Avatar: The Last Airbender Streams Unaired Pilot Episode

Nickelodeon recently held a special stream for Avatar: The Last Airbender, and one of the huge surprises was the reveal of the series’ previously unaired pilot episode. As part of the celebration for the franchise’s revival with both Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel, The Legend of Korra, hitting Netflix, Nickelodeon hosted a special stream on their Twitch channel that gave fans a look behind the scenes at how the famous animated series was made. As a final special treat, we even got to see how the series first began with its official pilot.

Avatar: The Last Airbender‘s pilot episode (the one made to pitch it for a full series) never officially aired on Nickelodeon, and is not included in the current Netflix release of the series. Although it has been available for digital purchase (and on a few of the home video releases), Nickelodeon showcased in on the biggest platform yet through its official Twitch stream. If you wanted to check out the pilot for yourself, you can currently find it archived (as of the time of this writing anyway) at the following link here.

The pilot episode itself starts at around the 43 minute mark, and here you will see many of the quirks that did not make it into the final product such as heavier accents for some of the characters, the Fire Nation armor looking far pricklier, and even more smaller differences that were tweaked in between the production of the pilot and the first official episode of the animated series. Don’t stick around for just the pilot either as the hour long event showcased tons of behind the scenes looks for other major moments in the fan favorite series.

Unfortunately, even with these fun explorations into the animated series’ past there is still notably a black cloud hanging over the franchise as a whole. Following the public exit of original creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino from the upcoming Netflix live-action adaptation of the franchise, the future of the franchise as a whole is looking pretty uncertain. But at least the animated series will always be around to enjoy no matter what shape or form it takes on in the future.

What do you think of Avatar: The Last Airbender’s pilot episode? What changes did you notice to the series before it aired? Which differences do you wish were kept in the official series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or you can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!