Being only eight episodes long, Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the beloved animated show had to skip a few story beats, and in doing so, Avatar: The Last Airbender skipped one crucial element. While the Netflix adaptation is still a major improvement over M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, fans aren’t happy following the show’s decision to deviate from the source material.
Unlike the animated show, whose theme for the first season involved waterbending (Book One: Water), surprisingly, in the Netflix adaptation, Aang never learns to waterbend.
Aang Skips Learning Waterbending in Avatar: The Last Airbender
While it’s not uncommon for creators to take some creative liberties on how to structure the existing story in live-action, great adaptations often stay true to the source material’s theme. But in Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang never learns waterbending, and throughout the whole season, Aang spends time worried about failing the world. While Katara ends up mastering waterbending, even when Aang visits the Soth Pole, he doesn’t bother asking for a waterbending teacher nor does any practice during his entire stay.
Reasonably, this didn’t sit well with fans, as not having him learning the element closest to the air for the entirety of the first season seems a pretty weird choice on the creatives’ part behind the show.
I was thinking this as I finished episode 8.
— Ike (@IIGINTON) March 7, 2024
Oh yeah they’re definitely skipping Toph and Katara’s short beef
— Daiquiri (@Da1qu1r1) March 6, 2024
The symbol for the first season isn’t even the water element that kid is NOT learning water bending at all
— Jace (@sirmolten) March 6, 2024
That’s gotta be my #1 complaint about the show, it’s called Book One: Water and he learned 0 waterbending
— Brendon of Chromatica 🐀 (@HousofBrendon) March 7, 2024
Thought I was the only one to notice my mans did no water bending in regular state
— arvan_pacman (@arvan_pacman) March 7, 2024
Season one eventually ends with Katara being declared a waterbending master, who promises to teach Aang how to waterbend. But considering season two of the animated show revolves around Earth, it’d be interesting to see how the creatives behind the adaptation approach the story moving forward.
A Time Jump Heading Into Season Two Is Expected per Showrunner
Although it wasn’t the most truthful adaptation that fans hoped from Netflix, especially after the success of One Piece, Avatar: The Last Airbender still did great numbers for the streaming service. And the higher-ups at Netflix have given showrunner Albert Kim and his team the green signal to proceed working on the adaptation, with the second and third seasons being confirmed (via Variety). But considering the story of the animated series takes place over the span of a single year, which isn’t possible to replicate in its live-action counterpart, a potential time gap is likely.
Albert Kim said (via Entertainment Weekly):
“All three seasons of the animated series essentially take place in the course of one calendar year. There was no way we could do that. So we had to design this first season, especially, to accommodate the possibility of some time elapsing between the first and the second season.”
A potential time jump can also fix the problem of Aang not learning waterbending in the first season. it can be explained that between the time jump, Aang was able to master waterbending, allowing season two to be more in line with the source material.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is available to stream on Netflix.
