Avatar: The Last Airbender will be showcasing a new live-action series take on the classic original animated series, and the showrunner and executive producer behind the Netflix series has explained why they’re going to be showing more Azula than in the original! One thing that fans of the original series had noticed about the promotional materials for Netflix’s adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender was that Azula was prominently featured despite the fact that she didn’t play a key role in the franchise until the second season of the original animated series. But thanks to the benefit of retrospect, she’s going to play a role sooner.
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Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender showrunner and executive producer Albert Kim previously revealed that this new take on the franchise would be showcasing more Azula scenes, and speaking with IGN, Kim explained that the addition of these new Azula scenes in this new series as part of the need to balance more of the Fire Nation’s ongoing story together with Aang’s journey. To help flesh out this side of the conflict, it’s necessary to showcase more of how characters like Azula and Fire Lord Ozai also factor into their own journeys as well as Zuko’s.
Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender – Why More Azula
“Azula is one who, in the animated series, you don’t really see until Season 2…But we made the conscious decision to bring some of those Fire Nation storylines more to the fore in the first season because I felt like we needed to balance out the storylines,” Kim explained to IGN when asked about incorporating more of Azula in the new season. “We needed to know more about the background for Zuko, and why he’s doing what he’s doing, and set that in the context of his family dynamic, and how he fits in with his father and sister.” Elaborating further, Kim explained how knowing what happens later in the animated series helped to balance Azula and Ozai’s additional scenes here.
“We knew where that was going, so we could pull some of those elements upfront into the first season and make the first season a little bit richer and a little bit deeper in terms of character storylines,” Kim continued. “So I think in the animated series, a lot of that was figured out as they went along. And then, they got to Season 2 and Season 3, and they were able to go more into the backstory and stuff. We wanted to make sure that Zuko felt like a much more dimensionalized character, and that meant bringing in more elements of his family storyline. So that naturally meant feeling like we should see a little more Azula and a little more Ozai. If anything, Azula’s story in the first season is a little bit of a prequel to her story in the second and third seasons, but that’s another element that we thought we should see rather than just talk about.”
So it seems adding more of Azula and Fire Lord Ozai early on will help with their plans for later, so now it’s just a matter of seeing how it works out when Avatar: The Last Airbender premieres on Netflix on February 22nd. What are you hoping to see from the new Azula scenes 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)!
