Netflix subscribers will know that Aang has changed slightly in live-action, but is he the only Avatar to meet every original bender?
He’s goofy, talented, and totally wants to run away from his responsibilities – Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender just might be one of the greatest fantasy protagonists of all time.
Thanks to Netflix, his story has been realized all over again, neatly chopped up into eight episodes that take his adventures from animation to live-action.
Now that fans are digging back in, some are claiming that Aang is the only Avatar to meet every original bender. But is this true?
Is Aang the only Avatar to meet every original bender?
Fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender are up in arms after a viral Reddit post claimed that Aang is the only Avatar to have met all of the original benders.
According to the original books and the 2005 animation, each nation has its own original bender. For airbenders it was the sky bison, dragons for firebenders, and badgermoles for earthbenders.
Waterbenders are a little more difficult to quantify, with the element technically not having a specific kind. It’s widely speculated that The Moon counts as the original after Princess Yue identifies it as such.
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When it comes to Aang, the jury is out. “Since we know like 6 out of the other hundreds of Avatars. The answer is, yes. Though it doesn’t seem too special if we look at it this way,” one fan posted on Reddit.
Another countered: “The word ‘known’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Yes, technically, we have not seen any other Avatars interact with Tui & La, but assuming they never did is kinda a leap. Kyoshi, for example, lived to be over 200 years old. I’m sure she found the time to commune with Tui & La in some fashion.”
As stated in the thread, fans will only have met six of the hundreds of Avatars in the storyline, with only three of those – Kyoshi, Roku, and Kuruk – making it to the Netflix adaptation.
For hardened Avatar: The Last Airbender fans, the conclusive answer to this question is both yes and no. “Keyword here is ‘known’. We don’t know a lot of other avatars and we barely know anything about most of their lives, except for key moments. When dragons weren’t rare/considered extinct, it’s very likely other avatars met the original benders too,” one fan explains.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is now available to stream on Netflix – catch up with our full review here.
