Avatar Studios is now expanding the Avatar: The Last Airbender franchise with new spinoffs and sequel series projects, and the co-creator behind it all has explained to ComicBook what they looked for in choosing an Avatar to explore for potential expanded stories and worlds. Avatar: Seven Havens has kicked off a new era of the franchise, and with it has already made waves with not only one, but two new Avatars at the center of this new adventure. But all of these stories have got to start somewhere.
With the premiere of Avatar: Seven Havens and recent confirmation of a new Avatar Kuruk: Wave of Chaos series now in the works, ComicBook got to ask franchise co-creator Michael DiMartino about what he and fellow creator Bryan Konietzko look for in a potential Avatar to explore with a new spinoff or sequel release. As DiMartino explains it, the duo “…were very conscious of making sure each project felt different in genre and tone style and everything” while developing multiple Avatar Studios projects at the same time.
“When Brian [Konietzko] and I came to start Avatar Studios, since we were developing multiple things at once, we were very conscious of making sure each project felt different in genre and tone style and everything,” DiMartino began. Explaining that when approaching the work for Avatar: Seven Havens, the two of them knew it was going to be the “big sequel to the…not exactly a trilogy, but maybe it is now” story of Aang, Korra, and now the new main duo at the center of the sequel series, Pavi and Nisha. As a result, they were looking for it to feel “big.”
“It had to feel feel big, it had to feel epic, had to feel like something we had never done before,” DiMartino explained about breaking down Avatar: Seven Havens story. “So sort of literally blowing up the world to create these Seven Havens, and then we soon hit upon the idea of the two Avatars and how that could open up a lot of really cool storytelling possibilities.” The co-creator even went into why this sequel series is actually set so far after the events of The Legend of Korra.
Explaining that the idea of setting Avatar: Seven Havens hundreds of years after the events of The Legend of Korra was one of the first things the creator duo had settled on, it was because of an earlier idea they head of questioning, “What would the Avatar world look like in the future” along with giving the animated series “a little more fantasy vibe.” The co-creator also further went into how they develop the shows overall, “We usually start with what’s the state of the world now when we talk about different eras of the Avatar, and then usually the Avatar character comes out of those discussions.”
With this in mind of how the duo ultimately constructs their current view of the Avatar world first before then building out the story, it seems like they figure out what each Avatar at the center of it after setting the foundation. It’s how they ultimately settled on the story and dual main characters for Avatar: Seven Havens (now streaming with Paramount+), and it’s how they’re choosing which stories to explore. As long as they all feel different in everything from other projects.
What are you hoping to see next from Avatar Studios? What kind of Avatars would you want to see with spinoffs in the future? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments!
