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It’s the Perfect Time to Discover Avatar: The Last Airbender

Spend your Labor Day weekend watching a 15-year-old Nickelodeon show aimed at children. You won’t regret it.

I’m a TV critic who’s constantly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of new television there is to consume; I can’t imagine how the average viewer must feel. Currently, 10 episodes of a new space opera, six episodes of a Civil War drama, a mini series about chess, an adaptation of a beloved novel, and the fourth installment of an anthology series are all vying for my attention—and those are just the ones I’m interested in watching, not the ones that I’ve already written off as being not worth my time.

Yet time and again, I’ve been frustrated by television in 2020. Seasons are bloated and meandering; character arcs are picked up and then abandoned; episodes don’t seem to cohere around any single idea, let alone a good idea; and often, shows are more interested in playing out their premise for as long as possible than they are in telling a story that has a compelling arc and a stunning end. Too many current shows seem to have been greenlit based on someone’s slightly deranged moodboard, or a movie idea spun into a series pitch; not enough are dramatically paced, well-written, coalescing around strong characters and a powerful theme or two. So it was a delight to spend some of the doldrums of August marathoning Avatar: The Last Airbender—a show so good, it puts prestige dramas, expensive streaming series, and wry comedies to shame. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it took the beloved Nickelodeon series’ arrival on Netflix to finally get me to watch its compact, elegant three seasons, which are purportedly intended for children but somehow also managed to make me cry like a baby. Anyway, I’m late to the party—Avatar premiered in 2005—but I’m not alone: After debuting on the platform in May, the series stayed in Netflix’s top 10 for 61 days, topping a previous record held by Ozark. 

For an animated half-hour that lasted just three seasons, this is a lot of meta-text—but if you’ve seen it, it’s not surprising. The series, from creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, introduces viewers to a fantasy world guided by fully non-European tradition, where certain powerful individuals can manipulate one of the four elements. The Avatar is a particularly powerful individual who has the ability to master all four elements; as their title implies, one is reincarnated every generation, holding all of those past lives inside them.

SARAYA, Sonia, 2020. Disponível em: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/09/avatarthe-last-airbender-netflix. Acesso em 24 mar. 2021.