‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Stars Predict Future Fire Family Scenes Amid Season 2 Renewal Hopes
While Season 1 of Netflix’s “Avatar: The Last Airbender” covered a lot of ground by blending the plot of the animated Book I: “Water” with elements and characters found in Book II, “Earth,” Fire Nation family actors Dallas Liu, Daniel Dae Kim and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee predict strong future scenes for the villainous dynasty should the series receive a renewal for more seasons.
Within the first four days of its Feb. 22 release, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” debuted as Netflix’s most-watched TV series for the week of Feb. 19. “Avatar” scored 21.2 million views during the four-day interval — outpacing viewership for “One Day,” “Love Is Blind” Season 6 and “Griselda” — and reached the streamer’s top 10 list in 92 countries. The live-action adaptation also outpaced the debut viewership of YA hit “My Life With the Walter Boys,” which debuted to 7.5 million views in its first four days on the platform.
In the cartoon series, the first season focused on Avatar Aang’s journey to the Northern Water Tribe to master waterbending. Seasons 2 and 3 of the animated series dealt with his attempts to learn earthbending and firebending, respectively. The ultimate confrontation takes place between Aang (voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen) and Fire Lord Ozai (voiced by Mark Hamill) in the finale of Season 3.
Daniel Dae Kim, who stars in the Netflix live-action series as Fire Lord Ozai, looks forward to major scenes that could divulge more of his character’s backstory. He compares his character to Darth Vader in the sense that he looms large, but his full context doesn’t get revealed until later. Part of what Kim teased involves the shadow of Paul Sun-Hyung Lee’s Iroh as his older brother, who passed on the title of heir to the Fire Nation throne.
“Duality is a big theme throughout. If you look at [his kids] Azula and Zuko there, it’s a similar relationship — two sides of the same coin, it’s fascinating — [to] the dynamic between Iroh and Ozai. Iroh’s the older brother, he is the one who should be the Fire Lord,” Kim told TheWrap hours before the show’s Los Angeles premiere. “So what is the pathology of a second son who has so much thirst for power that he supersedes his older brother? Paul and I were talking the other day. The scene that we would both like to see is a confrontation about that. How did that happen? How do we speak what’s been unspoken?”
Lee agreed with the “paralleling” between Zuko and Azula and Iroh and Ozai, calling Zuko “a little bit more compassionate” and Azula as the younger sibling “driven to excel, to exceed, to overtake” her older sibling. He also echoed Kim’s sentiments about a confrontation scene between the brothers.
“You never see it in the animated series, you just hear that Iroh should be the next Fire Lord. He’s the eldest. He’s the next in line, and he gives it all up. For me, the clues are in the writing of the stories after he loses his son Lu Ten in the siege of Ba Sing Se. Iroh checks out. It forces him to confront what he is fighting for, what he has been doing, and he doesn’t want any part of it,” Lee said. “To be completely honest and purely selfish, I would just love to work with Daniel. We had some scenes together, but they were so brief, and it would be so great to show some scenes with them and have Ozai and Iroh have it out to sort of talk about that.”
Iroh’s bending — which is limited in Season 1 — could lead to other highly-anticipated scenes as seen in later seasons of the animated series. Lee compares his character to a father figure whose patience is only so measured. The first season of the animated show sets up Iroh as “easy to dismiss” and “this bumbling old man” who loves food and is not taken super seriously.
“There’s a very judicious use of bending for [Iroh]. He is the dreaded Dragon of the West. [Iroh’s bending] is very power-driven. It’s all in the breath, and what he lacks for in flare, he more than makes up for in terms of strength and power,” he said. “I think it’s very smart, showing Iroh’s firebending abilities very sparingly because you’re saving your bullets so that when he does finally erupt and go, it’s quite spectacular. It’s quite frightening as well, and I think that’s another reason why he doesn’t bend as much, just because he does realize how powerful he is. As the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility.’”
Another moment Kim looks forward to exploring is the absence of Zuko and Azula’s mother Ursa, who — in the animated series — ran away when the children were young.
“I’m looking forward to seeing how that gets dealt with in our version because that’s also crucial to Zuko and Azula’s development and personality. And what does that also say about Ozai? If you think about all of the relationships between parents and children in this series, one of the things that characterize them is that the adults have expectations for the children that they don’t feel like they’re ready for or they don’t want,” Kim said. “So what was the role that the mother played and all of those things? I’d be very curious to see who gets cast in that role and what the dynamic will be.”
Dallas Liu also hopes that Ursa gets a strong storyline in the live-action series, and he feels that fans would be receptive to an expansion of her character’s involvement in the plot. He also wants his Prince Zuko to get the chance to heal from the heartbreak his father inflicted on him when he was younger.
“Everybody’s favorite season in the animated series is two and three for a reason. So naturally, I think [showrunner] Albert Kim took many, many courageous steps in making decisions to fill plot holes and make changes and make the story make sense,” Liu said. “We do have to set up the world-building and lay the pipes down for what is to come. The first 30 minutes of our show are different, but man, it hits heavy. What we’re doing is war at the end of the day. The genocide that takes place in the first episode, they didn’t have to show you, you could feel the weight of what was going on. Our show is meant to retell a beloved story in a new light.”
“Avatar: The Last Airbender” Season 1 is now streaming on Netflix.
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