This summer’s Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender was a beautiful, if slightly shallow and inert, way to reintroduce audiences to the world of Avatar Legends, which had mostly sat dormant on screen since the divisive end of The Legend of Korra back in 2014 (no, we’re not acknowledging the disastrous Netflix series). With its gorgeous animation and thin character themes, it was exactly the kind of film that would make fans nervously optimistic for Avatar: Seven Havens, the next step forward for the franchise – and the first of what may be many more Avatar stories gracing the small screen in the coming years, making it a real opportunity to onboard a new generation of viewers into its unique world of rich, elemental science fiction, a strange mix of Eastern and Western existentialism, and sociopolitical observation rarely seen in media often dismissed as “children’s entertainment”.
Thankfully, Avatar: Seven Havens is neither fan service nor empty creative exercise; though the first six episodes of its first of two planned books, Survival, are a bit too densely packed with mysteries, allusions, and worldbuilding, the long-standing tenets of worldbuilding and character that made Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra both so memorable appear to be live and well – and smartly, evolving just enough to keep from feeling like a stale retread.
Set some 200 years after the cataclysmic end to Korra’s reign as the Avatar (which one must imagine was a collapse of her forming a connection between the physical and spiritual worlds, leading to the world’s soul-consuming technological revolution), Avatar: Seven Havens smartly spaces itself far away from the well-developed part of its extensive timeline, allowing itself a complete creative reset – and an opportunity to build an entire layer of intrigue in reintroducing its post-apocalyptic world to the audience, which the series does in meticulous fashion through the first half-dozen episodes available to screen before its premiere. Like Korra, Seven Havens sets its story in a singular location – Ellora City, one of seven remaining strongholds of humanity – turning it into a sandbox to reflect on the spiritual and practical shifts and evolutions of its world, subtly examining the difference in nature vs. nurture on either side of the city’s walls through Pavi, a vagabond youth with a mysterious past and a cat-monkey named Geet who follows her around everywhere.
And yes, there are definitely some familiar beats Seven Havens builds on; Pavi’s first friend in Ellora is a young Bender Brigade (think a draft-based militia for all benders) squad leader named Jae, who has more than a few shades of Sokka built into his air bending DNA. And that’s not all; there’s a slightly disgruntled military leader who acts as a paternal presence for the main crew of characters, hints of underlying conspiracies – and as the trailer gives away, at least a passing mention of the Order of the White Lotus, ensuring that while Seven Havens might look and sound quite different (with its pastel colors and swelling, electronic-tinged score) than the original, the DNA of its iconic predecessors are still alive and well under the mystery-and-tragedy-laden surface of this new story.
Seven Havens also follows in suit with the first seasons of its predecessors, in how patient Seven Havens is with its storytelling; the first six episodes are surprisingly vertical, with only a few major events driving the plot across the half-dozen episodes – which feature everything from slow-motion action scenes, to trippy, unsettling dream sequences, a Neon Genesis Evangelion-esque metaphysical monstrosity – and of course, lots of characters talking while they’re eating, a familiar storytelling blend that works, but feels so densely packed at times it can lose its characters amongst the historical bits it is constantly explaining (which, as always, remains some of the most engrossing, allusive world building in American fiction). There’s just so much to detail, from the mystery of what happened in the 200 years since we left this world, to the mysteries and conflicts that are building in the present (a world that hates and fears the potential return of the Avatar, I might add), that it bogs down episodes a bit, removing some of the fun, more immature elements of the original pair of series, for something that occasionally feels a bit overwhelmed by its own density.
Regardless, when Avatar: Seven Havens does take the time to slow down, one can already see the potential starting to catalyze; the dynamic between the show’s main characters is impeccable – even if, at times, it feels like these young characters talk like adults, in ways I don’t recall The Last Airbender or The Legend of Korra ever getting). But Pavi, who is ostensibly nine, talks with such emotional maturity and clarity that it occasionally becomes distracting; she’s still a strong main character, one defined by her grit and slowly-emerging confidence, which really starts to come to life when the series gets past its nearly two-episode-long preamble and begins to start pushing slowly forward into its main narrative.
Will Avatar: Seven Havens be able to maintain that careful, meticulous pace as it begins to show some of its bigger cards with the show’s connection to its own past, present, and future? With some of its characters falling into the lighter, thinner pile in the first half-dozen episodes, it remains to be seen whether Avatar: Seven Havens is going to be able to find that harmonic balance between theme, character, and setting that has made it such an iconic franchise over the past two decades; but with a strong cast of personalities and a clear sense of direction, I’m intrigued to see Avatar: Seven Havens build on its own foundation over the course of its planned 26-episode run. Bring on the lotus fritters!
Other thoughts/observations:
- Looking for episodic reviews of Avatar: Seven Havens? My reviews of the first three episodes will be available this weekend, including the first episode, “On the Horizon”, this morning.