"Avatar: The Last Airbender" Season 2 — Netflix's Live-Action Adaptation Still Can't Find Its Footing

Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender adaptation still doesn't understand why the original Nickelodeon cartoon was so beloved. Season two brings back nearly all of season one's core problems without fixing them. The main culprit, once again, is pacing. The animated series, aimed at a middle-school audience with fast, funny 20-minute episodes, gets crammed here into a seven-episode, hour-long, event-packed structure. This doesn't produce a more mature interpretation — it just creates a heavier, more solemn version, which is precisely the worst thing you could do to the source material.

Twelve-year-old Avatar Aang (Gordon Cormier), who's learned waterbending from Katara (Kiawentiio) and Sokka (Ian Ousley) of the Water Tribe, spends the season traveling through the Earth Kingdom. He needs an earthbending teacher to master all four elements, and joining the group is the blind girl Toph (Miyako), the liveliest and most mischievous figure yet. Meanwhile, as the Fire Nation's forces spread through the Earth Kingdom, our heroes end up caught in the propaganda, surveillance, and secret-police triangle of the walled city of Ba Sing Se. This is one of the original series' most memorable arcs — its potential is undeniable.

The problem is exactly how that potential gets squandered. Instead of bright colors and quick jokes, we're stuck with long, slow dialogue scenes shot in the dark; there's almost no humor to be found. Cormier does what he can, but he's never given the comedic room he needs to carry Aang's childlike charm. The scene where Bumi (Utkarsh Ambudkar) explains why he can't teach Aang, which in the cartoon is a chase sequence that wraps up in 45 seconds of exposition, becomes a static three-minute conversation in a dark room in the show. Nobody — especially 10-year-olds — enjoys being told a story this way.

Still, there's one strong note worth recording: Zuko (Dallas Liu). The son of the Fire Lord, trying to live under an assumed name in Ba Sing Se with his uncle Iroh (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee), is starting to spark the first flickers of redemption. Caught between the desire to prove himself to his father and his sister Azula's (Elizabeth Yu) cruelty, this teenage figure is the season's most compelling character study. Unfortunately, since the supporting cast around him isn't written well enough, Zuko has to carry that weight almost entirely on his own.

In the end, Netflix's Avatar doesn't sink to the level of M. Night Shyamalan's infamously bad film adaptation — its faithful casting choices at least clear that bar. But it's hard to say it has a reason to exist beyond capitalizing on a popular brand. Lacking charisma, lacking pace, and perpetually dimly lit, this adaptation presents "not being a cartoon" as if that were a virtue in itself — which it isn't.