We are certainly living in a golden age of television, regardless of how you feel about the endless adaptations. The fact that we’re getting so many of them, and that they are as well funded as they are, is at least promising because some of them are producing quality work. Thirty years ago, science fiction, fantasy, and superhero television meant shows like seaQuest DSV, Earth 2, The Flash, Xena: Warrior Princess, and Sliders. I remember that live-action Flash series starring John Wesley Shipp, who would later play Dawson’s father on Dawson’s Creek. Budgets were lower and casts were largely filled with actors who weren’t household names. Now we have Lord of the Rings, Star Wars television series, HBO dropping Lanterns, The Last of Us and Fallout becoming prestige television, a Penguin spinoff, and Netflix turning Avatar: The Last Airbender into a live-action series, taking the animated Nickelodeon hit and trying to interpret its world better than M. Night Shyamalan did.

I didn’t grow up in the Avatar generation of Nickelodeon. I was right there for what I consider the greatest era of Nickelodeon, the beginning of SNICK and Nicktoons, and I rode that all the way through the ‘90s. Unfortunately, Avatar isn’t a ‘90s series. SpongeBob was just starting to become huge as I was trending away from Nickelodeon. But through gaming culture, and the fact that once you get online you can play with people from every age group and background, I kept running into people who recommended Avatar: The Last Airbender like it was the oxygen they needed to breathe. This was their franchise. This was their hill to die on. Eventually, I checked out Avatar and later its spinoff, The Legend of Korra. I wouldn’t say I loved the original enough to remember every little detail about these characters, and by then M. Night Shyamalan had already clouded and destroyed my vision of what this series could be, but Netflix’s adaptation has slowly been rebuilding that to some extent.

I’m a little concerned that as I click into Season 2, Netflix is already advertising that the final season is coming. It’s great that Seasons 2 and 3 were produced close together because one of the problems these streaming shows have is taking so long between seasons that they risk losing massive portions of their audience. But Season 2 runs only seven episodes, and it feels like we’re trying to get through this story and reach the end. Aang (Gordon Cormier) is trying to figure out earthbending and firebending, the two elements he hasn’t mastered, and over the course of the season he at least makes progress on one of them. He gains a new ally in Toph Beifong (Miyako Cech), a blind earthbender played by a sighted actress, which I’ll come back to. Meanwhile, conflict still comes from the Fire Nation, but not necessarily from Zuko (Dallas Liu), who is on a very different path this season. He’s been stuck out on his own learning what it is to have a soul, to have empathy, and to not spend every waking moment trying to live up to his father’s expectations of dictatorship. He still seems to be the chosen one, something that deeply frustrates his sister Azula (Elizabeth Yu).

It’s a connected season that takes us from point A to point B and clearly sets up the final battles to come. But it feels rushed. It feels like Netflix is squishing everything together. That’s becoming a pattern. Get in, get out, get it over with. Do we need another season? No, let’s make a movie instead. Heartstopper doesn’t need a final season, we’ll make a movie. Now there are questions about other Netflix shows getting similar treatment. I’m almost surprised Avatar isn’t ending with a movie, although perhaps the last time somebody tried making a live-action Avatar movie frightened everyone away from that idea. Three seasons still feels remarkably short for a franchise of this stature. Paramount recently gave Aang: The Last Airbender, its animated follow-up film, a bare-minimum theatrical Oscar-qualifying run before sending it to Paramount+, reducing what had once been intended as a theatrical release to something resembling a footnote. Meanwhile, Crunchyroll has demonstrated with franchises like Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man that anime audiences can translate into substantial theatrical business. Even PAW Patrol can pull people into theaters. So why does everyone seem so nervous about Avatar?

If people don’t know what to do with a franchise, are they adapting it simply because they know it has fans? Netflix seems unsure of what it wants from Avatar. Luckily, there are passionate people actually making the show, even though original Avatar creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko famously departed Netflix’s adaptation before the first season over creative differences. This is still a far better adaptation than Shyamalan’s live-action film. I just think Netflix is missing an opportunity to create a richer experience within this world and flesh out this ensemble in more meaningful ways. By ending it after three seasons, Netflix has put a clock on the storytelling. Is that because of the show’s quality, or because Netflix takes forever to make another season and then drops it whenever it fits into the schedule? There’s no consistency that tells audiences, two Junes from now, Avatar will be back. It’s just whenever it’s ready, find somewhere to put it.

I’m probably the wrong person to address whether Season 2 satisfies the hardcore fan base. For those who aren’t fanatics, or who only casually watched the animated series, I enjoyed these seven episodes. Did I love them? No. Like I said, it feels like we’re moving quickly through the plot so we can get to Season 3 and finish everything. I shouldn’t have to feel Netflix’s regret while I’m watching a show. When I watched the second season of One Piece, I felt like I was watching a series that believed it had five, six, or seven seasons ahead of it. It wasn’t racing toward its finale. Avatar feels like a show that was told by Netflix that it would have an ending, and that ending would be coming sooner rather than later. You can tell when a show believes it has the space to continue because it paces itself differently. Avatar feels lucky to be alive and constantly worried about its future. There should be a reason to make a live-action adaptation of something that was already pretty great. If you don’t know what that reason is, don’t adapt it.

The acting here is fine. Sometimes it’s over the top, but that’s okay because this is essentially a live-action adaptation of a cartoon with anime influences, so exaggerated performances aren’t necessarily out of place. One Piece inhabits that space as well. Gordon Cormier continues to make Aang easy to root for, with Kiawentiio as Katara and Ian Ousley as Sokka rounding out the central trio. Dallas Liu gets a different emotional journey as Zuko, while Daniel Dae Kim and Elizabeth Yu continue representing the increasingly complicated Fire Nation side of the story. I also enjoy seeing actors like Danny Pudi pop up in this world. But the major addition is Miyako Cech as Toph, and this is where the season gets complicated for me personally.

Toph is blind. Miyako Cech isn’t. The production did make a considerable effort toward authenticity, including working with blind consultant Joe Strechay, and Cech trained using contacts that completely blocked her vision. I appreciate that they didn’t just tell a sighted actress to close her eyes and wing it. There was thought and consultation behind the performance, and Toph’s ability to sense the world through vibrations in the earth is communicated effectively. But there are blind actors and actresses out there. I’m sure one of them would have loved the opportunity to step into one of the most famous blind roles in animation. Every time a character like this pops up, I wonder if sighted people think this is what I can do. Can I tilt my head and suddenly know everything happening around me? Is this my representation? There’s something a little Daredevil about it, and while I appreciate the effort Cech and Strechay put into making Toph work, authentic casting was still an opportunity sitting right there.

Ironically, the lack of blind representation on screen is made up for slightly by blind representation off screen because Ross Minor returns as the audio-description narrator. Ross is blind himself, making him authentically matched to a show that now features a major blind character, and he’s also become quite an advocate within audio description, particularly when it comes to accessibility in video games. I support Ross’s work in this field, and I think he delivers a lovely performance here. The audio description comes from Descriptive Video Works, with excellent writing from Conor DeWolf, who has proven that fantasy is very much his bag. He recently worked on House of the Dragon, and here he tackles airbending, waterbending, firebending, and earthbending rather well. Numerous fight sequences are brought to life through the description, along with the elaborate production design, fantasy costuming, environments, and the physical language surrounding Toph’s earthbending. There’s quite a bit for an audio-description team to juggle in this world, and they do it exceptionally well.

I don’t really have a lot of complaints about Avatar: The Last Airbender beyond the fact that I can feel that ticking clock. The showrunners clearly aren’t behaving like people who believe they have four, five, six, or seven seasons to explore this universe. Perhaps that’s the fundamental problem with the adaptation. Instead of simply translating the animated series into live action, maybe Netflix could have found richer stories within this universe, a little like what The Legend of Korra did. Every time Aang enters the spirit world, we’re reminded that other Avatars existed. There are generations of stories sitting there. Maybe the mistake was retelling this particular story instead of finding a new one and staking a claim on something that could exist alongside the animated series instead of forever being compared to it.

Still, if you liked Season 1, I don’t know why you wouldn’t like Season 2. It feels like a lateral move. And if you simply want a fantasy series, get started on Avatar: The Last Airbender because the premise is still pretty cool. You’ve got all these different forms of bending. In my day, we had Captain Planet. Earth, fire, wind, water, heart. When our powers combined, Captain Planet. Kids these days don’t have any heart. They just have earth, fire, air, and water. When their powers combine, well, nothing really happens. I guess they’ve never tried summoning Captain Planet. But they do have an Avatar, and Aang is pretty badass.

I just wish the people who keep trying to adapt Aang and the world in which he lives had more faith in these characters and this lore, hired people who understood what made the franchise special to begin with, and then gave them the space to actually bring these stories to life. Season 2 is enjoyable, the bending remains fun, and the audio description is superb, created by amazingly talented people who understand how to make this fantasy world accessible. Come for the bending, stay for the description.

Fresh: 7.3/10