Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for Season 2 of the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is currently streaming on Netflix.
Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender is returning for Season 2. Similar to season 2 of the Nickelodeon original show, it follows Anne (Gordon Cormier)’s journey to learn earthbending from her young blind mentor Toph Beifong (Miyako). As in the first series, Aang, Katara (Kiawentio), and Sokka (Ian Owsley) travel to the walled city of Ba Sing Se to find their earthbending teacher. Pursuing them are Princess Azula (Elizabeth Yu) of the Fire Nation and her friends Mai (Talia Tran) and Ty Lee (Momona Tamada). Meanwhile, exiled Prince Zuko (Dallas Liu) and his uncle Iroh (Paul Seung-Hyun) are on the run, trying to integrate into the quiet life of the Earth Kingdom.
While there, Ahn and his friends discover a massive conspiracy within the Ba Sing Se government that is ignoring the war going on outside the city walls. They also learn some important information from the discovery of Wang Shi Tong’s desert library that could defeat the Fire Nation once and for all. The upcoming solar eclipse will thwart all firebending and weaken their fanatical enemies. During their escape from the library, Anne’s sky bison, Appa, is stolen and the group of friends is nearly torn apart.
Eventually, Aang’s crew retrieves Appa and locates the missing Earth King, who is unaware of the government’s cover-up of the war. However, Azula interrupts the group and forces Aang and Katara to duel with Zuko, who almost has a change of heart after opening up to Katara. In the climactic ending, Azula manipulates lightning and attacks Aang’s chest, incapacitating him in his Avatar state. Katara, Toph, and Sokka escape with Aang and the Earth King, and Katara is able to heal Aang’s near-fatal wound. They fly away from Ba Sing Se aboard Appa, as Aang faces a long road to recovery and still has to learn how to firebend.
In an interview with Variety, showrunner Christine Bolan and executive producer Jabbar Raisani talked about changes made from the Nickelodeon show, including cutting sandbending, adding Katara’s Painted Lady arc from Season 3, and cutting the action-packed Nickelodeon Season 2 episode “The Drill.”
Katie Yu/Netflix
I’d like to start with the season premiere. The season premiere picks up the “Serpent’s Pass” episode from the middle of the original series, kicking off this new season. Why did you decide to make that episode the first episode of season 2?
Christine Boylan: When we decided to write it, we got everyone in a room on the first day, and we knew we wanted to address the refugee story on some level. It’s a very big thematic part of the anime series. The entire writers’ room and staff are big fans. I wanted to remind everyone that we are doing an adaptation of myths and legends. That is, they are not exactly the same and will never be one-to-one. We started looking at scenes and stories that haven’t been done this deeply in animation. What you can achieve here is to be more emotional and participate in the action in a way that animators cannot. I also started thinking about what stories I don’t want to touch on because they would be perfect in animation, but would be better done in animation.
We started with real refugee stories, including people’s families and upbringings. I said to the writers, “If you’re willing, tell me about your parents, your grandparents, your ancestors, when they moved from place to place, why they moved, how they moved, who helped them, what was difficult and what made them happy about that situation.” We had a great family story and we watched all three seasons and started planning. We didn’t know if we would be able to film season two, but we definitely had season three in mind. 3 is still filming, but no matter what, character growth isn’t linear. How can we make these developmental processes as interesting and surprising as possible, especially for young people?
Jabbar Raisani: The story we wanted to tell was pretty clear from the script of the season, but at some point there’s also some push and pull in production. We wanted to physically build so many of these sets that we’re like, “Hey, we can only build X number of sets before we can’t build any more.” So some of it has to do with things like drill tanks.
Boylan: Rest in peace. they exist.
Raisani: I really wanted to do it. This plan is still being presented around the world, but it is one of those that ultimately came to the conclusion that it could not be incorporated. Plans were made until quite late in the process and had to be scrapped in the end.
Boylan: That’s a great creative exercise. We took a whole episode about drills and doing it a little differently and boiled it down to this pitch that Azula gives. I said to Elizabeth, “This is the whole episode. You’re proposing a real strategy. Azula never suggests anything that’s not absolutely viable.” We know that because we carried out the death penalty, and it was great for her. She took advantage of all of that.
Raisani: We try to do that whenever we lose something. We try to include as many nods to the anime series as possible, so the fans know we wanted to include that in the anime series as well. You don’t just say, “Oh, I don’t need this” and get rid of things. At a given point in time, there is only so much you can fit into.
“The Drill” episode was another arc that I noticed was missing from the original show. What was the episode like before you cut it?
Boylan: Want to know the secret to “killing your beloved”? It’s “cannibalizing your beloved.” If someone comes up with a cool part in an episode and we’re not going to do that episode anymore, we’ll take that cool part and bring it deep into Season 3. So we started the episode with Elizabeth’s speech, and then we included a lot of elements about Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee. That friendship is very important to all of us. Female friendships on screen, whether heroes or villains, are very important. We pulled a lot of the friendship elements from that episode and incorporated them into other episodes. That part may have been lost, but the increased episode length allowed us to cannibalize all the parts we love most. I think the only thing missing is the actual drill. Everything else is still there, whether it’s Season 2 or Season 3. We found our favorite parts, jokes and everything else and pulled out everything we could.
“The Painted Lady” was another arc that moved from the original show’s third season to this second season. Why did you give Katara that storyline now?
Boylan: One of the first things I pitched was, let’s get out into real locations, real sets, out into the world. I would love to do a Fire Nation inheritance story. And now that Katara is somewhat done teaching Aang, “Painted Lady” will make more sense in season two. So what is Katara doing? That was really important to me. One of her main driving forces is a desire for justice. That’s something I really relate to personally, and a lot of writers do as well. We thought, “Let’s do something like “Batman Returns,” a movie that we’ve never seen before.” There are people in this city who need her help. Since they don’t move as much as they can in the anime series, let me show you the difference between the lower, middle, and upper rings. She will notice who is not valued before others notice. She’s so used to doing things in public that she even tries to hide herself — I’m really interested in the story of the shadows.
The shadow is not necessarily a negative part of ourselves. Your shadow is just a part of yourself, and perhaps you’re not ready to show it to others yet. And let’s talk about shadow integration. Zuko talks to Blue Spirit about it. Aang has a story like that. He is Aang the Air Nomad and also the Avatar. He has to integrate all the parts of himself over three seasons, making each season a kind of mini-arc. Toph has to integrate being a North Peak with being this rough, tough, earthbending, blind thief. Everyone has a shadow side. However, Katara wears makeup and dresses up, so it’s a little more obvious. So let’s put it where she can do it best, and since she didn’t have a natural arc, we played that arc and weaved it in with everyone else’s arcs.
Raisani: If you have to do two seasons at the same time, one of the benefits is how you can fit into season two and have the space you need for season three. Season 2 had more space because we knew where season 3 was going to go.
Boylan: Katara will be a big part of Season 3.
There are no sand bends or stream bends this season. Have you ever thought about introducing these other forms of bending?
Raisani: We had to make certain choices, partly because of what we could fit into the season. When you look at something like sandbending, I think there are probably some possibilities that you could incorporate it into the story, but then you would have to research and develop and do a completely different kind of bending. Spending begins to spread along this path. If we’re trying to tell the most distilled version of a story that we can, and we want it to be really, really powerful, we need to focus on the story that’s central to the overall story that we’re going to tell.
Boylan: But that goes back to cannibalism. Because once we found out we couldn’t do that, we went back to the character of Ba Sing Se. How does this convey the character of the city? These are all Earthbenders. As more people join, they expand the walls of the city. The city and the ring need to get even bigger. They occupied the land around it. No one knows what happened before Ba Sing Se expanded. This show focuses a lot on history. I like to think of this as historical fantasy. So we looked at history and how cities expand and build walls. So not being able to sandbend meant we could tell more of Ba Sing Se’s story and get closer to the character.
What would they have put into the show if CGI and special effects hadn’t soared the budget?
Boylan: Part of creativity is writing with what you have, no matter what. And the game you play with yourself is how can you be as creative as possible within those boundaries.
Raisani: I said, “Can you please do one or two more episodes?” Yes, definitely, to tell a little more of the story. Let’s try some of the things that didn’t fit or were difficult to cut. We, like Bosco (King of the Earth’s bear), hated cutting things. There’s a picture of Bosco, and he kept telling jokes for a long time, but at the end of the day, he’s like, “I can’t even put a joke in there.” This picture is amazing. Because our fans know we’re fans. And we wanted to have that connection and cherish this painting forever. It’s a nice nod to people who are feeling passionate in the moment. It’s tough. It is strange to practice moderation unless you can do everything properly. He even said, “Is this a clownfish or is this a bear?” It would be such a waste not to have a real bear, so Bosco had to do it all.
Boylan: Bosco has been there for a long time. There’s a lot of life on the floor[in the cutting room]a lot of jokes, a lot of serious stuff. We strive to maintain the right balance.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
