Long ago, Nickelodeon launched one of its most enduring properties with “Avatar: The Last Airbender” way back in 2005. A hundred years (give or take) passed, and now Netflix is ready to air Season 2 of its live-action take on the beloved cartoon.
For co-showrunner/writer Christine Boylan and fellow EP/director Jabbar Raisani, they see the source material as a piece of mythology from which to pull.
“In the writers’ room, we look at this as historical fantasy; we look at it as a legend, as a myth. Like all legends and myths, you keep telling the story. It’s the reason ‘Hadestown’ works,” Boylan told TheWrap at the Season 2 premiere on Tuesday. “You keep retelling the story because it’s always meaningful in the time that we’re in. The world will always have challenges and we’re always going to need people to dig in and try to meet those challenges. This is just our retelling of this legend, there will be more, I’m sure, in the future.”
The pair was joined on the red carpet by stars Gordon Cormier, Kiawentiio, Ian Ousley, Miya Cech, Dallas Liu, Elizabeth Yu, Momona Tamada, Miyako, Thalia Tran, Matthew Yang King, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Daniel Dae Kim, as well as Dee Bradley Baker, Jessie Flower and Gaten Matarazzo. However, unlike most shows in their sophomore seasons, “Avatar” filmed Seasons 2 and 3 back-to-back.
“It was back-to-back for the actors, but for us, it was all at the same time,” Boylan explained, as Raisani added: “While we were filming Season 2, we would shoot in the morning, lunch was a meeting about Season 3, then you shoot the second half of the day, then you watch a cut from Season 2 at night and then you’re working on scripts at night as well.”
“I have network training, so when you’ve trained on network shows but you love to write this higher-level kind of genre, those two things go well together,” Boylan further noted. “I’m grateful for the 22-episode seasons I’ve gotten to do… but we didn’t sleep for like two years.”
The fan event at The Autry Museum of the American West across the street from the Los Angeles Zoo in Griffith Park also featured a dozen food trucks, an inflatable rock for Earthbenders-in-training, tattoos, concession stands, photo ops and commemorative Appa hats.
“Avatar: The Last Airbender” Season 2 premieres Thursday on Netflix.
