Avatar: The Last Airbender showrunner Albert Kim explains why and how they added time jumps to the show’s larger story to accommodate the teenage cast.
A huge problem with live-action productions that are child- and teen-led (or primarily child- and teen-based) is that the ages of some of the characters don’t quite match up with the actual time the actors played them between seasons/movies. We see this happen in Harry Potter. We see this happen in Carl Grimes’ The Walking Dead. Of course, Stranger Things was also heavily influenced. These are just some examples. So, how does Netflix’s The Last Airbender solve the problem of telling a real-life teen story that originally took place over a year ago?
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King’s answer is simple: You can’t fight time, these large-scale works take a while to write, assemble, shoot and edit. A year-long story would be impossible to believe without the main cast growing up before our eyes. “There’s no way we can do that. So we have to design the first season, especially considering that there’s probably going to be some time between season one and season two,” he explained to Entertainment Weekly .
In The Last Airbender, things became even more problematic when the creators had to account for Sozin’s Comet, which was sort of like a “ticking clock” for the animated series. While appearing in this iteration of the story, its arrival isn’t that pressing…yet. “We really thought about that in season one so that we could accommodate puberty, adolescence and the passage of time,” King said. “All of that happens to real-life humans and doesn’t happen to animated characters. Interesting things. “
These time adjustments aren’t the only elements being tweaked in the live-action Avatar series, as Kim also promised a slightly more mature tone (Given Netflix’s goal to expand their reach) This allows them to include things like the Fire Nation’s attacks on other nations.
The first season of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” will be released on Netflix on February 22.