Netflix's Avatar Better Sack Its Writers If It Wants Season 2 & 3 to Not Flop Miserably

Summary:

• Netflix ’s Avatar: The Last Airbender got renewed for Seasons 2 & 3 despite harsh criticism.
• The writing of the show leaves much to be desired.
• The next seasons might be more successful if the writing team gets their act together.

Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender has been called a trainwreck you can’t look away from. Its first season was very problematic, but gathered a very large audience nonetheless, of course encouraging Netflix to renew it for two more seasons.

Fans are adamant: either the streaming service does its homework, or nobody is watching that dumpster fire of a live adaptation. Their complaints mostly lie in bad writing.

First, the fewer-episodes-per-season trend set by Netflix has done more harm than good for many shows, ATLA no exception. The original anime had too many great episodes, and cutting them or making them part of another plotline, confusing people who haven’t watched the anime—well, that would make a show a bigger mess than it is, probably putting it among regretful flops like The Witcher.

Clipping storylines is not the way Netflix should move this story forward.

Second, writing made the series move at a very fast speed, turning some dialogues into incomprehensible gibberish. Good shows are all about pacing; when the time comes, they are fast and action-packed, and sometimes, they are slow, going into character reflection and analysis.

ATLA made it impossible at times to decipher what was going on, what with its weird editing and cuts, where too much is crammed into one episode.

Third, the script makes it seem like the original was under-researched, or likely, just googled. It’s like the writing team didn’t even watch the anime because the live adaptation is a far cry from the brilliant writing of the original. It’s very corny at times and overly dramatic, nothing like what we admired when we used to binge Avatar.

And please, Netflix team: hire writers who can write female characters. Katara seems one-dimensional, and it’s a total injustice to her fierce and strong personality.

You may ask: if there’s so much to unpack, why’d the show become so popular? Simple: people did not expect much from the adaptation, so they were pleasantly surprised as there were some good things to say about the remake (for example, acting, though it is open to interpretation).

The leeway they got won’t cut it in Seasons 2 & 3, so we’ll see what they have in store for us.