Avatar fans have plenty to be excited about. During CinemaCon last week, it was announced that Dave Bautista and Eric Nam would lend their voices for the upcoming animated film. As for the live-action series, it became a hit on Netflix, prompting the streaming service to renew the series for a second and third season. Last night, attendees got the chance to see their favorite cast members on the PaleyFest LA stage in Hollywood.
April 14th marked the third day of The Paley Center for Media’s TV festival, PaleyFest LA, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The Avatar event started with the first season finale of the show, and once it was over, the cast and crew came to the stage.
Attending the panel for Avatar: The Airbender were Gordon Cormier (Aang), Kiawentiio (Katara), Ian Ousley (Sokka), Dallas Liu (Zuko), Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (Iroh), Arden Cho (June), Elizabeth Yu (Azula), Albert Kim (showrunner, executive producer, and writer), and Jabbar Raisani (executive producer and director). The panel was moderated by Perri Nemiroff (senior producer at Collider).
Katara is a waterbender who helps Aang on his journey to becoming the Avatar, a powerful being who can help save the world. She has grown a lot from someone who was struggling with her powers as a waterbender into someone who can take on Zuko and the leader of the Northern Water Tribe.
“I think the new confidence that Katara has now going into second season and third is super exciting,” Kiawentiio said during the PaleyFest panel. “I mean, I’m hoping that we get to see more of that and just see more of us together in general.”
Zuko has a close relationship with Uncle Iroh, and they are on a journey together to look for the Avatar, aka Aang.
“I think in our show you really see how close Uncle Iroh and Zuko really are compared to the animated series,” Liu said. “And so I think carrying that over into future scenes of our show… if you watch the original, you know how big some of those moments are at the ending [of season 2] and the beginning of season three. So I’m really stoked for Uncle Iroh and Zuko’s moments in those seasons because I think it’ll hit that much harder because of what we built up in season one.”
In the show, we see Azula having ambitions, and the actor wants to see how that will carry out in the next season.
“My answer would probably be towards the end of season one, I think Azula gains her freedom from the Fire Nations,” Yu said. “She is able to finally reign terror over the rest of the world. I’m excited to finally be able to interact with anyone.”
At the end of the first season, Sokka and Princess Yue had a romantic relationship, but it was cut short when she sacrificed herself to save the world. As a result, this devastated the young Water Tribe member.
“I think for Sokka, he’s just gone through his first catastrophic emotional situation with a love interest, I guess, and he’s had that obviously with family,” Ousley said. “But I think that there’s a lot that he’s going to have to work through that got brought to the surface emotionally.”
Appa is a fan-favorite flying creature, and Cormier wants to see more of their special bond in future seasons.
“In episode one, we see Aang’s relationship with Appa for a little bit,” Cormier said. “And I feel like we’ll get to dive into that more in season two and three. That would be just so amazing.”
