Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender Star Teases More Azula and Ozai Focus

Avatar: The Last Airbender will be debuting a new live-action series adaptation on Netflix next month, and one of the stars behind the new series is teasing we’ll be seeing more of Azula and Fire Lord Ozai’s connection than seen in the original animated series. The new live-action adaptation is being crafted with the benefit of retrospect in seeing how Avatar: The Last Airbender’s original work played out over the course of its three seasons. Knowing the arcs that each of the characters will go on, and knowing how important they arc in various moments, the team behind the series can start planting those seeds earlier than expected. 

That seems to be the approach towards Azula and Ozai for Netflix’s new Avatar: The Last Airbender series. While they were big parts of the second and third seasons of the original animated work, they took a backseat in the first season to Zuko, who served as one of the main driving antagonistic forces against Aang and his gaang. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly ahead of Avatar: The Last Airbender‘s release, Elizabeth Yu (who stars as Azula in the Netflix series) teases that Azula and Ozai will get to have more of their own story outside of what impact they have on Zuko as seen in the original. 

Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender – Azula’s Origin Story Tease

“A lot of the O.G. series was through the eyes of Zuko,” Yu began. “I feel like our show lets [Azula and Ozai] have their own start to their story before all the stuff that we know them to do later on.…We get to see her origin story, which is really cool.” Speaking to that idea, Fire Lord Ozai star Daniel Dae Kim teased his impact on this first season despite not having a ton of screen time, “Ozai is always watching and always judging,” Kim stated. “So you get a sense of how stifling this family can be. He doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but you feel him whenever you see Zuko or Azula.”

So it seems like the team behind the new Avatar: The Last Airbender series will be fleshing out some of the moments only hinted at in the animated original for their new take on the story, but thankfully we’ll soon see how it all works out when Avatar: The Last Airbender premieres with Netflix on February 22nd.

What are you hoping to see from Azula and Ozai in Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animation and other cool stuff @Valdezology on X (formerly known as Twitter)!

HT – EW