Everything Changed When the Fire Nation Attacked: ATLA Turns Twenty

[If you’ve had your fill of politics for the day and are looking for something else to talk about, this is a guest post by LGM commenter Murc on the twentieth anniversary of the beloved, seminal animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Enjoy!]

Water.

Earth.

Fire.

Air.

Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony.

Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them.

But when the world needed him the most, he vanished…

On February 21st, 2005, Nickelodeon premiered a mid-season replacement show that had been developed on spec by a couple of guys whose production pedigree to that point was “directed some episodes of Family Guy and King of the Hill” and “did some art direction on Invader Zim.” It aired after Spongebob Squarepants, was only lightly promoted, and Nickelodeon was sufficiently dubious about it that they had not even wanted a whole season; the initial episode order was for only thirteen.

Avatar: The Last Airbender would go on to become the crown jewel of 21st century western television animation.

The coming of ATLA or something like it seems almost inevitable, in hindsight. The influence of Japan on western animation had been growing for years, and some of the most critically beloved (although, it’s appropriate to note, not necessarily financially successful) animated series of the previous decade, such as Gargoyles and Beast Wars, had done some interesting things by being more serious in tone and developing themselves around lightly serialized, rather than strictly episodic, storytelling. A generation that had grown up with the toy-commercial shows of the eighties were now adults in their twenties and hungry for the art form to evolve; coming up behind them were kids who were being heavily exposed to anime and no longer willing to accept slop when there were better alternatives.

When that better alternative arrived, it burst like a bombshell. ATLA was a plot and character oriented comedy-drama that combined the kind of familiar western humor and archetypes that anyone who had seen an episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer or Kim Possible would be immediately comfortable with, and layered a high-octane eastern fantasy setting over it. Martial arts! MAGICAL martial arts! Punches that threw fireballs! Kicks that caused avalanches! All extended in ways that emphasized the sheer spectacle of it all, pure Wuxia coolness, but also, somehow, felt grounded, natural to the setting.

The setting itself was marvelous, of course. It was similar enough to the “real” world that we didn’t need to memorize a whole concordance of special rules and exceptions governing its metaphysics (Dragon Prince, I am looking in your direction here!) but also fantastical enough to be special and charming, even aside from the fact of the magical martial arts. The basic conceit—a world divided geopolitically along the lines of the four classic elements, with magic users in each nation able to manipulate that element—was straightforward while also allowing for tremendous worldbuilding creativity. The main cast flew through the air on a giant fluffy bison the size of a schoolbus! There were huge eels you could use to shoot some totally sick curls! Most animals were some weird, but cute, chimaerized hybrid, like turtle-ducks and badger-moles. It had cities carved from icebergs, it had caves with face-stealing spider-demons, it had an enormous library ruled by an even more enormous talking owl!  

All of this sprang from the minds of three men; the two with top billing, who got that fancy “created by” credit in the opening, were Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. (The duo were referred to at the time as “Bryke” amongst the fandom.) Equally important, though, was the head writer they brought in to punch things up, Aaron Ehasz. Ehasz, among other things, is basically wholly responsible for the existence of Toph, without whom we would all be the poorer.

As noted, neither DiMartino, nor Konietzko, nor Ehasz had a lot of experience helming, or writing, a show. Ehasz’s primary writing work before ATLA was a few not-particularly-memorable episodes of Futurama, for example. But they had a murderer’s row of people who either were either already legendary within the western animation industry (Joaquim dos Santos, Andrea Romano) or would go on to become legends (Dave Filoni, Giancarlo Volpe) backstopping them, and as the team gelled and learned to work with each other, the show only got better and better.

But you know what, a lot of people can come up with a great hook, a bold visual style, and an intriguing setting. Nobody would remember ATLA if it hadn’t been for the absolutely compelling characters and the superb execution of what would otherwise be a standard “defeat the evil empire” overarching plot. That alchemy got into our blood, into our brains.

ATLA makes the bold ask of presenting us with a history lesson we have to pay attention to in the opening credits, wherein we’re expected to absorb the setting conceits in the form of voiceover narration. Thankfully, said narration involved watching cool-ass magical kung fu, so it at least got your attention that way.

Then we plunge straight in. The first three episodes of the first season of ATLA feature, in no particular order:

• The introduction of a diverse cast of wisecracking pre-teens and teens embodying various character archetypes.
• The subtle but devastating  impact of a century of colonialism and war on the society of indigenous people.
• The reckoning of a lone survivor with the genocide of his nation.
• Boomerangs!
• An abused scion of the family responsible for the aforementioned centuries worth horror desperately trying to regain his standing within their system of world-raping imperialism while being abused by people within that system who are, somehow, so much worse than he is it puts us squarely in his camp. 
• A wise, gentle, funny old man who is nonetheless clearly on the side of the baddies.
• Penguin sledding.

Something you can’t say about ATLA is that it started off slow.

The core cast of ATLA, the “Gaang,” seem awfully generic these days, but that’s largely because they helped to define the space they inhabit. They’re generic because they ARE the genre.

You have Aang, the Chosen One himself, a happy-go-lucky preteen weighed down by the responsibility placed on him when he just wants to eat pies and play in the sky with his airbending. His genuine joy in the wonders of the world masks a deep fear at his responsibility for protecting them.

Katara, the heart of the entire goddamn show, aspiring waterbender, simultaneous mom, big sister, and best friend to the entire group, is the walking embodiment of an aughts-era Strong Female Character, and I mean that in the very, very best way possible.

And rounding out the initial group was her wisecracking brother, Sokka, who is goofy, gawky, loud, and the subject of a lot of humor that involves his giant mouth or equally giant ego getting him into a comical situation he has to be extracted from. He’s also simultaneously probably the smartest guy on the bison, which is hilarious and terrifying. 

Later they’d be joined by Toph Beifong, the Blind Bruiser, scion of privilege and wealth, who as the name implies is blind as a bat but hasn’t let that stop her from becoming fifty pounds of absolute terror.

This was a pretty good collection of traditional protagonists by themselves, but ATLA didn’t stop there; it gave us a double act of bad-guy villain protagonists as well.

Prince Zuko is an ostensible antagonist; he’s introduced as a nasty, tyrannical piece of work, tooling around in one of the Fire Nation’s evil-looking iron warships, wrecking up villages to get what he wants, and what he wants is “kidnap a twelve-year-old.” But ATLA goes out of its way, very quickly, to establish Zuko as a viable protagonist, as someone anchoring storylines in his own right as a sympathetic figure. He’s a genuinely troubled young man, the inheritor of a kingdom of blood and a throne of skulls, but he actually buys into the propaganda, the myth of the Fire Nation that they are noble, honorable warriors on a civilizing mission to improve the world. Almost literally nobody else in the Fire Nation hierarchy believes this… but Zuko, he believes. 

And this belief gets half his face burned off by his own father and a decree of exile hung on him, sent on what is seen as a fool’s errand to hunt down and capture a figure out of myth.

When he shows up in opposition to the rest of the main cast, he’s often overtly villainous, but any episode that centers Zuko usually has us rooting for him to win, and there are a LOT of episodes that center Zuko, often some of the best ones in the show. Katara, as a character, is the heart and soul of the show; but Zuko’s character arc, as he’s dragged almost kicking and screaming by his better angels into decency and righteousness, is its most compelling and, I would argue, its most well-remembered. 

Zuko is accompanied, of course, by Uncle Iroh. Voiced by the legendary Mako (Makoto Iwamatsu, one of the pioneering Asian-American actors of the 20th century) he inhabits the role of a wise, almost Yoda-like mentor and advisor to his young nephew. He loves his tea and his shopping, often appearing scatterbrained and unfocused. This bumbling old man act covers a quiet grief; Iroh has outlived his wife and son and father, was usurped by his brother, and has realized that a lifetime of warring has won him nothing and made the world a worse place. His time has passed; if his nation is to have a future free from the horrors it, and he, has authored, it will be through his nephew. 

It takes Zuko a long time to realize the subtle education in morals and ethics he’s getting from the damaged old soldier. It takes him even longer to appreciate it. To a large degree, the show pushes us to love and support Zuko because Iroh loves and supports Zuko, and god damn, do you as a viewer not want Iroh to be disappointed.

To be honest… Zuko is tricky to analyze the fallout of, two decades after the fact. If you’ve seen people arguing online about “redemption arcs” over the past fifteen years or so, those arguments have their genesis in Zuko’s entire character arc. ATLA is enormously influential and has cast a long shadow. Much of this legacy is entirely positive; shows like Blue Eye Samurai don’t exist without ATLA. But unfortunately, part of the legacy of Zuko was a million other, lesser, writers looking at his journey and his character arc and how much they and everyone else loved it… and thinking “hey, I can do that.”

Zuko is the direct inspiration for characters like Kylo Ren. This isn’t the fault of the character or his writers, but it is absolutely a thing that happened.

This extraordinarily well-realized primary cast doesn’t even include the out-and-out villains. The power-mad, destiny-obsessed Captain Zhao, voiced perfectly by Jason Isaacs. Princess Azula, ruthless firecracker of a combat princess and one of the characters that redefined what slapping the label “princess” on a girl could mean going forward, with her sidekicks Mai and Ty Lee. Long Feng, a startlingly Orwellian manipulator whose emergence in the back half of season two was a real delight. And of course the final boss, Fire Lord Ozai; not precisely Mark Hamill’s greatest role, but his looming presence dominates the entire show even as he’s rarely seen. I could do deep dives into all of them, but we’d be here for hours.

Really, that’s something of a problem when sitting down to look back at ATLA; the sheer depth. I’d like to talk a bit about the plot, but when you do that you end up going down a rabbit hole very quickly. There’s the overarching thread, of course, the Chosen One who must defeat the evil empire and restore peace and justice to the world. But so many wonderful sub-plots and one-offs weave in and out of that narrative, which is what gives the show its richness. There’s a whole episode where they went “let’s just put Zuko in a spaghetti western, see how that works.” Another that’s just Appa the sky bison being lost and sad and alone. Zuko and Aang discover an ancient city and learn firebending from dragons. There’s a detour in season three where the show becomes about a prison break for a whole two-parter.

Hell, the entire back half of season two suddenly flips the script on us; what had been thirty episodes of constant road tripping and running from the Fire Nation very suddenly transforms into court intrigue with a layer of totalitarian urban horror as the cast confront the fact that the last safe city in the world is anything but.

One of the very most highly critically acclaimed and fan-favorite episodes of the show is an anthology story episode that is technically classed as filler and during which almost nothing of significance happens. Katara and Toph have a spa day. Sokka tries to impress girls. Zuko goes on a date. Iroh mourns his son in a very specific, very heartbreaking way. Nothing plot-relevant happens but it doesn’t really need to. Normally an episode like this would go into the “can skip, waste of time” pile in any watch guide; with ATLA, it is instead a must-see.

The whole thing hangs together better than it has any right to, seamlessly moving through the overarching narrative with all of the little streams around it collecting into a mighty river that moves us to the final apocalyptic showdowns. To a certain extent, and with hindsight, this might have been accidental, a matter of luck; most of the people involved have not really produced anything again that was as well put-together. (The sequel series, Legend of Korra, is a structural mess, as are Joaquim dos Santos’ Voltron: Legendary Defender and Aaron Ehasz’s The Dragon Prince.) But you still get a certain amount of credit for being lucky when it’s this good.

Some aspects of ATLA are showing their age, if you didn’t initially come up with them. The normal back-and-forth between the characters can seem a bit dated; the best comedic lines still play, but the cast were representative of, and speaking to, an audience of western adolescents twenty years ago, and the way people talk has moved on a bit.

There’s also a pronounced whipsaw between “dear god, this is still gorgeous!” and “… I don’t remember it looking like THAT.” ATLA has been popular enough to have received an HD Blu-Ray remaster, but it was initially animated in standard definition in a 4:3 aspect ratio using some very flat color palettes (one of the ways in which TV animation used to be able to “cheat” on costs was that they knew they could hide a LOT of haloing and blurring behind the fact that TVs were just bad) and so it doesn’t “pop” as much as something made just a few years later might. It still looks amazing in its big-budget prestige sequences, but a lot of the time when it’s just the characters moving through the world they appear very blobby, and some of the times they go off-model now look really, really terrible because now you can actually see them crisply and realize “wow, Katara’s neck should NOT look like that.” 

The fandom for ATLA remains evergreen and thriving even after twenty years, which is a difficult feat to achieve. I put this retrospective together over the course of about three days; in that time, over fifty thousand words of ATLA fanfiction have been posted to AO3, and the flood of fan art and commentary continues unabated. This is an absurd amount of transformative works for a series that went off the air in 2008. Its influence in the field is enormous; many of the big animation hits of the 2010s and proceeding through to today either were made by alums of ATLA, have it explicitly cited as a strong influence, or are very obviously operating in the space it created. Many of those shows do not get made if ATLA doesn’t get made first.

The show proper and the universe it created has spawned sequels, tie-ins, spin-offs, and remakes. This has been… a mixed bag. The live-action movie is a complete trainwreck and a waste of the talents of some of the people involved. The live-action Netflix series is so mid you almost forget it exists. The explicit sequel, The Legend of Korra, is probably the best of a weak field; great characters, great ideas, execution that was deeply, deeply painful. The comics and books vary hugely but tend towards the inessential. 

But the core of what spawned it all, the original sixty-one episodes, a story that moves from a couple of squabbling siblings finding a kid in an iceberg, to that kid whipping the shit out of a genocidal madman while a comet blazes in the sky above them and a continent burns below them, those remain as incredible as they’ve ever been.

Now is a great time to go and re-watch it if you haven’t in a while, to re-acquaint yourself with its magic. If you haven’t ever seen it, now is an even better time to see what all the fuss was about!

Avatar: The Last Airbender is currently streaming on Netflix and Paramount+, and is available to purchase on Blu-Ray and DVD.