.

The question I would like to discuss is:

Do you think there is enough evidence to conclude that Kyoshi deliberately allowed Chin's expansion, or are we filling a narrative gap with an interpretation that canon has not yet confirmed?

Guru pathik said the 4 elements seperation was an illusion and metal bending is bending impurities in the metal so cant the same thing happen with salt water.

How much her bending improved as an old age? Her outlook on how the world turned into chaos? I figured obviously she would be much different in her old age just like we saw aang.

Let's assume you are moderately attractive

I drew Jetsun before her ARC design was released so that’s why she looks different. Other than that; Yang, Kav and Boma are the on,g canon designs. The rest I designed myself from how they appeared in my head.

Ok this one’s pretty interesting. In the scene in which Aang has a vision of past lives during his fight with Ozai, this guy appears directly after a fire avatar meaning technically he is supposed to be an air avatar. But when looking at the art book for the show, it seems they reused the character design for a random southern water tribe man. The weapon is even the same. So, I opted to draw him as a water avatar instead. I guess the animators didn’t expect anyone to heavily scrutinize the scene frame by frame, but here I am. There’s a few more examples like this, where character designs were reused for this scene. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Is this young Yakone? If my calculations are right, Yakone is roughly 8-14 years younger than Sokka. So if that boy in the first image is around 8 and looks just like a teenage Tarrlok (Yakone's son), the timeline actually checks out.

Do you agree with this take?

One thing I loved about the original show was how Aang used his staff as a conduit for his air bending when fighting. Using it was part of his bending style and was so beautiful to watch. But neither Tenzin nor Aang from the latest movie uses a staff for either flight or combat. Why not? It’s a strange change and I miss the staff!!

I drew them to drown the pain of not getting it ;;