Warning: Spoilers follow for Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2.
It’s time to climb aboard your flying bison, Avatar fans, because Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 is now streaming. The live-action adaptation of the widely beloved cartoon series continues the journey of Aang and his friends as he seeks to master the four elements, with this second season a condensed take on the original’s Book Two: Earth in the same way Season 1 adapted Book One: Water.
Fans of the original Nickelodeon show know that Book Two featured Aang searching for an earthbending teacher, the debut of new ally Toph Beifong (who would become a card-carrying member of Team Avatar), the main characters traveling to the walled-off Earth Kingdom city of Ba Sing Se, and the rising importance of the villainous Princess Azula, sister of Prince Zuko.
Season 2 of the Netflix series tackles all of these elements but makes adjustments to many of the details. At least for IGN’s Rafael Motamayor, the new season is an improvement on the previous one; in his 8/10 review, he said that Season 2 “finds a good balance between lighter fun moments and a darker and more mature story.” To learn more about how Season 2 came together and why certain creative choices were made, IGN spoke to showrunner Christine Boylan, who took up those duties after Season 1 showrunner Albert Kim stepped down (Boylan was an executive producer on Season 1). Spoilers ahead, but let’s get into it!
Finding the Right Tone
One of the reasons the original show is so acclaimed is because of how deftly it balances moments of heart and humor with the mature and sometimes very bleak world being presented, and all while staying appropriate for young viewers. When asked about how the creators approached Season 2’s tone, Boylan said, “I feel pretty confident about the balance. We even try to bring some light into the Fire Nation side, and some dark into our heroes’ side, and I think that juxtaposition really helps.”
She elaborated by saying, “We wanted to play the truth. These are real people, and this is a war. The entire world is being colonized, and you want to play the truth of that. But at the same time, these are young people: teenagers and young adults. They’re going to find things funny; they’re going to make jokes in the face of terrible things. I think that’s hugely relatable right now… our actors have done such a beautiful job seeing that and making it better than what we give them. Mai is pretty funny. Azula is hilarious, often on purpose. They’re all pretty funny, I’d say — except for Ozai.” Probably a good exception to the rule!
Adaptational Choices
Given how popular the original show is, any adaptation of Avatar would be fighting an uphill battle; no matter what choices you make, you’re going to alter or remove something that someone out there considers critical to their vision of the story. Boylan seems keenly aware of this and explained her strategy, saying that “my theory and practice of adapting anything, especially a large mythos and a large world, is that it should never be one-to-one. I always say: If you hear The Iliad, read The Song of Achilles, and watch Troy, those are all the same story told [in] completely different ways. Ours isn’t completely different, but we take our cue from the animated series. We know we could never replace it, and we’d never try.”
We prodded Boylan about changes made to the next season, which will adapt Book Three: Fire. While we can’t share many details about that, she did state her philosophy regarding adaptation: “If we can’t do it justice or make it better, don’t do it.” Your mileage may vary on how well the Netflix show lives up to that principle — Season 2’s take on Appa’s kidnapping stands out as oddly handled, for example — but it’s an admirable goal all the same.
“We take our cue from the animated series. We know we could never replace it, and we’d never try.”
Another notable choice is incorporating material from the expanded universe that came after the original show’s release. Boylan confirmed that there were “little nods to the world of the animated series and the books. The books are really influential to us, because we want the world to feel the depth and breadth of everything that came after. Korra came after, the novels came after — Bryan [Konietzko] and Mike [DiMartino], and all the writers who worked on the other properties, have expanded the world in such a beautiful way, and we try to bring all of that in. Humor comes from it, drama comes from it, [and] the way we portray the other Avatars comes from it.”
Touching on Toph
Among the biggest additions in Season 2 is Toph Beifong, played in the Netflix show by Miya Cech, also known mononymously as Miyako. The blind earthbending prodigy has long been a fan favorite for her mastery of her powers, abrasive personality, and steadfast loyalty to Team Avatar, so finding the right actress for the character was crucial.
Boylan discussed Miyako’s audition and how she knew immediately that they’d found their Toph: “What Miya brought to the role is exactly the thing we’d written, which is that Toph needs to be grounded. It sounds silly and basic — she’s an earthbender, she needs to be grounded — but Toph is grounded in a way nobody else is. She learned from the badger moles; she’s the epitome, the platonic ideal, of the grounded earthbender. I come from theater, so I’m very picky and annoying, and as soon as I saw Miya — she’s a full-body actor. When she came in, she wasn’t only delivering the jokes with that hilarious, biting cadence and that whole ‘I don’t care what anybody thinks about me’ attitude, which you absolutely need. She was fully moving, even before she’d learned any of the bending moves.”
An aspect of Toph many fans were nervous wouldn’t be included was her tendency to make jokes about her own blindness. Boylan explained how they kept that trait intact: “We have an amazing blindness consultant, Joe Strechay, who’s wonderful, and his assistant Keira is amazing too. Joe works on Daredevil, and I come from that Daredevil-Punisher universe as well, so we have a lot of the same people in common. Joe came over and said, ‘Listen, we are making blind jokes. Don’t be afraid.’ He gave the writers and me permission to just embody it. He taught us so much about the blind community and how to honor that experience while not taking it too seriously.”
We also get more of Toph’s background with her parents depicted in the Netflix show, something Boylan felt strongly about: “I think the Beifongs have a bit more presence in our series; we wanted to show where people came from. We got to see the Air Nomads before the genocide, so we get to see parents a bit more. We got to see more of Omashu, more of Wolf Cove, more of the Northern Water Tribe, Kyoshi Island — all these places. Seeing Toph with the Beifongs and how she has to mask, hide herself, make herself small and ‘less than’ in real life… watching the contrast between how she hides herself with her parents and how she is at Earth Rumble and then watching her bring those two personalities together once she starts to trust the group is really beautiful.”
Developing Zuko and the Fire Nation
When it comes to subplots from the original show, Prince Zuko’s redemption arc stands as one of the most universally lauded. The way he goes from antagonist to Aang and his friends to fighting against his father’s imperial rule is among the show’s most carefully considered threads, and Boylan knew the new series needed to honor that. For her part, she has nothing but praise for Zuko actor Dallas Liu: “It helps that Dallas is so gifted, and it helps even more that he’s so hardworking and that he cares. He cares about the character in the animated series, and about the character we’re all creating with him and that he’s really holding in this show. So we’re incredibly lucky to have him.”
To develop Zuko properly, Boylan put a lot of emphasis on the culture of the Fire Nation and the way their customs inform his characterization. “The first thing we talked about when we got into pre-production was Zuko’s hair story [and] why hair is important in the Fire Nation. Something really important to me and a lot of the writers is the culture of each nation, and the fact that each nation isn’t necessarily a monolith… bringing it all back to Zuko’s arc: We talked not just about how Dallas can pull off any hairstyle and look great — he can, it’s wonderful — but about the idea that you grow your hair out when you’re victorious, you cut it when you’ve suffered a loss or lost to an opponent, you shave your head when you’ve been shamed, and you lose the topknot when it’s all over. There’s a great bit about this in one of the Kyoshi novels that helped us flesh out some of that story.”
Boylan also elaborated on how in-universe storytelling affects the cultures the characters come from, which is especially important for the Fire Nation because of how it operates as a colonizing force within the Avatar world. “The Fire Nation in the animated series is rich in theater, storytelling, parables, and proverbs, and we drew on all of it. We looked at how Aang and Zuko were brought up, and how that resonates in the choices they’re making now. They each use stories as touchstones, and how they use those stories to justify what they’re doing was interesting to all of us. The Blue Spirit is a story — and here’s a spoiler, ready? — that Zuko’s mom told him. It’s a Fire Nation legend that was taken from another kingdom, from a Water Tribe spirit, and it was first seen on the stage. So we did a little stage bit using a lot of kabuki, bunraku, and Vietnamese water puppet theater, and brought all of that into the Fire Nation, because they can afford to have the arts.”
What did you think of Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2? Let us know in the comments!
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles, and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
Interview by Josh Du.
