Avatar: The Last Airbender is getting another sequel from original creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. In honor of the series’ 20th anniversary, Nickelodeon announced the franchise’s next series, Avatar: Seven Havens, one of the first releases from Avatar Studios. The new show will center on a young Earthbender who becomes the next Avatar following Korra.
I’ve been a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender since I was a kid, and I loved watching Aang and his friends go on adventures and learn to bend the four elements. The show had everything: Magic-infused martial arts, flying bison, secret tunnels and kids trying to save the world. Two decades later, it holds up incredibly well. (Its recent live-action adaptation was compelling, but I thought it was missing some of the original show’s charm.)
I was equally enthusiastic about the sequel series, The Legend of Korra, which takes place 70 years after ATLA. Korra targeted an older demographic with its more mature political themes and teenage/early-adult main cast. I enjoyed being immersed in its urban steampunk setting, where members of the Four Nations lived in harmony in Republic City (OK, “harmony” may not be quite accurate — the city was attacked on multiple occasions).
However, the Avatar universe changed somewhere in the last season of Korra. While the story itself was strong and brought Korra’s character arc to a fitting close, there were times when I felt the technology of her world had overshadowed bending. With Airbenders in futuristic wingsuits fighting an epic battle against a towering, energy cannon-wielding mech, the show began to feel more like science-fiction. There’s nothing wrong with that — I love science-fiction — but it didn’t feel like the right choice for Avatar, a series that has traditionally been set in a fantasy alternate past with mythological roots.
That’s why the premise of Avatar: Seven Havens sounds like a perfect way to reset the universe. Here is the official synopsis from Nickelodeon:
Avatar: Seven Havens is set in a world shattered by a devastating cataclysm. A young Earthbender discovers she’s the new 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.
We know that Seven Havens will be set sometime after Korra, but we don’t know exactly when. What stands out is that the new Avatar is no longer revered by society like her predecessors. If she’s marked as “humanity’s destroyer,” we can probably assume that Korra was blamed for the events that shattered the world. The new premise is an intriguing twist on the conventional heroic Avatar story, though not without precedence: Aang and Korra were both occasionally fugitives in their respective series.
The synopsis also implies that technology in Seven Havens has taken a step backward. While I don’t know what life looks like in “civilization’s last strongholds,” I’m certain we won’t see another skyscraper-size mech.
Before Seven Havenswas announced, I’d wondered if a sequel to Korra would feel even more futuristic. I worried that bending would fade into the background of a world with modern technology. I’m glad this brief glimpse into the new series suggests a low-tech, possibly post-apocalyptic setting; this would be a great way to visually distinguish Seven Havens. I hope we’ll see more of the magic and mythology of ATLA. DiMartino and Konietzko are amazingly gifted world-builders, and I’m excited about what they have in store for us.