Avatar: Seven Havens Is A Fantastical Mystery Box — And A Major Overcorrection
The Avatar saga breaks the world to move forward.
You couldn’t make a show like Avatar: The Last Airbender today. That has a lot to do with the untouchable magic of the series, but 2005 was also just a vastly different time. Avatar could break every mold for an animated series because it had the freedom to. Studios seemed to believe in animation far more than they do now; at the very least, they understood its place in the ecosystem. Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino were also never afraid to push at the boundaries of the world they meticulously built — ironically, that same fearlessness has only come back to bite them 20 years later.
Avatar’s success was a double-edged sword: with the bar set so high, fans’ standards were impossible to meet. The waning respect for animated shows with similar ambition also proved nearly fatal to The Last Airbender’s direct sequel, The Legend of Korra. The next chapter of the Avatar saga should have been an even bigger phenomenon, not the forgotten stepchild that took the franchise to untenable lows. Konietzko and DiMartino defended each of their choices to the letter, from Korra’s turn-of-the-century influences, to its attempts to cut ties with The Last Airbender. But the ghost of regret hangs subtly over the Avatar World, even now. The only way forward, to the next chain in the broken Avatar Cycle, was to cleave that world in two.
Actually — as the title of the third Avatar series, Seven Havens, suggests — the universe we knew and loved is far more splintered these days. The next chapter of the beloved saga is set hundreds of years beyond the events of The Legend of Korra, after a cataclysm sends society back to the Dark Ages. What’s left of the Four Nations are now split into seven small kingdoms called havens, each isolated from the other, with its citizens bracing constantly against a never-ending barrage of sandstorms.
We’re told this is the work of Avatar Korra. In a world where select individuals can “bend” certain elements (air, water, earth, or fire), the Avatar — a reincarnated spirit appointed to keep the world in balance — can control all four. Korra’s early days as the Avatar were unmitigatedly hard. For every good thing she brought about (like the Harmonic Convergence, which brought the previously extinct airbenders back to the world), she caused twice as many existential headaches.
Seven Havens reveals that her end was more ruinous than her beginning: in her twilight years, she unleashed the cataclysm and doomed the world to darkness and despair. Most of the tech that was slowly, surely bringing the Four Nations into a steampunk utopia was destroyed; ditto for the records of literally every event in history. (For the more seasoned fans tuning in to Seven Havens, that little tidbit should make your ears perk up. Records are often destroyed to destabilize societies. Are we returning to a realm decimated by a power-mad Avatar, or compromised by a supernatural conspiracy?)
In Seven Havens, Korra is the elephant-rhino in the room.
It’s into this mystery that not one, but two new Avatars are born. Pavi (Saheli Khan) wanders the desert wastelands on the outskirts of Ellora, totally alone save for her trusty cat-monkey, Geet (Dee Bradley Baker — some things never change). She’d be a regular Disney Princess if she wasn’t also so refreshingly weird: Seven Havens shows us what a whimsical little girl who lives alone and only talks to bugs and trees and rocks (!) would really, truly look like, and it might be the best characterization we’ve seen in an Avatar in a long time. Sorry to Korra, but her brash demeanor took a lot of getting used to after spending so long with the adorably impish Aang — and Konietzko and DiMartino seem well aware of that.
As Pavi reunites with her long-lost twin, the bending prodigy Nisha (Aishu Devan), Seven Havens feels utterly self-conscious about how everything went down in The Legend of Korra. The new series bakes the fan-forged scrutiny against Korra into the very fabric of its story, which would be interesting if Seven Havens wasn’t also totally disinterested in answering the questions we’re all shouting at the screen. Why would Korra destroy the world? How have 200 years passed since she disappeared forever? Konietzko and DiMartino spoke to a desire to craft a mystery box with Seven Havens. It’s a shame that they’ve taken that to mean “ignore your most fascinating plot point while filling the audience up on far less tantalizing subplots.” The series moves with the surety of a 22-episode season when it’s got less than half the time. The pacing issues will be palpable for those anxious for answers.
Despite the charm of its twin Avatars, Seven Havens feels a little underbaked.
It’s strange to encounter a legacy show that wants to put so much distance between itself and the stories that came before. Aside from the obvious — the bending, the animal hybrids, and one big Easter egg drop that comes halfway through the season — Seven Havens only bears glancing connections to the Avatar mythos. Its animation and art style also leave a bit to be desired. It invokes Netflix shows like Voltron and She-Ra more than the gorgeous, sweeping specificity of The Last Airbender, in looks as well as feel. It’s also a Korra overcorrection in every way imaginable: the series caught some flak for courting an older audience with its emphasis on angst, romance, and life-or-death stakes. Seven Havens swings the pendulum farther back than even The Last Airbender might have tread. Its cutesy humor and young protagonists make it perfect for a much younger audience — though once its central mystery begins to heat up, the series does wade into darker waters.
That Pavi and Nisha are hiding in plain sight, training under a captain of the Brigade that defends Ellora, gives Seven Havens most of its propulsion. Early episodes oscillate between team-building hijinks and the slow, unsteady build of more adult plot points. Our Avatars notably have amnesia, which sows distrust between themselves and those that claim to be their allies. Seven Havens is at its best when it leans on the tension and paranoia, and it gets a bit better when a malevolent red specter starts possessing Elloran warriors in the hopes of drawing Pavi and Nisha out. The series has the makings of a promising fantasy show, but its shortcomings reaffirm just how difficult it is — maybe even impossible — for even the original Avatar creators to recreate their own magic.
