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The Making of “The Blind Bandit”

In this oral history, the cast and crew look back at the episode that introduced fan-favorite Earthbender, Toph. Pg. 16

The Music and Sounds of ATLA

The aural team lays out the journey of how the sounds and music of ATLA took shape from the very beginning. Pg. 26

Fan-Favorite Side Characters

It doesn’t matter if they only appeared in a few episodes or even just one, these bit players get the celebration they deserve. Pg. 22

Everything

Changed: The

Beginnings of ATLA

Learn how the franchise began with creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and the people who took ATLA from idea to series. Pg. 6

Beloved Series Moments

The stories behind the scenes that helped make ATLA a classic. Pg. 30

Next for Avatar

Nickelodeon gives us an exclusive look at the movies, games, music, and more coming next from the Avatar universe. Pg. 33

20 YEARS, 4 ELEMENTS, 1 AVATAR

Flameo,

Way back in 2002, we were just two art school grads trying to figure out our place in the animation world. We had big dreams about creating a series that would push the boundaries of what TV animation could be— a show that would stand the test of time. So when the chance to pitch to Nickelodeon came up, we knew it was our shot, and we poured our hearts and souls into what became Avatar: The Last Airbender

Looking back now, it feels a bit surreal that we’re celebrating Avatar’s 20th anniversary with all of you. What started as a passion project between two friends became something so much bigger than we ever imagined.

Although we planted the seed of the initial idea, Avatar became what it is thanks to an incredible team of writers, artists, animators, voice actors, and so many other talented people who brought the show to life. We’ve been lucky to work with such amazing collaborators, many of whom became lifelong friends. You’ll get to hear from some of these folks in the pages ahead, and we’re excited for you to learn more about the people who helped build this world.

From the beginning, Avatar has been about balance, understanding, and the connections we make with others. That’s true for the characters in our stories, but it’s also been true for us as creators and for the amazing fans around the world. It’s thanks to all of you that Avatar has endured for all these years. You’ve created art, written stories, and formed friendships

and communities all out of love for the show. Your passion and dedication have kept this universe alive in ways we never expected. We’re grateful for every fan who’s taken this journey with us, whether you’ve been here since day one or recently discovered what all the fuss is over cactus juice.

But as we take a moment to look back at this beloved series, we are also busy building Avatar’s future. In 2021, we embarked on a new mission, establishing Avatar Studios as the creative hub for all things Avatar. We’re working with an awesome team on our first feature film, The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender, which is going to be something special. There’s also our new series, Seven Havens, plus all the other books, comics, and games that keep expanding the world between our animated projects.

It’s hard to believe 20 years have passed. Though compared to Aang’s hundred years in that iceberg, we suppose we’re still pretty young!

Thanks for being part of this adventure. Thanks for growing up with these characters and letting them grow with you. And thanks for proving that great stories really can bring people together. The journey has been incredible, and we can’t wait to share what comes next.

Yip Yip!

MICHAEL DIMARTINO AND BRYAN KONIETZKO CO-CREATORS, AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

Team Avatar flies into action, with Aang, Sokka, Katara, and lemur Momo riding the hero’s loyal sky bison, Appa.

EVERYTHING CHANGED WHEN...

Twenty years after its debut, the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender look back at the show’s creation.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the beloved Nickelodeon series

Avatar: The Last Airbender, Den of Geek sits down for an exclusive chat with creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, along with the team that made the show a reality—from execs to a certain director from a galaxy far, far away.

BY ROSIE KNIGHT

BRYAN KONIETZKO WAS doing yoga when he had a lightbulb moment. It was a cumulation of thoughts, sketches, and conversations with his creative collaborator, Michael Dante DiMartino. Suddenly, everything clicked, and the path to Avatar: The Last Airbender became clear. But he couldn’t get there alone.

“I drove over to [Michael’s] house at night; it was before we had cell phones, and I was all sweaty. We just started kicking around ideas, and very quickly, out of that, came the epic world of Avatar,” Konietzko says.

All of the conversations and brainstorming had set them up for success, and on that night, those moments came together. In the wee small hours of the morning, the pair began crafting the characters who would become Aang, Sokka, and Katara.

The epiphany might have seemed like a bolt of lightning, but the real story of the hit show had begun years earlier when Konietzko met DiMartino at Rhode Island School of Design, colloquially known as RISD. While Konietzko was finishing his degree, DiMartino had already graduated and was establishing himself in the animation industry in Los Angeles. Once the pair were reunited on the West Coast, DiMartino helped his collaborative partner get his foot in the door.

“We worked together on a couple shows, but we wanted to create our own show and decided to team up,” Konietzko says.

That team-up really began to bear fruit the night that the warring world of Waterbenders, Earthbenders, Airbenders, and Firebenders began to take shape.

“Sometimes it’s good to have deadlines,” DiMartino laughs. “There was just this rush of creativity. Bryan was doing sketches; I was writing stuff. We were talking about what the story could be and who the characters were.”

It paid off. The pair’s initial pitch to Eric Coleman, Nickelodeon’s then head of development, was expansive. It included a broad outline of three seasons, though without Prince Zuko, who would come to life later in the process. Bryan spread his sketches on the table in front of Coleman, and the pair began their pitch.

“[The show’s] core idea stayed the same through the years,” DiMartino explains. “Following Aang’s journey through these different nations as he learned the elements, and this peaceful, nomadic monk trying to find a way to end a violent war. That was always the core from the beginning and was still there when we were writing the finale.”

Konietzko had previously met Coleman during his time working on another fan-favorite Nickelodeon series, Invader Zim. Back then, the executive had instantly taken a shine to the up-and-comer. The pair quickly developed a great relationship, and Coleman embraced DiMartino as Konietzko’s creative partner for the pitch. Konietzko still greatly appreciates Coleman’s generosity.

“Eric puts people first, ideas second, and was gracious enough to let us know what they were looking for and what they weren’t looking for at that time,” Konietzko says. “He said he’d keep the door open and just wanted us to keep pitching until we got something.”

Coleman remembers being excited when he met Konietzko on Invader Zim. “It was clear to see how talented Bryan was,” he says. “I admired his talent. We built a relationship, and then I encouraged him to develop and pitch his own show.”

Heading into that meeting, Coleman knew what he was looking for. Nickelodeon wanted to take a

Right: Konietzko’s early sketches illustrated the relationship dynamics of the main characters.

big swing at something different, something more epic, more fantasybased. They could sense there was a huge audience for such a show, but it had to fit within the vibe and programming of the network. Says the executive: “I had thrown out this challenge to him that we were looking for something with adventure, with action, with a magical or fantastical element... Action, but without violence. That’s just important [for] a kids network.”

The two college friends came up with the perfect answer for that: bending. A core tenet of the world of Avatar is that within the four nations, certain people can manipulate one of the four elements: water, earth, fire, or air. Only one person possesses the ability to bend all four: the Avatar.

“I was just so struck by everything about the pitch, the clarity of their vision, the quality of the art they were presenting,” Coleman says. “It was both elaborate but really simple. It was fantastical yet felt really grounded, but most importantly, it was really emotional. You cared about the hero and all of the other characters. They all had their journey, and you cared about the villain as well.”

It would be around eight months of development as Coleman gave

Left: While the concept of bending “sounded really cool to everyone,” early drawings like this one served as illustrations of “what it would actually look like,” says Konietzko. Below: The use of martial arts moves to manipulate the elements allowed for energetic action scenes without an emphasis on violence.

Konietzko and DiMartino feedback and thoughts, one of which would lead to the creation of an iconic fictional villain.

“I loved the epic journey, but I threw out the notion of ‘what if the villain were a kid?’” Coleman recalls. “We had the uber-villain in Fire Lord Ozai, but I thought it might benefit the week-to-week episodes if we could pull the villain into the storytelling —a villain who ultimately could have more of a relationship with Aang.”

Below: As seen in this concept art, Bryan Konietzko initially designed Zuko with a samurai influenced, wick-like sprig of hair, but animation director Young Ki Yoon suggested a more flowing ponytail (left).

now known as the Lucasfilm superstar who is behind most of the current slate of Star Wars television, but back then, he was an animator who had yet to enter the world of Grogu. Still, he was selected to direct the first episodes of the show.

They came up with Zuko, one of the most richly imagined characters in American animation.

Word soon spread of the fantastic burgeoning project as Coleman, Konietzko, and DiMartino began to bring it to life. As the show moved from test pilot to production—and after a successful screening at San Diego Comic-Con—it picked up another fan who would go on to help shape the show. Dave Filoni is, of course,

“I remember seeing the [test pilot] Mike and Bryan created, and I thought immediately they had made something special,” Filoni recalls. “I was very excited to be offered the opportunity to direct the pilot episodes, so much so that I wanted to do both parts of the opener. It was rare back then to get to work on an anime-style show in the U.S. I had wanted to work on a series like this since seeing Macross [Robotech in the States] as a kid. I storyboarded the first two episodes on tiny Post-its, which took up all four walls of an entire office at Nickelodeon. It was a dream come true to work on such a show.”

Filoni came on board after the series had gotten a 13-episode order, which

Left, from top: Fire Nation prince Zuko started out as Avatar ’s antagonist before becoming an antihero; Zuko with Uncle Iroh.

suddenly made everything feel real for the two young creators who had seen many friends get pilots and shows picked up but were going through it for the first time themselves. Merging Nickelodeon’s mandate of wanting an epic fantasy-style show and an action series as described by Coleman, they began to get to work.

“We always thought of it as this big epic, like The Lord of the Rings in terms of scale, world, conflict, and story,” Konietzko says. “But how to slice that up into episodes, that was still in the air. We probably were more of the mindset of it being very plot-driven: this is their journey. We were thinking of it as very much a fantasy trilogy but also more like a novel.”

The quest to tell an epic ongoing story that could also be watched as

standalone episodes and be rerun on Nickelodeon was a task nearly as daunting as Aang, Katara, and Sokka’s trip across the four nations.

“I think that we went in somewhat naively because we had never written a full television series before,” DiMartino shares.

To help build out the room, the team turned to writers from traditional TV and sitcoms who taught them about breaking down episodes and resolving character arcs in a single episode. This allowed the show to explore its ongoing story while fitting into the Nickelodeon Animation model.

Right and below: Konietzko’s illustrations from the prologue to the pilot, which served as a rough version for the opening title sequence of the series.

episode, so I attempted to limit the number of shots in my episodes and reused certain angles in a scene to ensure the artists were drawing fewer backgrounds, which would translate into better backgrounds and animation.”

“I think that’s why it still holds up,” DiMartino says. “Because you can enjoy each episode on its own, but if you know the bigger story, you know how it fits in.”

It was a learning-on-the-job kind of project—not just for the new showrunners who were crafting an original series from scratch, but also for creative partners like Filoni.

“We considered the ‘lens’ we were drawing with a lot,” the director recalls. “The horizon line was considered in every shot so we could get a sense of depth and perspective to everything we were illustrating. This was different from a stylized cartoon. Directing the series gave me a better sense of how to cover a scene, similar to live action. We could only do so many drawings per

Filoni would direct only eight episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender before he took a giant leap into the galaxy far, far away—after a personal call from George Lucas. Even 20 years later, though, it’s clear how much of an impact his short time on the series had on him.

“I think the same things that make Star Wars resonate with people can be said about The Last Airbender,” he says. “We can feel like Sokka or Aang or Katara on any day. We hope to have friends and form bonds as strong as the ones depicted in the show. The themes are ones that resonate with our lives even though they are portrayed in a fantastic way in a different world. We all have moments like Zuko and strive to become a better person. Mike and Bryan created something very special,

which captured the imagination of many, many people.”

One of those enraptured fans is the current President of Nickelodeon Animation and Paramount Animation, Ramsey Naito, who has an unbridled passion for Avatar and its hero.

“I love Aang!” Naito enthuses. “What I have always loved about the Nickelodeon brand is that it always embraces real kids in extraordinary situations, and Aang embodies that perfectly. Even though the world of Avatar is fantasy, Aang’s journey and experiences, and his reactions to this moment in his life, feel so authentic. It’s what makes him so special to me even after all these years.”

Those iconic episodes and others charmed audiences, with the show becoming a firm favorite. It was clear from the consistent numbers and fan sites popping up that they were onto something special. And they were.

Avatar: The Last Airbender would run the full three seasons that Konietzko

Above: These shots from Avatar ’s pilot emphasize the use of different depths, layouts, and animation styles, say the show’s creators.

and DiMartino pitched and would inspire a sequel series in the stunning The Legend of Korra. The stories continued in books and comics, but it wasn’t until an unexpected event during the pandemic that Naito realized what a hold the show still had on fans.

“When Covid hit, it was a difficult time for everyone, but an interesting one for content distributors. What happened with Avatar on Netflix was a true phenomenon,” says Naito. “It was one of those ‘who knew?’ moments that reignited interest in this incredible property. It caught fire all over again, reintroducing fans to the show and allowing a whole new generation of kids, often children of those fans, to discover it for the first time.”

Even two decades in, the creators are clearly still getting used to the series’ enduring popularity, and they are having evermore interesting and heartwarming interactions with fans.

“It’s a surreal experience to create something that then becomes a part

Katara shows her waterbending prowess in a duel with Master Pakku.

Zuko and Aang face the Firebending Masters.

Sokka learns a new fighting style from Kyoshi warrior Suki.

Aang attempts to master cosmic energy.

IT’S BEEN INCREDIBLE TO WATCH AVATAR GROW FROM A CULT FAVORITE INTO A TRUE CULTURAL PHENOMENON.

Ramsey Naito

President of Nickelodeon Animation and Paramount Animation

of other people’s lives,” says Konietzko. “But that’s what art is kind of meant to do. It’s meant to go out there and live its own life.”

Avatar has undoubtedly done that, and Konietzko got a great example of how much it’s become part of the cultural lexicon when he saw a fan with a tattoo of Aang’s glider while walking in a Seattle park.

“I told him who I was, and he and his friends were freaking out. He told me he’s a middle school teacher, and his students love it.”

The explosion of popularity when the series was added to Netflix meant that as soon as Naito and Brian Robbins (co-CEO of Paramount and President and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon) returned to Nickelodeon eight years ago, they knew who to reach out to. Soon, they were meeting with DiMartino and Konietzko to work out just how they could capitalize on the massive fandom and passion. It was that conversation that led to the animated sequel film currently in production, The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender, as well as multiple series that will explore

other timelines and other Avatars, including sequel Avatar: Seven Havens “Aang was the first, and there are many more to come,” Naito teases.

It’s been a fascinating and fantastical journey of two friends embarking on a story they wanted to tell. Avatar: The Last Airbender is a love letter to friendship, animation, and creative collaboration. That was there from the very start and is still part of what makes the series sing for all of us, including Filoni, who wants Avatar fans to know just how much it means to him.

“Everyone learned a lot working on ATLA, and it was a privilege to be a part of the first season. Believe it or not, it was not an easy decision to leave the show, even for something like Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Every now and then at a Star Wars event, I’ll get a request to draw an Aang or an Appa, and I am always more than happy to oblige.”

Below: The quiet moment between Aang and Appa in this early sketch “captured the epic spirit of the series that we hoped to realize,” says Konietzko.

THE BLIND BANDIT

AN ORAL HISTORY

It’s been 20 years since Toph first stomped her way into Avatar: The Last Airbender. With the creative team and the cast, we look back on the Earthbender’s tremendous debut. BY SHAMUS KELLEY

kicked off, fans were excited to see the further adventures of Aang, Sokka, and Katara. The safe choice would have been to keep that core group the same throughout the run of the series, but Aang needed an earthbending teacher as part of his journey to master all four elements and save the world. He’d find one in the most unlikely of places.

Season two, episode six, “The Blind Bandit,” introduced the brash, sarcastic, and soon-to-be earthbending teacher, Toph: a young character who shrugged off her noble upbringing and ran away from her family to embrace the little “chaos gremlin” she really was.

Produced near the halfway point of ATLA’s run, “The Blind Bandit” offers valuable insight into the production process of a show that was at the top of its creative output yet still subject to the intense challenges that come with producing animation. Introducing a new lead character, a task that needed special attention, had to be undertaken in addition to the demanding work that went into every other episode of The Last Airbender. How did the team accomplish it? What challenges did they face along the way?

With insights and recollections from the cast and crew, Den of Geek looks back on the production of the episode that introduced the young fighter who quickly cemented herself as an irreplaceable and beloved core member of Team Avatar.

PART 1: PLANNING THE EPISODE

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO (CREATOR, WRITER): Very early on, we knew Aang was going to need an earthbending teacher, and there would be a new character joining the group.

BRYAN KONIETZKO (CREATOR): We knew it was going to be a blind Earthbender, and we had the name.

DIMARTINO: We had a little writing retreat for Book Two, and I remember talking about Toph.

KONIETZKO: I might have brought some scribbles of Toph back from that. I remember being inspired by Range Murata and starting Toph’s design quite early on. We had gone through the debate on whether or not to keep her a boy or make her a girl; writer Aaron Ehasz made really good arguments about how there were already two boys in the group, and if we added a third, it really put Katara in a different position.

DIMARTINO: Having a cute girl saying these tough-guy lines made it funnier.

KONIETZKO: But then we had some resistance from the network.

DIMARTINO: There is always a little bit of the toy side of things pushing back on stuff.

ETHAN SPAULDING (DIRECTOR): Bryan wanted to show the powers-that-be that it doesn’t always have to be a guy. In relation to the toys, they’d say, “No one’s gonna buy a Katara figure.” I know this not to be true because of Star Wars. You want Princess Leia; you want all the characters because of the storytelling.

DIMARTINO: Sometimes, we’d say we could change that; it’s not a big deal. Other times, in a case like this, we had all debated it, we all decided this is the best path forward. We decided that we weren’t going to go back. Usually, if we were like, “This is really important to us and the choice we’re making,” somebody somewhere would back down, and then we’d just continue on our way.

ANGELA SONG MUELLER (CHARACTER DESIGNER): We’d all known about Toph for a while. By the end of season one, we knew she was coming. It was just a matter of when. We all knew this big personality was going to be part of Team Avatar soon. As a crew, we were really looking forward to being able to include a lot of that stuff with her.

The initial character designs for Toph were inspired by artist Range Murata.

Earthbender Toph, Aang’s teacher in the element, shows off her skills.

PART 2: WRITING THE EPISODE

DIMARTINO: I staked my claim on writing that episode early on. “I want to do the Toph one!”

ZACH TYLER EISEN (AANG): Toph gets such a great character introduction. She takes on this ring full of professional wrestlers—excuse me, professional benders. She’s the most powerful Earthbender in the world.

DIMARTINO: My love affair with wrestling goes back to my childhood with the Hulk Hogan days. In college, I didn’t watch it at all, but I got back into it in my twenties. It was The Rock era.

KONIETZKO: The Attitude era. I came over to Mike’s, and we had this novel fascination with it. The ridiculous melodramatic theater of it all.

DIMARTINO: You meet Toph in the ring, and you think she’s one way, and they show up to find her at the mansion, and she’s in this dress and acting all properly. In the same way that wrestlers put on personas, she was putting on this persona for her parents, but that wasn’t really her.

JOHN O’BRYAN (STAFF WRITER): I wrote the Fire Nation Man anthem. His accent was a thing they’d do in professional wrestling: “I’m going to rile these people up by bringing out this guy from a country no one likes.”

MICHAELA JILL MURPHY (TOPH): I was absolutely not aware of the wrestling references. I did not have cable. I didn’t have a lot of pop-culture references available to me. I watched a lot of G-rated Winnie the Pooh-esque things. I liked Cats, the musical. I was lying in the sunshine, which was very Toph of me.

Earthbending wrestler The Boulder, Toph’s final opponent in the Earth Rumble VI tournament in season two’s “The Blind Bandit”.

PART 3: VOICE ACTING

DIMARTINO: We tried to get The Rock to play The Boulder, but he was already too famous at that point.

KONIETZKO: The response we got was, “The Rock does not do TV.”

DIMARTINO: Actually, I think it was, “He does not do animation.” Obviously, he went on to do a lot of animation. It’s alright, Mick Foley’s awesome.

KONIETZKO: It all worked out. No hard feelings.

JACK DE SENA (SOKKA): Sokka’s love of wrestling comes from a very real place. I was a huge wrestling fan growing up, so it was very easy for me to channel that unbridled raw emotion. Had I known that Mick Foley was playing the role, I would have lost my mind even more. I would have somehow insisted upon arranging schedules so I could be there.

MURPHY: I got the audition for Toph while I was visiting my grandparents in Indiana. I was 11-ish. We had an old Snowball USB mic, but we did not have a great audio setup. Thank goodness my mom realized it was an important audition, so we ended up going to a music shop with a studio in the back. It was that first scene in “The Blind Bandit” where Toph says, “Sounds to me like you’re scared, Boulder!” My grandma came with us and said, “Who reads the other lines?” And I go, “No one, you’re just supposed to read your character’s lines,” and she said, “Well, that’s silly. Why don’t I read The Boulder?” So she came into the studio with me. She was pretty great—and I booked the job!

EISEN: I was concerned that my voice and Michaela’s voice were very similar. We both had this high-pitched quality to it. But they play into that in the episode. She says, “Do people really wanna see two little girls fighting out here?”

MURPHY: It was all very relatable. I moved around a lot as a kid. There are lots of different schools, lots of new friend groups. As an actor kid, your schedules are weird, so you have to miss birthday parties or the school dance. I was used to not fitting in. So, I was a little late to the Avatar party. They already had this group, and I’m like, “I’m here now. Let me in! I’m going to help you save the world!”

SENA: Michaela was such a joy to work with. She was quite young. Very precocious; there were some real Toph similarities. I loved that they were building another comedic voice into the group; that was really fun to play off of.

ANDREA ROMANO (VOICE DIRECTOR): Because she was such a terrific actress and such a together person, she was embraced by the cast right on because she was just so darn good as this character. She had that sarcastic Toph tomboy edge that was required. What happened in the storyline, that they wanted Toph to be a part of the group, is exactly what happened with the cast.

JENNIE KWAN (SUKI): Michaela basically came up to my waist, and she was a little chatterbox. At the time, she went by Jessie Flower, and she really did wear jeans that had flowers. She would carry a little bouquet. It was quite cute. She was like a little caricature of herself.

Storyboards for the episode show an excitable Sokka’s range of emotions during the Earth Rumble VI wrestling tournament.

MURPHY: I had lots of different fun moods. Sometimes, outfits or accessories would change accordingly. I’ve had lots of eras of Michaela fashion and vibes. I don’t particularly remember that moment, but it absolutely checks out.

ROMANO: I was always a big proponent of ensemble records. I always wanted all the actors to be in the room at the same time, if at all possible, because half of acting is reacting.

DEE BRADLEY BAKER (APPA, MOMO):

I did the voices of the badgermoles clearing the arena. I am not a sound effects guy. That you get from a library. Those are generic, and you might be able to craft them into the performance that you want, but it’s going to take a lot of time. There’s the efficiency of hiring an actor to just bring it to you right now, and that’s what I do. With the badgermoles, you could see the effort, so I, as the actor, layer in the intent. Even with Appa, he may just make a grunt, but there’s generally an opinion behind that grunt, so I try to layer that in there. It’s part

PART 4: STORYBOARDING AND DESIGN

SPAULDING: We got a CD audio track; they’d call it a radio play. It’s everything cut together, all the takes they liked, so we had that to listen to. That’s always been a guide. You can just focus on telling the story in pictures. You just listen to the track and get ideas from the voice performance. I knew this episode was going to be fun. Mike’s scripts were always the best because he comes from an animation background, so he wrote visually. When you read it, you could see it in your head. You would cast the artists on your team like you would a live-action. Some are better at action, some are better at comedy, some can do both. Each artist would basically get an act. I did the opening scene where Sokka’s trying to get a “man bag.” I had never heard that term before.

DIMARTINO: The stuff Bryan boarded in act one was my favorite because it introduced Toph’s “seeing” ability. We’d written in the script [that] she can see with her feet, but Bryan really had the idea of how to visualize that.

MUELLER: Little things would come up about Toph’s outfit. Bryan would remind us she’d be walking around barefoot all the time. We’d have to make sure that we were designing her around her abilities. What makes her stand out is, for a female character, she has that wide, confident stance. She’s firmly planted. She’s a very grounded character. Even the silhouette of her costuming that Bryan had designed for her is very boxy; it’s very squared out. It alludes to her kung-fu style. On top of that, you can’t not say her little hair tassel puffs do a lot for the shape of her hair.

of why people are still so fond of these characters. They have a humanity to them.

MURPHY: So many people love that scene between Toph and The Boulder. At conventions, I get lots of wrestling fans, wrestlers, martial artists, and also lots of frat bros who love doing The Boulder lines with me.

Above: Storyboards detail Toph’s powerful finishing move in her bout with The Boulder, forcing him into a split.

SPAULDING: We did too many shots in that episode because of the action and the fights. Usually, you want to get around 300 shots per episode. We had 600. In hindsight? That’s irresponsible. We killed the animation studio. They did basically two episodes worth of work for one.

KONIETZKO: Sometimes, the higher shot count is more efficient if you’re cutting around action. There’s a lot of limited anime where they cut around a lot, but there’s not a lot of motion. It depends on what action you’re covering and how much movement you have.

SPAULDING: Mike and Bryan would put revision post-its over drawings. You’d look around the room, and it’s almost all yellow Post-its. They redid the whole show, but then you have a great guidepost [for the rest of production.] Some of it was so good I was like, “I’m just going to use these and not clean them up. The animators will understand these drawings.” I got in trouble with Bryan because when it was time for animatic or shipping, he said, “These are too rough, man.”

KONIETZKO: On the first pass of the act three fight, I remember Mike and I were like, “It’s not quite there yet.” You don’t make any friends on those days when you have to give those big notes.

SPAULDING: So Bryan, Justin Ridge—a board artist—and I came in on a Saturday, and we went through all the shots.

KONIETZKO: They did a great job, and it all came together really well.

MUELLER: By the time I came on (the episode), I’m there to be like, “What can I do for you?” Bryan already had a solid pre-design set for most of those wrestlers, and he says, “I have these sketches. Can you take them to final? Can you go ahead and clean them up?” I’d be helping him clean up what he’s got down already. Then there’s going to be a lot of ancillary characters and incidentals. I’d just get lost in the rabbit holes of online reference. I was one of the lucky few to have a computer actually at my desk. It was hard to find some of that research sometimes. You would tap into something, and it would just take you down a whole rabbit hole of gorgeous historical outfits and designs. I’m just like, “How far can I go with this, and is Bryan gonna get mad if I put too many flowers in Toph’s mom’s hair?” I’d happily tack on more, but gotta think about our poor animators and save them from dying.

PART 5: LEGACY

SPAULDING: We got the VHS with the raw animation back, and it came out looking stellar. Everyone had fun working on this because of the subject matter. The writers had fun; the board team had fun; and then the animators, you could tell they had fun with all these characters.

KONIETZKO: This was a really special episode. Mike and I both had the opportunity to personally put even more care into this one than we had with other episodes. I’m usually the one that picks on our old work the hardest, but this one? It came out pretty good.

DIMARTINO: The character animation in this one is definitely one of the best. Among the top episodes for character animation.

MURPHY: A lot of people, myself included, were so grateful to have a character like Toph. They were used to seeing a more feminine display of strength or communication, being collected and cordial. Toph was not any of that. She got to be a little gremlin. Sometimes, you just want to wake up and make hairy pits jokes. So many people, especially girls growing up, would say, “I was the tomboy. I was always making fart jokes. I always loved being more messy and dirty and wrestling with neighbors and brothers. I never felt like I saw a female character who was as grounded and tough as I was.” Toph was so fiercely against all the control. Any time she gets to wake up and just be who she is and not have to worry about judgment from anyone else? There’s no better feeling than that: just being 100 percent authentically you without having to adhere to any weird standards.

Toph proves her prowess as the winner of Earth Rumble VI.

The stories behind the most loved side characters in Avatar: The Last Airbender history.

You don’t have to be a main member of Team Avatar to be loved by fans! We turn a spotlight on the smaller players in the Avatar world with insights from those who brought them to life.

BY SHAMUS KELLEY

AANG. KATARA. SOKKA.

Toph. Zuko. Iroh. Characters that fans across the world can’t get enough of. For most shows, the core cast are the only ones who get any love—but Avatar: The Last Airbender is not most shows. While the main players are beloved, even the most minor of minor side characters have been embraced with passionate zeal. We burrowed deep into the history of the show to

CABBAGE MERCHANT

uncover the origins of these adored side characters. How did some step into the spotlight with so little screen time? What made them just as beloved as characters who showed up every episode? Which ones can trace their DNA to members of the ATLA crew? And most importantly, whose cabbages are they?

CHONG (SECRET TUNNEL GUY)

DEE BRADLEY BAKER

(CHONG): They just threw that character to me. I’ve got a pretty good range, so they’ll just throw incidental characters to take a swing at. They said, “Well, this one’s got a little song.” I can sing, great! They sent me the demo of the song. I listened through it, and I thought, “Oh, this is awful. This song sounds terrible!” It didn’t sound right to me. I came into this thinking, “Ah geez, this is not gonna work. I don’t know how to make this work!”

You take your best swing, and you don’t go negative on it, but I really didn’t have any confidence in my ability to make anything from it. We recorded this kind of loopy, kind of halfway out of it, really sweet,

spiritual, creative, nonpragmatic fellow. It’s one of my favorite things that I did in that whole show. Recently, they were traveling around doing the ATLA [soundtrack] in concert. They finished the show with the “Secret Tunnel” song as the

encore! I got to perform it a few times on stage, and people just all sang along with it. They all know that song, which is a wonderful thing. It’s fun to occasionally just take a little casual swing and doggone it, you knock it out of the park.

JOHN O’BRYAN (STAFF WRITER): He was incidental in the script [for first season episode “The King of Omashu”]. I just needed something in the environment that [Aang, Sokka, and Katara] were affecting as they ran by, and that’s where that guy came from. Honestly, I have no idea why [I chose] cabbages. It seemed like a plausible thing someone would be selling. It was just a throwaway, and then it became something endearing. Everybody has bad days where nothing seems to be going your way, and the universe is aligned against you.

AARON ALEXOVICH (CHARACTER DESIGNER): That’s life, isn’t it? There is a lot of suffering, and you have to laugh through it. You have to find the humor in all this weird ugliness.

JOHN O’BRYAN: I can’t imagine selling cabbages out of a cart is super lucrative. I’m sure if we’d gone on for a couple more seasons, he would have had his own episode.

AARON ALEXOVICH: I didn’t know he was going to be such a big deal. There were a million people like [Cabbage Merchant] that I drew for the show. So many merchants on that show. If I had known that guy was going to be so huge, I probably would have overthought it. I would have made him some wild-looking, zany character instead of the basic-looking guy that he is.

JET

KI HYUN RYU (CHARACTER DESIGNER/ANIMATOR): Bryan [Konietzko] asked me to design a group of rough-and-tumble street kids. My initial color sketches were more about exploring moods rather than finalized designs. [In early sketches, Jet has red hair.] The final character color choices were determined by the directors and art directors after deeper story considerations. Growing up in Asia, I wasn’t particularly sensitive about hair and skin colors in animation…not in the way that American audiences

are. Later, while working in the U.S., I realized that fans are very passionate about those details! As for Jet, I imagine Bryan wanted him to look more distinctly Asian, which led to the change from pale skin and red hair to darker features.

When designing Jet’s gang, I tried to make sure every member had distinctive features so they would all stand out individually. I often collect references of ordinary people and caricature them. For each character, I wanted a truly unique face. I would go through my sketches and pick one that matched the character’s spirit, then refine it to fit the show’s style.

JOO DEE

ANGELA SONG MUELLER (CHARACTER DESIGNER): [Line producer] Miken Wong was known for having these incredibly long paper schedules tacked to her wall. Her job was to keep our production on track; she was our person of authority on the show. [Basing Joo Dee’s likeness on Miken] was a playful little nudge at her.

BRYAN KONIETZKO (CO-CREATOR): I still, to this day, don’t know if she was happy about that. It does really look like her, though, in the animation.

ANGELA SONG MUELLER: It wasn’t too mean; I think it was pretty tame. It was all in good fun. That unnerving (part of the character) was played up for the show. Miken was not unnerving. She was very sweet! We were always sneaking people in as a little inside joke.

Right: Character concept art shows Jet with red hair, standing beside his distinctive-looking street crew.

FOAMING MOUTH GUY

KI HYUN RYU: At the time, the animation director was a close friend of mine. I was busy with other work, but he asked me to help animate a few

scenes. One was a young man foaming at the mouth. Bryan [Konietzko] had sent me an acting reference video — it was fun, but I wanted to push it even

JUNE

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Lisa Yang [post-production supervisor on Avatar: The Last Airbender and the basis of June’s design] is one of my best friends

Bounty hunter June with her shirshu companion, Nyla.

further to make it truly hilarious and unforgettable. Nickelodeon’s team loved the result.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: The animation came back, and we were dying laughing. I did the ADR for that character, and I somehow summoned that voice.

KI HYUN RYU: Later, when the same character reappeared in a new season, Bryan personally called me to animate him again. I jokingly told him that I would do it if he bought me a Fender Telecaster guitar—since American guitars were expensive in Korea! [Fun fact: Bryan is a professional-level guitarist.] It helped my career a lot. When I moved to the U.S. and started working in the industry, just mentioning that I animated Foaming Mouth Guy instantly made people smile and want to work with me.

still. She’s a very striking person. She’s tall but then would wear these big goth boots, so she was even taller. She had really cool hair and tattoos. She’s a total sweetheart but also a badass. Nerdy guys like myself at Nickelodeon were probably pretty scared of her.

We needed a cool character, so I looked at a reference of a real person, a close friend, who’s actually tough and cool. We ended up basing Mai more on Lisa’s personality, but June has more of a physical resemblance of her.

FRIENDSHIP AND COLLABORATION:

FORGING THE SOUND OF AVATAR

United by a passion for experimental digital techniques, three friends laid the sonic foundation for a legendary TV soundtrack. BY

NICK MARINO

Uncle Iroh’s tsungi horn forms a key part of Avatar: The Last Airbender ’s soundtrack.

FOR TWO DECADES, THE lush score and sounds of Avatar: The Last Airbender have immersed viewers in the fantasy world of the groundbreaking animated series. However, you might be surprised to learn that the captivating compositions weren’t originally devised in a lavish rehearsal space or a plush corporate recording studio.

As series co-creator Bryan Konietzko explains, the Track Team —featuring composer Jeremy Zuckerman and sound designer Benjamin Wynn—developed Avatar’s sonic landscape in a small front room of the humble Burbank house where Konietzko and Wynn roomed together in the early 2000s.

“We didn’t even have any doors, and I was in the living room watching television, eating peanut butter and jelly, and I heard ‘DUNN DUN DUN DUNN’ [Konietzko hums Aang’s theme]. And I just went, ‘That one! That’s it! I heard it and I just knew right away that’s a melody like a Star Wars theme, something you can just hum.”

Mirroring the powerful bond between the heroic characters of Team Avatar, friendship is the true source of strength behind the majestic sound of ATLA. Konietzko first visited the Wynn family home during his years as a student enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design. There, he was introduced to a young Ben, the brother of Konietzko’s college friend.

“One spring break they came home, and Bryan met me as a little punk,” recounts Wynn. “Fast forward a number of years, I end up going to California Institute of the Arts and don’t know anybody there. My brother’s like, ‘Oh, you should reach out to Bryan.’ Fast forward a bit more, we end up being roommates while I’m at CalArts and he’s working at Nickelodeon.”

Also in attendance at CalArts was Zuckerman, pursuing a master’s in Composition/New Media. The two CalArts students shared an interest in pushing the sonic envelope, often finding themselves attending or

performing at the university’s avant-garde performances alongside Konietzko.

“My focus was computer music and the processing of sound,” explains

“I JUST LIKE TO LOOK AT MY FRIENDS AND SEE THEIR POTENTIAL AND BE LIKE, ‘I THINK YOU CAN DO THIS. GIVE ME YOUR BEST’”

BRYAN KONIETZKO CO-CREATOR

Zuckerman. “I met Bryan through Ben because Bryan would come to these performances. In some crazy way, he saw that it would work for Avatar I have no idea how I made that leap in his mind. But he said, ‘I like the way you think about sound and music. I don’t want a seasoned media composer. I want someone who’s gonna think of it differently.’”

Zuckerman had a true partner in crime in Wynn, and the experimental artists had recently formed their own ambitious soundtrack and sound design production service, calling themselves the Track Team.

“One day, Bryan comes home and says that Nickelodeon wants him and Mike [Dante DiMartino] to pitch a show. And so they start thinking of the concept and drawing characters on our kitchen table,” remembers Wynn. “And then another day he comes home and says, ‘They want to make it. Do you and Jeremy want to do the music and sound?’ I remember just being like, ‘Sure.’ He was like, ‘No, seriously, it’s

Ancient civilization the Sun Warriors play their ceremonial drums in season three episode “The Firebending Masters.”

going to be a lot of work. Are you sure you want to do this?’ And I was like, ‘Sure.’ He knew what Jeremy and I were capable of, more so than maybe we did. I was 24 and I was a bit overconfident, at least outwardly. But when we started working on the show, we had never done anything like it. It became a process of invention by necessity in terms of the tools and the techniques. Looking back, the show has a lot of heart in that way.”

The partners originally intended to split composition and sound design responsibilities equally. However, the show’s grueling production schedule halted that plan shortly after it was hatched, with Wynn opting to take on worldbuilding by designing the soundscape of the four nations while Zuckerman handled the music.

“I was so green,” Zuckerman admits. “I hadn’t done a show. I’d done a lot of commercials but I hadn’t done anything longform with recurring and developing themes. It was seven days a week, 14 hours a day for pretty much the whole time until we had a break. I didn’t know if I could pull it off because it was just

“I KNOW PEOPLE LOVE THE MUSIC, AND THE MUSIC IS GOOD, BUT I THINK IF THE STORY WASN’T AMAZING PEOPLE WOULDN’T CARE.”

JEREMY ZUCKERMAN COMPOSER

such a new world to me. That’s not what I planned to do—I expected to make strange, esoteric compositions and have no money.”

The Track Team shared studio space for the entirety of the first season, working inside an in-law unit behind Zuckerman’s rental. Breaks from work consisted of playing H-O-R-S-E at the basketball hoop or seeing how many consecutive frisbee catches they could secure, invariably hitting their neighbors’ cars in the process. Then it was back to the studio, where Zuckerman would channel influences like Tōru Takemitsu and Krzysztof Penderecki into the music while Wynn experimented with digitally manipulating his voice, random noise makers, slide whistles, and anything else he could record to create the aural landscape of the animated series.

“I just like to look at my friends and see their potential and be like, ‘I think you can do this. Give me your best,’” says Konietzko.

Zuckerman and Wynn’s potential was fostered with great care, blossoming within the production framework created by DiMartino and Konietzko. Although the Track Team’s responsibilities separated within the first season, and their working spaces separated by the second, their simpatico sensibilities

Below: Aang joins in with a Fire Nation music class, but his creative expression doesn’t impress the strict music teacher.

continued to thrive under the freedom afforded them.

The fandom responded in kind, growing ever larger over the ensuing decades. Now, Zuckerman’s music for the show is performed by a symphony to adoring audiences at Avatar: The Last Airbender in Concert, an immersive experience that began drawing passionate crowds in Fall 2024. The orchestral events have proven to be profoundly moving for the storytellers and musicians behind ATLA, who have attended many of the performances. A plethora of future tour dates await attendees across North America and Europe from Fall 2025 to Fall 2026, with tickets available at avatarinconcert.com.

“I really credit the fanbase for making this happen,” says Zuckerman. “That’s why these concerts exist, you know? I just feel really grateful and amazed that all these years later people still want to hear it. But it’s a beautiful story. I know people love the music, and the music is good, but I think if the story weren’t amazing people wouldn’t care. So I think a huge part of why people love the music is because the story’s just so good.”

“I went to the one in San Francisco and the one in LA, and I’m finding myself incredibly emotional,” Wynn shares. “It’s a whole spectrum of me remembering the individual decisions that I made in that scene for that one sound or for that one thing. Remembering us in the room doing it together and the thoughts that were going through my head when we did it. That’s crazy to me. I mean, this is almost half of my life ago at this point. But more so than that, just the fact that it seems more popular than ever really blows me away. And being in a big room full of people who are incredibly invested in the show, it’s really emotional.”

For all that they’ve been through together, the three remain great friends. At the time of our interview, Konietzko marveled about the notifications stacking up in his text thread with Zuckerman and Wynn, 70+ messages deep as they opined about a new guitar pedal. It’s this kind of innocent camaraderie and endless curiosity that fueled their original collaboration and holds great promise for the future of Avatar as it moves into its thrilling third decade.

The tour Avatar: The Last Airbender in Concert brings the epic soundtrack to life.

AGNI KAI

The epic moments and fan-favorite scenes of Avatar: The Last Airbender

THERE’S ANY NUMBER OF WAYS IN WHICH MOMENTS IN long-running TV shows get elevated to “epic” status. Years of carefully laid story lines, perfect direction, inspired acting, or something intangible that still makes you jump out of your seat to scream with uninhibited hype. Avatar: The Last Airbender has no shortage of these moments, and we spoke with the people behind them to discover what they brought to the table and how they feel about them 20 years later.

ZUKO AND AZULA DUEL

Trauma is one of the worst things in life to try to work through. It can be isolating and even knowing where to begin is a struggle. That’s where stories can come in. A story in your favorite movie, TV show, book, or whatever else can function as a kind of mirror

for your trauma. It’s a safe mirror, where the reflection helps you begin to understand what you went through because your favorite characters are struggling with similar battles. Relating to them helps you understand yourself. Dante Basco felt just that while playing Zuko. “A lot of the trauma I was going through in my life made its way into the DNA of what Zuko became. It’s

The stories behind cathartic sibling battles, disrespectful beard pulling, earned cockiness, and more of the best moments in Avatar: The Last Airbender.

BY SHAMUS KELLEY

all intertwined in who I was talking to in my mind and my soul at the moment.” Fans have shared with Basco that watching Zuko’s fight with his abusive sister, Azula, was cathartic to them.

“In life, we don’t all get to confront our abusers and battle out with the people who have hurt us the most,” says Basco. “It meant a lot to a lot of people to see themselves in Zuko— someone who’s gone through trauma and abuse and been able to overcome it and really confront the ones who are abusing him.”

That’s the power of the mirror of media. Zuko confronting his sister in an epic duel of fire and lightning may help you feel seen and validated in your own real-world struggles.

AANG VS. OZAI

Ozai, the Fire Lord, thinks he’s got Aang finished. The young Avatar, buried under a pile of rocks, is no threat to this titanic force—right?

BAM! Aang, body glowing from entering the Avatar state, grabs Ozai by the beard. It’s a massive power move, one that speaks to how Zach Tyler Eisen views the climactic fight all these years later.

“The pulling of the beard was a way for Aang to assert dominance and say, ‘Listen, guy, I may be a 12-year-old kid. I’m not going to kill you, I’m going to take your bending anyway. I’m the boss.’”

And he is. Aang, staying true to his ways and not killing Ozai, still manages to defeat him. What’s more brutal than a kid grabbing your beard? “It’s disrespectful,” Eisen laughs. “If someone did that in hockey? It would be a headline. You’d never see the end of that clip on the internet, on television. It would be an infamous moment.”

TOPH DISCOVERS METALBENDING

When Toph invents metalbending, a new sub-style of bending, to escape a metal prison, she doesn’t hesitate to celebrate her accomplishment. Putting her own captors in that very same prison, she declares: “I am the greatest Earthbender in the world!”

Some might disparagingly call Toph cocky or egotistical for that statement. Michaela Jill Murphy believes that Toph deserves that cockiness, but also that it’s more complicated. She compares Toph to being a professional in her field, “like

My

a businessman.” If the character had a huge ego but couldn’t live up to her own hype, that’d be pompous. “When can you stand on business and actually follow through with being legit? How much of that is ‘ego’ versus being proud of yourself for getting yourself out of peril and inventing an entire new sub-bending style?” asks Murphy.

Toph’s attitude, according to Murphy, simply comes from knowing how good

she is. She knows she can help people and knows what she’s talking about. Yet when women know their abilities and speak them out loud they can get disparaging labels, seen as too cocky or sure of themselves. It happens, “every day, all the time,” Murphy knowingly says. However, “Toph is more than just cocky. She’s a problem solver and wants to be really great at what she does.”

Favorite Moment:

The cast and crew share their most-loved memories

JACK DE SENA (SOKKA):

Episode three [“The Southern Air Temple”] where we get the Monk Gyatso context [about what happened while Aang was in the iceberg.] If it wasn’t clear in the pilot, this is about genocide. If you didn’t know, that’s absolutely what we’re talking about here. That was an early moment for me where I was like, “This show is not shying away from incredibly difficult subjects and it’s going to tackle them with grace and complexity.”

JENNIE KWAN (SUKI): [At the end of the series] I’m looking around the room and I keep hearing this voice and I’m like, “Where is that voice coming from? I don’t see him in the

room. He’s really good! I don’t know who it is.” Then we’re in the courtyard at Nickelodeon, I’m chit-chatting with Dante [Basco] and this man. He walks away and Dante says, “Jennie, do you know who that was?” I’m like, “No.”

He says, “That’s Mark Hamill.” I was like, “Ohhhhhh, okay! There ya go! That’s who the Fire Lord was!” That was just the biggest ditsy moment ever. [Hamill’s] a very sweet guy.

ANDREA ROMANO (VOICE DIRECTOR): The initial kid who was cast to play Aang was such a good young actor, absolutely delightful, but he sounded like a baby. They had to recast and they found a kid out of New York. We did many episodes with him but

he wasn’t really an actor yet. He was working on becoming an actor. It just didn’t work out; he wasn’t strong enough. He is the title character. He is the Avatar. It’s got to be the strongest actor in the whole series.

Then they found Zach Tyler Eisen, who was such a remarkable child. Aside from being an instinctually good actor, he was taking violin lessons, archery lessons, regular school, and a ton of other classes. What he had to do was not just come up with the voice for Aang and act it but for the first several episodes, which were already animated, he had to ADR re-record all the dialogue and replace the kid before him. He had to make it his own with somebody else’s timing and mouth flaps. It really speaks to just how talented this young man was. An absolute pleasure to work with. An absolute joy to direct.

COM ING ATTR ACTIONS

After 20 years, the Avatar franchise continues to evolve with exciting new projects. Here’s what fans can expect next.

Twenty years after its debut, Avatar: The Last Airbender remains as viable and vibrant as ever. And, like the Avatar cycle itself, this story never truly ends. There is still plenty to come in the world of elemental benders, nations struggling for balance, and flying bison. From podcasts to books to concerts to the next step in the legends of Aang and Korra, here are the upcoming Avatar projects to look forward to.

 CONCERT TOUR

Avatar: The Last Airbender in Concert – The 20th Anniversary Tour will kick off on Sunday, Sept. 14, in Iowa City and tour more than 80 cities worldwide beginning this fall. Audiences will be immersed in a two-hour performance with a live orchestra that brings the show’s iconic musical score to life in perfect harmony, paired with visual highlights and favorite moments from all three seasons of the series. Preserving the original dialogue and sound effects, the concert replaces the recorded

score with a powerful live orchestra, performing the legendary music of Emmy Award-winning composer Jeremy Zuckerman, the creative mastermind behind the show’s original music, in perfect sync with the action on screen. Tickets are on sale now.

ALBUM

Republic Records: Kids & Family and Nickelodeon are bringing fans Avatar: The Last Airbender – Book 2 Earth (Music From the Animated Series), a new digital and vinyl album featuring the

score from season two of the Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series. Available July 25, the album features an updated and re-recorded score from the second season of the iconic series. Composed by Jeremy Zuckerman, the album will be available to order at participating retailers and on all streaming platforms.

TOYS & MORE

A brand-new action figure line from Jazwares will hit retailers this summer —along with plush, collectibles, and more—and in the fall, fans will get the opportunity to dress up as all their favorite Avatar characters with new Halloween costumes.

Also coming this fall, bend the battlefield with Magic: The Gathering cards from Avatar: The Last Airbender Master the elements and join your favorite characters for new adventures,

iconic art, and an elemental showdown like never before. This Standard-legal set based entirely on the original Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series will be available on Nov. 21.

 PODCAST

Season four of Nickelodeon’s awardwinning original podcast, Avatar: Braving the Elements, the official rewatch podcast for Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, is currently rolling out weekly with new video episodes on YouTube and audio episodes wherever listeners get their podcasts. Hosts Janet Varney (the voice of Korra) and Dante Basco (the voice of Prince Zuko) offer fans an intimate look inside Books 1 and 2 of The Legend of Korra, where they break down key themes, notable battles, share behind-the-scenes stories and trivia, and interview special guests.

VIDEO GAMES

Fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender will soon be able to step into the expansive world of the beloved franchise like

never before with a AAA video game title in development by Paramount Game Studios and Saber Interactive, in collaboration with Avatar Studios. Created for PC and consoles, the action RPG title will follow a brandnew story, developed in close collaboration with Avatar Studios, which drops players into the world of the franchise where they can take on the role of an all-new, never-beforeseen Avatar. Set thousands of years in the past, players can expect to be immersed in a vibrant world, master all four elements, engage in dynamic combat alongside companions, and experience the challenges and decisions that come with being the keeper of balance in the world. The game will include both familiar and new elements from the franchise, offering fans an opportunity to deeply connect to the world and become the hero of this unexplored era.

PUBLISHING

New publishing activity in 2025 includes the launch of a new middlegrade series (Avatar Legends Bending Academy: Light It Up!, Random

House); a new YA series (Avatar Legends: City of Echoes by Judy I. Lin, Abrams); the next installment in the bestselling The Chronicles of the Avatar series (The Awakening of Roku by Randy Ribay, Abrams); a new art book (Beasts of the Four Nations by John O’Bryan, Dark Horse); a second cookbook (Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Official Baking Book by Jenn Fujikawa, Insight); a new adult activity book (Avatar: The Last Airbender Paint with Water, Thunder Bay); new installments in the ongoing graphic novel series (Dark Horse); and much more!

THEATRICAL FILM

Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies’ highly anticipated The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender film debuts only in theaters on Oct. 9, 2026, featuring a voice cast that includes Dave Bautista, Dionne Quan, Jessica Matten, Román Zaragoza, Steven Yeun and introducing Eric Nam.

ALL-NEW SERIES

Nickelodeon is continuing the mythology and adventure of the beloved animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender with Avatar: Seven Havens, an all-new series from creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Set in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender—a world that has been shattered by a devastating cataclysm—the original 26-episode, 2D-animated series centers around a young Earthbender who discovers she’s the next Avatar after Korra. But in this dangerous era, that title marks her as humanity’s destroyer, not its savior. Hunted by both human and spirit enemies, she and her long-lost twin must uncover their mysterious origins and save the Seven Havens before civilization’s last strongholds collapse.