The Last Airbender’ Star Dallas Liu Is Burning Up

Dallas Liu (Courtesy of Dallas Liu)

JJ Geiger

Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender star Dallas Liu knows fans are furious with his character, Zuko, after the events of Season 2.

At the end of Season 2, which premiered on June 25, Zuko has renounced his heinous ways of the Fire Nation, opting to live a peaceful – but also masked superhero – life in the Earth Kingdom, Ba Sing Se. In the finale, Zuko and Katara (Kiawentiio) share a heart-to-heart about their loss and heartbreak at the hands of the Fire Nation. Zuko seems to have redeemed himself until he makes up with his villainous sister, Azula (Elizabeth Yu), and betrays Katara and her friends – Aang (Gordon Cormier) and Sokka (Ian Ousley). It is one of the biggest – and most heartbreaking – twists for viewers who had seen Zuko’s character growth be thrown away at the last second.

The 24-year-old actor actually enjoys watching fans’ reactions to the twist because it shows that he’s doing a good job portraying this young, misguided character.

“That’s exactly how Zuko’s story is supposed to go,” Liu says over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “He’s flip-flopping and trying to figure out who he wants to be this season. He’ll do something bad, then do something good – and he’s torn. That’s a great representation of where his mind is at. It might not necessarily be spot-on with the cartoon, but it is, in my opinion, interesting to be confused as an audience member.”

The live-action Netflix series, based on the beloved, popular, and award-winning Nickelodeon animated series, was first greenlit in 2018 and filmed from late 2021 to mid-2022. Liu, who was 20 when filming began, had to wait three years until the first season premiered. When it finally dropped in 2024, the series was a massive success, drawing in 21.2 million views in its first four days and hitting the Top 10 shows in 92 countries/regions. Liu was praised for his role as Zuko, the disgraced, vengeful prince of the Fire Nation, whose goal of securing the right-hand man position next to his father, the Fire Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim), was to capture and kill the Avatar Aang.

When it was confirmed there would be a second and third season of the show, Liu felt the pressure going into filming, which began in October 2024 and ended in November 2025. There has never been a live-action version of the animated series beyond Season 1, so Liu would be the live-action blueprint for Zuko’s journey for those seasons. He also feels that those two seasons were the best of the animated series, especially for Zuko.

“That’s where it all happens for him,” Liu explains. “That’s where he gained the title of one of the best characters and best redemption arcs in animation history.”

He adds that he also felt the pressure because he was not satisfied with his performance for Season 1, which is shocking to hear, because it was three years later that he got to see and relive it. He began to question whether he had made the right decisions in certain scenes and to avoid social media and reviews, despite receiving applause and recognition for his acting. The team at Netflix had to tell him how much audiences liked Liu’s portrayal of the character.

“Coming into Season 2, there was more pressure to just be the better version of myself,” he admits. “It was really hard for me to grasp [the compliments] because what I was seeing, I was not pleased with. I wanted to be better, and I was hard on myself as I came into the season.”

He put the pressure on himself to be a better actor, taking on an acting coach and working closely with the on-set coach for his scenes. He looked back on Season 1, documenting the strengths he wanted to bring into Season 2 and what he wanted to leave out, and changing the approach for the role. He worked hard to bring the best acting he could for the character. He admits that he’s his own “worst critic.”

“Just because I love the character of Zuko so much,” He emphasizes. “He’s an extremely well-written character in both the animated series and live-action. To play Zuko is a big responsibility. There will always be pressure there, no matter what. The pressure this time for this season was that everyone loves Zuko, and so do I.”

Liu did a lot of “homework” to prep for the next season. Besides significantly increasing his martial arts discipline and training, he had begun watching more TV and film to find inspiration from others’ performances that fit Zuko. He also watched great analyses of Zuko’s character arc for each season of the animated series and applied them to the live-action series. Even on his days off, he would be studying Zuko and what made people love and hate him. He started seeing parallels between his own life and Zuko’s, especially the isolation they used to better themselves.

“If I wasn’t in school doing homework, I was doing martial arts – and it’s one of those sports that is very isolated,” Liu, who has a black belt in Shotokan karate, reflects. “You are your own opponent. You are your toughest opponent. That’s what it was. For Seasons 2 and 3, I thought about how I could be better than the version of myself yesterday, not just as an actor but as a human being. How can I be better? It became an obsession to better my craft every single day, trying to learn something new.”

He says isolating himself was not intentional. He laughs at the suggestion of method acting. He replies, “It was not intentional. It was purely my own personal battle happening in real life.”

For his role, Liu took inspiration from many of the actors he looked up to, including Jeremy Allen White, Austin Butler, and Robert Pattinson. He watched White’s intense performance in FX’s The Bear, complimenting the actor’s ability to showcase his anger and vulnerability while also trying to hide his emotions by appearing strong. Liu relays, “You see a lot of that in The Bear, which is awesome. And Robert Pattinson’s ability to transform fully into his characters is something I really wanted to emulate. It’s always hard to separate these different personalities and characters, but I make sure I take the time in the morning to get into character. Then, after work, take the time to get out of character. Creating those boundaries is really important when playing a character as intense as Zuko.”

Though Zuko still has anger issues and family trauma, this season revealed another side to the character – one where he lives a normal life. He flirts a bit with girls this season – two potential love interests. Liu did not see it that way while filming, but did when watching the season.

“I don’t think my approach was ever romantic,” Liu laughs. “It just played out that way naturally, which is really interesting to me. He’s only got his sister, but she hates him. Zuko goes off with his uncle at 13 or 14, so he doesn’t have any friends. He doesn’t communicate with people his own age. He’s probably experiencing some sort of feeling and doesn’t know what that feeling is. He just knows this is kindness and pure-hearted people love where people help trying to do the right thing.”

He chuckles at the idea of Zuko being a “ladies’ man” and exclaims, “It’s the editing.”

He adds, “Zuko is looking for a connection. While he has some connection to Iroh, it’s so wholesome that he’s experiencing all these things for the first time in Ba Sing Se. From an outside perspective, there are definitely scenes that could be taken in that [romantic] way.”

Liu is too attached to the character to see the fault in Zuko’s decision in the finale. It could be because he (and animated series fans) know what will happen in Season 3 and in future Avatar stories. He can understand from a fan’s point of view, especially those who haven’t seen the animated films or know what’s going to happen. He shouts with excitement when he learns I haven’t finished the animated series and don’t know what is going to happen. He suddenly empathizes with the intense reaction to the Season 2 finale.

“When I watched the cartoon as a kid, I had such a big reaction to the little plot twist at the end of Season 2,” he explains. “There’s a part of me that wants to always be righteous – just as a human being. But I obviously knew what was to come and understood why he did that in both the cartoon and the live-action. Zuko is a mama’s boy, and Azula knows that. He wants to be there for his sister back home, and they both experienced the trauma [of losing their mother]. There’s a lot of unspoken deep trauma bonding in that sense that led to that decision. It hurts me that Zuko chose to do that, even though he was on the road to being good. He was doing so well. He was trying to be there for Katara. If it hadn’t come down to Zuko and Azula being separated to be by themselves, things might have been different. He’s hard to read.”

When asked how Zuko could trust her, Liu shrugs and responds, “It’s family! Sometimes you don’t need to. It’s like a ‘ride or die’ kind of thing. Stubborn loyalty.”

He admits that those two scenes in the finale – the conversation with Katara and the separate conversation with Azula – tore him apart as an actor – and as a person. After the final scene with Yu, he went back to his trailer and broke down in tears, the kind of tears where “you’re hitting your chest and having trouble breathing.”

Liu explains, “Zuko has never really openly talked about his mom, even with Uncle Iroh. That was a big step for Zuko. That was difficult. As an actor, it hit a different nerve inside my body.”

Though Season 3 is set to be the final season for the series, Liu doesn’t feel ready to say goodbye to his character just yet. He hopes to continue playing the character, especially the story of finding Zuko and Azula’s mother and of Zuko reconciling with Azula and his father.

“I would love to just be Zuko again,” Liu sighs. “Whether he’s the Fire Lord or the story of him being the Blue Spirit for his days off, the Fire Nation as a whole is so layered and interesting. There could be a beautiful story to bring hope. The Fire Nation on the outside looks like it’s got it together, but everyone knows there’s so much corruption, evil, and negativity internally. It would be cool to see the Fire Nation evolve into something beautiful under Zuko and Azula’s leadership.”

Liu is excited for everyone to watch Season 3 and possibly be “unmad” at his character. Knowing that I, and many others who haven’t seen the animated series, am approaching Season 3 blindly, he continues to shrug, while laughing, “I don’t know. I’m excited for you to watch.”

“I’m just such a big fan of the show as a whole,” Liu shares. “There are so many things that could have been done if we had been given the time, but you work with what you got – and we did a pretty solid job at telling these characters’ stories.”

Check out Dallas Liu as Zuko in Season 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix. Season 3 is set to be released in 2027.