Albert Kim, who replaced creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, is handing over the series to colleagues Christine Boylan and Jabbar Raisani.
Sources say Kim’s intention was to lay the foundation for season one of Avatar: The Last Airbender after stepping in for the beloved franchise’s creators. Given the long turnaround time in crafting the series — Netflix ordered it in 2018, the creators left in late 2020 and the show didn’t debut until February 2024 — sources say Kim was ready to move on to new opportunities.
Co-executive producer Christine Boylan and exec producer/director Jabbar Raisani — both of whom were hired by Kim — will take over as the drama’s third showrunners for the previously announced second and third seasons.
I think critics are being a bit dramatic. ATLA Book 1 had bumps and slow episodes, and some very similar flaws people pave over looking back (like Sokka being a chick magnet).
I wouldn’t care if the issues where just bumps or some slow episodes. The problem is that the live action has some very fundamental issues like a glaring lack of character development and generally poor story telling, which are things the original excelled at.
Just watching the live action remake and trying to tune out the original as much as I could, I found most characters to be very flat and superficial. Combined with the often very cringy dialog I found it really hard to emotionally connect with or care about the characters.
It’s a problem that lots of live action shows have nowadays, not just adaptions. Usually character writing gets better in the second season when the writers have a better grasp on what their actors are good at.