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Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 1 Review

Avatar: The Last Airbender is an adventure fantasy series that is a live-action adaptation of the titular Nickelodeon show. Its first season of eight episodes premiered on Netflix in 2024.

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“We can’t worry about anyone else’s expectations“

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A lot has been said about this series before and after its release. I sit somewhere in the middle – I don’t have any qualms with its existence, but I also don’t think it’s all too necessary. It will be probably a better experience for new fans not familiar with the original series than the already established fans as the latter group would find its flaws all the more painful. As somebody who doesn’t remember the series but did watch it, I enjoyed this show for what it is, which is just a new, somewhat changed rendition with nothing particularly great or terrible in it.

The cast is an interesting one. They went out and chose the suitable ethnicities for all of the characters – East Asians and Native Americans constituting the majority of the ensemble. I did find this choice to be the only suitable one given the setting of the show, but because they found pretty much unknown actors, that did reflect on the overall acting quality, which is subpar for the most part.

Ian Ousley as Sokka is quite good. He did not start off great, but when he became more comfortable with the role, he was quite strong. Sokka is almost as funny and as fun as the original incarnation. But the standout for me has to be Dallas Liu as Prince Zuko. His voice is exactly the same as it was before and his performance is by far the strongest of the entire cast. Zuko was given a lot do to here and an extensive backstory where we witness how he was mistreated by his father and how he developed a kinship with his uncle Iroh, who was once again one of the highlights here. Whenever the two were on screen together, the show reached the funniest as well as most moving moments.

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Aang and Katara are just fine. They did not steal the show, but they weren’t terrible either. They’re serviceable, but I do expect more from them in the future seasons. Zhao and Ozai were just as horrible as on the show and pretty good villains overall, but unfortunately Azula for now is quite underwhelming, though hopefully her actress loosens up a bit more in the next season.

Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender benefits from an obviously huge budget inflicted upon it. This resulted in truly impressive VFX. Surely now television can rival cinema in the visual effects department. How all of the bending looked was spectacular and the show brought back the famous settings from the original very satisfyingly. The action is splendid as well. Every single fight sequence was very cool to watch and by far the best reason to see the series is for those action scenes.

But the dialogue, emotional investment and the overall characterization and plot were only okay. The original series balanced all of these things so much better while this show was too muted in its impact. The humor fared the worst as animation is much better suited for this type of endearing and childlike humor. They included some new plot points, but for the most part those did not stick the landing.

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