In 2020, the winds of change for Avatar—the animated franchise, not the James Cameron movies about blue aliens—began to blow. During the pandemic, animators and creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, who met as students at the Rhode Island School of Design, began mapping out the future for their beloved universe. It included not one, but two new shows.
They first made waves in 2005 with their hit Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender, a martial arts fantasy about a boy who can harness the four elements of earth, wind, fire, and water. They followed it with the equally acclaimed The Legend of Korra, about a brash young woman who could do the same, that aired between 2012-2014. When die-hard fans assumed Avatar had no more stories to tell, DiMartino and Konietzko secretly hammered away on what was next.
The future is here, in the new series Avatar: Seven Havens on Paramount+. And that’s not the only show on the way. As the creators sketched out the character to be the next “Avatar” (that’s the chosen-by-fate, once-a-generation hero who can harness the elements), they resurrected ideas they’ve had for decades but couldn’t execute until now.
Setting a story in a society built atop the ruins of another stoked their imaginations for years, but the time for it wasn’t right. That’s when we really started digging in.” Avatar: Seven Havens is the third and newest series in the Avatar universe, with executive producer Ethan Spaulding and co-executive producer Sehaj Sethi. Set more than two hundred years after The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, the show follows an adventurous girl named Pavi (voiced by Saheli Khan) who hides in obscurity because of her power to manipulate, or “bend,” the elements.
But Pavi’s destiny changes when she meets her twin sister Nisha (Aishu Devan), a skilled student who can bend the elements just like her. For the first time, an Avatar story will reckon with two living Avatars at once. How and why this happens are the questions driving the new series forward.
Unlike the previous shows where the “Avatar” was a mythic hero, Seven Havens casts them as persona non grata—they are a condemned figure deemed responsible for ruining the world. So it’s truly a matter of life and death that two young sisters must keep their powers secret as they walk among the ruins of a fallen civilization. But just because the world is broken doesn’t mean it’s too late to fix it.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
