The real reason Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2 is shorter than season 1

If you’ve dipped into Netflix’s big-budget live-action take on ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender,’ you might have clocked something odd with Season 2—there are only seven episodes, not the eight that were originally planned. This isn’t some mysterious creative decision either; it’s more a case of Netflix doing what Netflix does best: controlling the purse strings and the schedule.

Why Only Seven Episodes?

Executive producer Christine Boylan explained the whole thing in a recent chat with SFX magazine (flagged up by GamesRadar). In her words:

'Netflix gives very little real estate when it comes to episodes. We have seven episodes this time round, and while we wrote eight, cutting that down forced us to focus in on key themes. So while we knew we couldn't include everything, fans can certainly expect to see elements of the fan-favourite episode "The Tales Of Ba Sing Se" throughout the series.'

If you’re keeping score at home, the original animated series kicked off with roughly 18 to 20 episodes for its second season (Book Two: Earth), and each of those was about 24 minutes long. By comparison, the new live-action episodes nearly double the runtime—with each instalment running between 45 minutes and well over an hour. That does soften the blow a bit, but still, chopping a whole episode at script stage is a classic streaming-era move.

What Made the Cut?

For those nervy about what storylines survived Netflix’s axe, co-executive producer and director Jabbar Raisani gave a bit of reassurance. He said they made sure to keep the big, defining moments:

'There are certain episodes we knew we couldn't cut. "Zuko Alone," for example, we knew had to be in there, and it was such an honour to be able to direct that episode too. The thing is there’s never enough time to do everything one-to-one, but we try and draw as much inspiration as possible from every aspect of Avatar: The Last Airbender, be it the comics, novels or the show, and we hope that this live-action version can drum up excitement for these other aspects of ATLA and newcomers to the series will go off and explore them.'

So: no, not every iconic arc or beloved animated detour made it in, but the essentials—like the ‘Zuko Alone’ storyline—are there. And for fans of the episode ‘The Tales Of Ba Sing Se,’ you’ll find its DNA sprinkled throughout, even though it’s not a direct adaptation.

Who’s Back, What’s New?

• The Earthbender legend herself, Toph, shows up properly in Season 2 and features in a major way.
• The new batch of episodes landed on Netflix on 25 June.

This was originally reported by Anubhav Chaudhry for SuperHeroHype.