Entertainment
The Last Airbender’ Needs To Adapt Its Best Spin-Off Series for TV
Avatar: The Last Airbender is a one-of-a-kind series. It’s no surprise that fans haven’t loved any of the sequels, spinoffs, or adaptations quite as much as they loved the original, from the direct sequel The Legend of Korra to the live-action adaptation, which just premiered its second season on Netflix. It can be frustrating to watch this franchise stumble forward down treacherous storytelling paths when the perfect next step is right there waiting for it. Avatar Studios has an easy win in the Chronicles of the Avatar novel series, which is practically begging to be adapted into an animated series. These books have everything fans love about the original series without any of the baggage that comes with a live-action adaptation or a sequel in an uncertain future.
It’s been a rough couple of years for Avatar Studios, which hasn’t even officially released anything since its formation in 2021. The studio will debut this fall with the movie Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, but the movie has already leaked online, softening its impact on the fandom. Many who watched the leaked movie left lackluster reviews, and the whole ordeal spawned a distracting cycle of discourse about studio politics and the ethics of media consumption. Meanwhile, Avatar Studios is charging ahead with its next sequel series, Avatar: Seven Havens — the third series in what they’re now calling the Avatar Legends franchise. None of this has helped get us back into the fictional setting we love to explore it’s amazing potential.
The ‘Avatar Legends’ Franchise Needs a Win
Aside from Avatar Aang, Avatar: Seven Havens is the only other project Avatar Studios has pulicly announced. It’s expected to debut next year, and it has all the talent it could need to succeed creatively — assuming it gets enough financial and marketing support from Paramount. However, some fans will inevitably feel alienated from the show since it takes place after The Legend of Korra. That series had its own ups and downs, and it changed the setting of the Avatar Legends franchise a lot in its time. It introduced advanced technology and industrialization to the Avatar world, which is too much for some fans to handle.
That’s not to say that Avatar Studios shouldn’t make sequels — Korra has some die-hard fans, and it will be exciting to see what comes next for this world. However, considering the franchise has a whole studio behind it, it’s surprising that they’re not taking the path of least resistance to draw lapsed fans back with prequels. Even without the Chronicles of the Avatar series, prequels would be a no-brainer for this franchise. Considering how great the novels are, they should definitely be adapted, as readers have been saying for years now.
‘Chronicles of the Avatar’ is The Ideal Prequel Format
The Chronicles of the Avatar novel series kicked off in 2019 with The Rise of Kyoshi, written by F.C. Yee. As the title suggests, the novel centers around Avatar Kyoshi, the earth-bending Avatar who preceded Aang by two generations, living before Avatar Roku. Yee published a direct sequel the following year, The Shadow of Kyoshi, then wrote two more books in the series titled The Dawn of Yang Chen and The Legacy of Yang Chen. These leapt back another generation in the timeline. From there, author Randy Ribay took over for The Reckoning of Roku in 2024 and The Awakening of Roku in 2025. Ribay has signed on to write at least one more book in the series, but so far we don’t know which Avatar it will be about or when it might come out.
Each of these novels tells of a momentous adventure in the lives of one of Aang’s predecessors in the Avatar cycle. They take some time to explore the political and social climate of their times, but since they all take place before the 100-Year War, they are all pre-industrial and relatively familiar from a worldbuilding perspective. Of course, fans already know a bit about these past Avatars thanks to Aang’s interactions with them in the main series, but these novels give us a chance to learn more about them, and by extension, learn about the nature of the Avatar cycle itself.
Those who have read these books could probably rattle off ten reasons they should be adapted off the tops of their heads. There are some incredible action scenes in the prose format, and seeing them animated would be a dream come true. There are also some unforgettable characters begging to be brought to life on screen, as every Avatar had their own version of “the Gaang.”
One old master asked two questions, and animation has been chasing the answer ever since.
An adaptation of the Chronicles of the Avatar novels would work well as a series of animated movies, or as an anthology TV series. The team behind the Avatar Aang movie displayed some incredible art and animation skills, and they could have done wonders with Yee and Ribay’s writing. Hopefully it’s not too late, as it seems like Avatar Studios’ best days are still ahead of it. Sadly, there’s only one chance to make a first impression, and this studio’s first impression was denied a theatrical release, then leaked unceremoniously.
If nothing else, hopefully the Avatar Legends renaissance will introduce more fans to the Chronicles of the Avatar novel series. All six installments are available now in print, digital, and audiobook formats, and at least one more is on the way. Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender will premiere on Paramount+ on October 9. The live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 premiered on Thursday, June 25 on Netflix.
- Release Date
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2005 – 2008
- Network
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Nickelodeon
- Showrunner
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Michael Dante DiMartino
- Directors
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Giancarlo Volpe, Ethan Spaulding, Lauren MacMullan, Dave Filoni, Joaquim Dos Santos, Anthony Lioi
- Writers
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Tim Hedrick, Elizabeth Welch Ehasz, Joshua Hamilton, James Eagan, Joann Estoesta, Nick Malis, May Chan, Katie Mattila
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