Avatar: The Last Airbender. Miyako as Toph in season 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
KATIE YU/NETFLIX
It’s been a bit noteworthy that a show supposedly as high-profile as Avatar: The Last Airbender has not hit #1 on Netflix’s top 10 list since season 2 arrived. Now, that is correlating with actual viewership numbers, and we can see why. It’s not good news.
According to new figures via What’s On Netflix, Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2 lost 58% of its viewership compared to season 1 over the same time period. That’s the same sort of crash that Beef season 2 saw when that Emmy-winning series returned. Avatar, however, is not an anthology, bringing back the cast and continuing to adapt the famed animated series.
How will this affect season 3? Well, in a normal situation, it may spell disaster for a series, especially one so reliant on pricey VFX. However, Avatar: The Last Airbender was previously renewed for both seasons 2 and 3 at the same time, and the two seasons were shot back-to-back. Right when season 2 arrived, there was a production notice that filming had ended on season 3. So that’s done and dusted. No matter the drop, the show will see its conclusion, adapting the final book of the original series. Though there has been some rather bizarre talk about potentially continuing on the story past season 3 and outside of the source material. That…seems unlikely. So if this is doing anything, it’s not putting season 3 in jeopardy, but maybe this potential season 4 that’s being bounced around.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rotten Tomatoes
Reception to Netflix’s rendition of The Last Airbender has always been tepid. The series has a 63% critic score and a 62% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. In season 2, however, audience scores dropped from a 70% to a 54%, indicating a level of dissatisfaction. It has also been almost 2.5 years between season 1 and season 2 of the show, an eye-rolling amount of time that is especially not great for a younger-skewing audience. The good news, however, is that because of the back-to-back filming, season 3 will arrive much more quickly than season 2.
What else went wrong? There are complaints ranging from certain elements left out of the season that were key in the original series. The VFX has often been mocked in social media clips as looking subpar. There are a lot of jokes about how Aang, meant to be a 12-year-old, has aged dramatically between seasons, with actor Gordon Cormier growing about two feet during the filming gap.
It’s just not a good situation all around, but this is one of those series that almost had to be finished, given the three-season source material and Netflix’s investment in the project. This is why season 2 and season 3 were double-greenlit, as canceling a show like this, no matter its second season slump issues, would have been ridiculous, even by Netflix standards.
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