Plot Summary: Avatar Aang, the world's last Airbender, learns of an ancient power that could save his culture from extinction. With the help of his friends, he embarks on a global quest to find it before it falls into the wrong hands.

Directors: Steve Ahn, William Mata, Lauren Montgomery

Writers: Tim Hedrick, Christopher Yost, Bryan Konietzko

Runtime: 1 hour 39 mins

Main Cast:

• Eric Nam as Aang (voice)
• Dave Bautista as Tagah (voice)
• Jessica Matten as Katara (voice)
• Roman Zaragoza as Sokka (voice)
• Steven Yeun as Zuko (voice)
• Dionne Quan as Toph Beifong (voice)

Review by: Tiffany

First, you need to understand how long I’ve been waiting for this.

Tweet

I’m an OG Avatar: The Last Airbender fan.

I was part of that mid-2000s cohort watching Aang and the Gaang while the original series was still airing and everybody was trying to figure out whether Zuko was ever going to restore his honor . . . and how in the world Aang was going to defeat Fire Lord Ozai when he was so deadset on not sending him to the afterlife.

We watched Aang wake up after 100 years and discover that his entire people had been wiped out (That first instance of Aang going into his Avatar state is seared into my brain.)

And saw Katara go from struggling to catch one fish with her waterbending to becoming a badass waterbending master. (Not to mention witnessing her pure power as she mastered bloodbending on the fly.)

We hell yeah’d as Toph invented metalbending because somebody made the mistake of telling her she couldn’t bend metal.

Of course, we spent three seasons watching Zuko go back and forth between trying to capture Aang and helping him, fighting Katara and later fighting alongside her, capturing Aang and then freeing Appa, standing by Iroh and then abandoning him, and confronting the Gaang, Ozai, and Azula . . . all because he thought restoring his honor meant earning his father’s approval.

We even watched Sokka drink cactus juice (it’s the quenchiest) and somehow land not one, but TWO baddies: Yue and Suki.

The original series had e-ve-ry-thing!

And then, like every other fan, I watched Aang defeat Fire Lord Ozai, end the Hundred Year War, and finally kiss Katara while the rest of the Gaang celebrated.

Even if you lowkey shipped Zutara, it was still pretty much the perfect, sweet ending.

Except . . . I still wanted to know what happened next.

Unfortunately, the first time Hollywood tried to give us more Avatar (not to be confused with the blue people from James Cameron’s cinematic universe), we got a live-action movie that butchered damn near everything that made the original series special.

And I mean everything.

They even changed the pronunciations of character names and in-world terminology when the correct pronunciations were RIGHT THERE in the source material.

This wasn’t a book adaptation where nobody could agree on how the names were supposed to sound. We had three full seasons of people saying them out loud.

All they had to do was watch the fricking show.

And then there was the bending.

The laughably terrible bending.

In the original series, bending was fast. It was fluid. It was powerful. Every element had its own style, and you could feel the difference between the way a waterbender moved and the way an earthbender moved.

In It-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named, you had a whole group of earthbenders doing a full choreographed dance routine so one little rock could slowly float across the screen.

And somehow, the slow-ass bending still wasn’t the worst part.

They went and sucked the personality out of everybody.

Aang was playful. He was funny. He was hopeful. He was mischievous. He was a kid carrying way too much responsibility, but he was still a KID.

1. Night’s Shame turned him into this boring, serious, lowkey depressing little boy who looked like he hadn’t experienced joy a day in his life.

Sokka wasn’t funny. At all.

No sarcasm. No ridiculous confidence. No dramatic reactions. No terrible plans that he somehow fully believed were genius.

He was just . . . there. Being serious and deeply un-Sokka-like.

And they did Katara dirty.

Katara was the girl who challenged a grown-ass waterbending master because he told her girls weren’t allowed to fight.

She was stubborn. She was brave. She was powerful. She had a temper, and she stood ten toes down behind the people she loved.

They turned her into somebody scared, weak, and barely recognizable.

That movie butchered the names, the bending, the casting, the humor, and the characters themselves. It took everything that made the original series feel alive and somehow made it dull, joyless, and weird.

They really were like “Oh, you wanted something GOOD that felt like the show you know and loved? . . . 

Long story short, it was a terrible fricking movie.

Which is why the fandom has maintained the only reasonable official position for more than 15 years:

There is no movie in Ba Sing Se.

Then The Legend of Korra came out, and I refused to watch it. On principle.

I knew Katara, Zuko, and Toph were still alive during parts of the series. I knew there were flashbacks. I knew we got bits and pieces of what happened to everybody after the original show ended.

I did not care.

You can’t take me from teenage Aang and Katara finally getting together directly to “Surprise, almost everyone you love is old or dead.”

Absolutely the frick not.

I didn’t want occasional flashbacks.

I wanted to watch Aang and the Gaang grow up.

I wanted to see them as young adults figuring out how to rebuild a world that had spent 100 years at war. 

I wanted to see Aang and Katara’s relationship mature. 

I wanted to know what kind of Fire Lord Zuko became.

I wanted more of Toph being Toph. 

And I needed more of our non-bending king, Sokka.

I did watch Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series, and I honestly love it for what it is.

But it’s still not the same.

I eventually watched Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series, and I honestly love it.

I love seeing the world brought to life. I love the cast. I love getting a new version of a story I already know, even with the changes they made along the way.

But loving the live-action series didn’t make me any less curious about what happened after the original one ended.

I still wanted the continuation.

I wanted to know what happened immediately after Aang defeated Ozai and the Hundred Year War finally ended. What rebuilding the world actually looked like. What happened after Aang and Katara kissed, everybody celebrated, and the credits rolled.

I wanted both.

And finally, we got it.

We waited. Mostly. 

When I found out we were finally getting a movie about Aang and the Gaang as young adults, I was ALL the way in.

Then the movie leaked earlier this year.

And if you’re an Avatar fan, you already know what happened next. Clips started circulating. Screenshots were everywhere. People were losing their collective minds over adult Zuko.

And listen . . . I looked.

I’m only human.

I saw the pictures. I watched a few of the little snippets people were sharing. I fully understood why the internet was salivating over Zuko because HOLY CARTOON CRUSH, BATMAN!!!

But my son is also a huge Avatar fan (and also very much a rule follower), so we agreed that we would wait for it to be officially released. Impatiently, lol. 

Did we wish they had given it the theatrical release it deserved? Absolutely. We would have been there opening night. Not front row because I value my neck and prefer the middle of the theater sweet spot, but IN the theater. Snacks in hand. Ready.

Still, since they decided to release it on Paramount+, we were going to wait and watch it the way they presented it.

So we avoided spoilers as much as two people with internet access realistically can, and we waited.

The night it came out, I stayed awake until 2 a.m. because that was when it became available in my time zone.

Not gonna lie, I started watching it alone because my son was asleep. 

Just the first few minutes, though.  Then the guilt kicked in because I knew he’d either be pissed or, somehow worse, quietly disappointed if I watched the whole thing without him.

So even though I really, really, REALLY wanted to keep going, I turned it off and waited until he woke up.

We watched it together that morning.

And, I tell you hwhat *in my Hank Hill voice*. . . I tell you it was worth the wait!!!

I’m not even TOO mad about it going straight to streaming because at least now I can watch it over and over again. Which I have. 3 times in the past week!

The animation felt familiar . . . but leveled up.

The first thing I noticed once we really got into the movie was that the animation looked different from the original series.

Not bad different. Not “Who the hell are these people?” different. Just . . . updated.

At first, I was like “It looks great, but I wouldn’t necessarily say it looks better than the original.”

My son immediately disagreed.

According to him, the quality is obviously way better, and I’m looking at the original through the very powerful lens of nostalgia.

Which . . . fair.

He grew up watching the newer version of My Little Pony, and when they showed an older, 1980s-style version of Pinkie Pie, he was DISGUSTED. 😂

Meanwhile, I was sitting there like “Excuse you. Respect your elders.”

So yes, animation changes. Technology improves. Children judge the cartoons that raised us. It is what it is.

But once I adjusted to the slightly different look, the animation was absolutely beautiful.

Aang looks a little different from how he did in the original series, but not so different that you’re sitting there wondering who the hell that is. He still looks very much like Aang. Everybody is immediately recognizable. They just look like older, more polished versions of the characters we grew up with.

And the movie wastes NO time using that animation to punch OG fans directly in the feelings.

It opens with young Aang back among the Air Nomads.

He’s flying through the air with the other airbenders. There are sky bison everywhere. Gyatso is there. For a few seconds, Aang is surrounded by his people again.

And it’s so sweet.

You know it isn’t going to last. We all know what happened to the Air Nomads. But for that brief moment, we get to see Aang in the world he came from, before the Fire Nation attacked, before he spent 100 years frozen in an iceberg, and before he became the last airbender.

Then the memory starts turning into trauma.

The Air Nomads are being attacked. Everybody is calling for the Avatar, saying that he disappeared when they needed him most.

And Aang is screaming that he’s there.

But nobody can hear him.

It was such a powerful way to open the movie because even 13 years after defeating Ozai and helping end the Hundred Year War, Aang is still carrying the guilt of running away. He still feels like his people died because he wasn’t there to protect them.

Then he wakes up.

And suddenly, he’s an adult.

Momo is still there. Appa is still there. Katara is there. Sokka is there. Toph is there.

And Zuko is there with his fine ass.

We finally get to see Aang and the Gaang as young adults, and they still feel like the characters we loved.

They’ve grown up. They’re stronger. They’ve taken on bigger responsibilities.

But they’re still them.

Toph is a badass muscle mommy. Sokka is still hilarious and fully convinced that he was the most important person involved in ending the war. Katara is still a healer and one of Aang’s biggest sources of support, except now we get to see how their relationship has matured into something openly romantic.

And adult Zuko?

I understand the internet’s reaction.

That is all I’ll say.

Actually, that’s a lie. I’m sure I’ll say more later.

The opening sequence emotionally jumped me.

After the dream sequence, the movie gives us this throwback to the original opening narration.

You know the one.

Water. Earth. Fire. Air.

Except this time, we don’t just see the younger versions of the characters we grew up with.

We get to watch them become adults.

First, there’s young Katara waterbending while the narration talks about the Water Tribes drawing strength from the moon and flowing with the tides. And then, right in the middle of the movement, she turns into adult Katara.

Then there’s Toph, representing earth, being solid and powerful and very much Toph. Young Toph turns into adult Toph, who somehow looks even more like she could beat your ass than she did when she was 12. Which is saying something

Then we get Zuko.

The narration talks about fire being capable of great destruction, but also great warmth. And younger Zuko becomes adult Fire Lord Zuko.

Fine-as-fuck adult Fire Lord Zuko. (Told you!)

Sorry, not sorry. If you saw the leaked pictures, then you already know. If you didn’t, you’ll understand when you watch the movie.

And then finally, we get air.

“Peaceful nomads with the power of a hurricane, but the spirit of a gentle breeze.”

Young Aang transitions into adult Aang while doing one of those familiar airbending moves we watched him do in the original series.

Y’all . . . I cried.

Like, actual tears.

I rewound that part at least eight times. I’m not exaggerating. I watched it, rewound it, watched it again, and cried some more.

And listen, I know I’m 41 years old crying over an animated character doing an airbending move.

I know how that sounds.

But it wasn’t just the move.

It was seeing all of them go from the kids we knew to adults who survived the war, mastered their elements, and helped build something new afterward.

Because Aang wasn’t the only master in the Gaang. He was just the one who had to master all four elements.

Katara became a badass waterbending master.

Toph was already arguably the best earthbender in the world before she even hit puberty.

Zuko became a ridiculously powerful firebender and the leader of the same nation that had spent 100 years trying to take over everybody else’s.

And Aang was the freaking Avatar.

We didn’t have to skip forward and hear about everything they accomplished after they were already old, dead, or somebody’s grandparents.

We got to SEE them.

Alive.

Grown.

Thriving.

And that part hit me harder than I expected it to.

Aang also gives us a recap of what happened in the original series, but he doesn’t tell it like he single-handedly saved the world while everybody else stood around clapping.

He talks about running away after finding out he was the Avatar. He talks about waking up 100 years later and finding out his people were gone.

Then he talks about finding friends and allies from every nation. Benders and non-benders.

Katara taught him waterbending.

Toph taught him earthbending.

Zuko went from being his worst enemy to becoming his firebending teacher.

And Sokka taught him that bravery was one of the most important parts of being a leader.

And I loved that Aang made sure Sokka got his credit.

Because Sokka didn’t have bending powers, but that never made him less important.

He was smart. He was strategic. He was brave. He came up with plans. Sometimes they were good plans. Sometimes they were . . . Sokka plans.

But he still stood beside people who could throw fire, move entire bodies of water, launch boulders through the air, and knock people across a room with a gust of wind.

With a boomerang and vibes.

Together, they became a family.

Together, they ended the Hundred Year War.

And then they started the much harder work of figuring out what the hell comes after you save the world.

That whole sequence felt like the people who made this movie actually understood why we loved the original series.

And the movie keeps doing that.

We get the cabbage merchant because obviously you cannot go back into the Avatar universe without that man’s livelihood being threatened somehow.

We even get the guy who used to get so excited that he would foam at the mouth and pass out. Except now, apparently, he has a son who inherited that same exact level of excitement.

Which means that drama is genetic.

Neither one of them was part of the Gaang. They weren’t major characters. But they were still part of what made the original series feel like the original series.

The cabbage merchant wasn’t important to the plot, but everybody remembers him.

People quote him. People cosplay as him. Every time he showed up in some completely different part of the world, you already knew his cabbages were about to go through something.

So seeing those characters again made it feel like we were actually back in that world.

Not like the creators brought back Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph, and Zuko, threw in Appa and Momo, and figured that was enough.

They knew we were going to notice the little things and they threw in the kind of Easter Eggs that make OG fans FEEL something. 

Aang saved the world. He still couldn’t save his people.

One of the things I loved most about this movie was getting to see Aang and Katara’s relationship as adults.

They’re not awkward teenagers trying to figure out whether they like each other anymore. They KNOW they love each other.

Katara is still a healer. She’s still one of Aang’s biggest sources of support. But now there’s this softness and intimacy between them that makes it clear they’ve built an actual life together.

And Katara is absolutely down for her man. Not that we expected anything less from Katara of the “Hurt Aang and I WILL end you” water tribe. 

But even with Katara beside him, the rest of the Gaang still in his life, and an entire city that probably wouldn’t exist without him, Aang is lonely.

Because he’s still the last airbender.

They ended the Hundred Year War. They brought the nations together. They helped create Republic City. They’re doing the work of rebuilding a world that spent 100 years being torn apart.

The Water Tribes are still there.

The Earth Kingdom is still there.

The Fire Nation is still there.

But the Air Nomads are gone.

It’s just Aang.

And he can’t stop thinking about the fact that when he dies, his culture could die with him.

Katara reminds him that he isn’t alone. He has her. He has Sokka, Toph, Zuko, Appa, Momo, and everyone else who loves him. She reminds him that Republic City and this new path toward peace wouldn’t exist without him.

And she’s right.

But Aang is also right.

He has a family. He has friends. He has people who would probably fight an entire army for him without even asking what time they need to be there.

But none of them know what it feels like to be the last person left from their entire nation.

None of them are carrying the language, traditions, history, spirituality, and future of a whole culture on their back.

Aang isn’t technically alone.

But in this one very specific and very painful way, he is.

And this is where we see that even though Aang is older, stronger, and presumably wiser, he’s still Aang.

He still gets stuck in that place of feeling like nobody can truly understand him because nobody else is the Avatar. Nobody else is the last airbender. Nobody else is living with the same guilt he’s been carrying since he was 12 years old.

And when Aang feels misunderstood, he has a habit of shutting out the people who actually know and love him.

Which becomes VERY important once another airbender enters the picture.

I’m not going to tell you exactly how that happens because I’m trying to get you excited to watch the movie, not describe the entire plot and ruin it for you.

But Aang and the Gaang eventually discover Tagah, an ancient airbender who has been preserved for a very long time in a way that feels extremely familiar.

And for Aang, finding him feels like a miracle.

For the first time since he woke up from the iceberg and realized everyone he knew was dead, he’s standing in front of another airbender.

Someone who knows the culture, understands the loss.and who might actually understand him in a way Katara and the rest of the Gaang can’t.

Or at least, that’s what Aang desperately wants to believe.

Tagah was everything Aang had been hoping for

Tagah isn’t just another airbender. To Aang, he’s proof that being the last airbender might not have to end with him.

Tagah tells him about a staff that can give people bending abilities. If they can find it, they could potentially use it to create more airbenders. That possibility is HUGE for Aang.

Since waking up from the iceberg and realizing his entire nation was gone, he’s been trying to preserve every piece of Air Nomad culture he can find. The artifacts. The history. The traditions. The spirituality. All of it.

He knows that if he doesn’t hold on to those things, nobody else can. Then Tagah shows up and basically tells him “You can bring them back.”

Not Gyatso or the people Aang personally lost. They’re still gone. But the culture could continue. Aang might not have to spend the rest of his life knowing that the Air Nomads could disappear completely when he dies.

And Tagah knows EXACTLY which emotional buttons to push.

Aang has blamed himself for what happened to his people since the moment he found out they were dead.

He ran away after learning he was the Avatar, and the Fire Nation attacked while he was frozen in that iceberg. Logically, Aang was a 12-year-old child who couldn’t possibly have stopped an entire army by himself. More than likely, he would have died during the attack and the Air Nomads would have been fully wiped out.

But his guilt doesn’t care about logic.

Tagah leans all the way into that guilt and frames the staff as Aang’s chance to redeem himself.

They can’t change the past, but they can decide what happens next. They can find the staff, create new airbenders, and rebuild the Air Nomads.

This is how Aang can finally make things right.

That’s a HELL of a thing to offer someone who has spent most of his life feeling like an entire culture disappeared because he ran away when they needed him.

Tagah also talks about watching his own family and his own people be killed. For the first time, Aang is standing in front of someone who can say he understands that kind of loss and actually mean it.

Plus, Tagah is an airbender.

He knows the culture, the traditions, and what it feels like to lose that entire world.

And the man can BEND.

Like . . . he is FAST.

He’s strong, powerful, and doing things with airbending that Aang didn’t even know were possible.

That’s saying a lot because Aang was basically born an airbending prodigy. He had already earned his tattoos and become a master before the OG show even started.

Airbending was home for Aang. It was the one element he never had to struggle to understand. Then Tagah starts showing him parts of that home he never knew existed.

So yeah, Aang is fascinated.

But there are warning signs from the moment Tagah wakes up.

He nearly attacks Toph after sensing her earthbending. He talks about firebenders as if destruction is simply part of who they are. And the way he speaks to Katara makes it pretty clear that he doesn’t have much respect for waterbenders either.

Aang is so focused on everything Tagah represents that he keeps moving past those moments.

Katara doesn’t.

Her trauma shows up differently. Aang is always searching for someone who can truly understand him. Katara watches for danger, especially when someone gets close to Aang and starts telling him exactly what he wants to hear.

After Long Feng, Ba Sing Se, and trusting Zuko only for him to turn around and side with Azula, Katara has learned to pay attention when something feels off.

And while the Gaang are dealing with Tagah . . .

They’re also facing a much more blatant threat: the Denied.

The Denied are a group of non-benders who’ve been getting bolder and more dangerous. They’re tired of living in a world where some people are born with the ability to control fire, water, earth, or air, while everybody else just has to hope those people don’t use that power against them.

And honestly, the frustration behind that isn’t hard to understand.

We’ve seen benders abuse their power plenty of times throughout the Avatar universe. We watched the Fire Nation use bending to terrorize the world for 100 years. 

We’ve seen earthbenders, waterbenders, and firebenders use their abilities to intimidate people who couldn’t fight back in the same way.

So the Denied aren’t wrong that there’s an imbalance.

The problem is that they’ve decided the answer is to get that power for themselves by any means necessary.

They’re after the same ancient staff that Aang and Tagah are searching for because they believe it can give bending abilities to people who weren’t born with them.

To Aang, the staff could mean new airbenders and a future for his culture.

To the Denied, it means they’ll never have to feel powerless again.

And they’re making it very clear that they don’t care who gets hurt while they’re trying to find it. Which makes for some good storytelling!

And the final stretch was SO good. It was big, emotional, and satisfying without feeling like the movie had suddenly pulled something out of its ass just to give us a dramatic ending.

Now I need another movie!

As much as I loved what we got, it also made me want even more of this stage of their lives.

There were a few people I kept expecting to show up who never did.

We didn’t get Suki. We didn’t get Iroh. We didn’t find out what happened with Mai or Ty Lee. We didn’t get an update on Ozai after Aang took away his bending and left him sitting in prison with nothing but his terrible decisions to keep him company.

And did Zuko ever find his mom?

I understand that they couldn’t bring back every single person from the original series, but I still have questions.

Did Sokka ever find his boomerang? What happened to his space sword? Did he finally move on from Yue and let his relationship with Suki be as great as it deserved to be?.

I also would’ve loved to see Iroh with adult Zuko. After everything they went through, I want to know what their relationship looks like now that Zuko has become Fire Lord and grown into the man Iroh always knew he could be.

Mostly, I want to see more of Aang and the Gaang during this part of their lives.

Let us see Aang and Katara build a life together. Let us watch them have their children. Show us what happens as Republic City grows and the world keeps changing around them. Give us more of Fire Lord Zuko, Sokka being Sokka, and the Gaang trying to stay a family while also carrying the responsibility of rebuilding the entire fricking world.

But even if we never get another movie with Aang and the Gaang at this age, I’m so glad we got this one.

It was beautiful. It was funny. It was emotional. The action was fantastic, the bending looked amazing, and the story gave Aang a conflict that felt deeply connected to everything he’d experienced in the original series.

It had the nostalgia and little Easter eggs longtime fans are going to eat up, but it wasn’t just two hours of the creators pointing at familiar characters and going “Remember this person?”

It was actually a damn good movie. So good that I’ve already watched it 4 times. 

 

Tiffany is a single WAHM and geek who lives in SmallTown, Arkansas, with her teenage son (who is annoyingly giant-like, towering over her even though she’s 5’9″ and very much an Amazon) and their black cat, Berlioz (the doggiest cat you’d ever meet).

She has worked from home full-time since 2012 as a (according to one client) Word Alchemist. Alas, someone else already claimed that title, so she goes by The Geeky Copywriter.

Tiffany is on a mission to do this whole marketing thing in a way that doesn’t just sound good — it feels good. She helps others use their voice to connect with their audience and grow their business authentically.

She works primarily with female coaches and course creators, helping them ditch pushy, salesy tactics in favor of ick-free, personality-filled copy that converts.

When she’s not crafting words that make an impact, Tiffany can be found hanging out with her son, geeking out over different fandoms, quoting Harry Potter like it’s a second language, or cycling through a wide array of creative hobbies.

You can learn more about her on her blog, Single Mommy Warrior, as well as her business website, The Geeky Copywriter.