Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 Already Has Fans Annoyed (And They Have A Point)

The original "Avatar: The Last Airbender" is one of the most beloved animated series of all time. Thus, when Netflix decided to enter the live-action "Last Airbender" game after a horrendously bad first attempt by M. Night Shyamalan, skepticism was high.

Unfortunately, the live-action TV show version of "Avatar: The Last Airbender," like Shyamalan's "Last Airbender" movie, has so far failed to capture the essence of the cartoon. Sure, the first season is faithful to the plot of the animated show, but as our own Jeremy Mathai put it in his review of season 1, it still feels like it's trying to "fit a round peg into a square hole" — forcing an inherently animated story into a bland, realistic world.

Now, with season 2 on the way, the issues with this remake seem to be growing exponentially. The season 2 trailer introduces the fan-favorite Toph (Miya Cech), but there's also something different about Aang (Gordan Cormier). It may be hard to notice, but if you concentrate really hard and maybe tilt your head or squint your eyes, you may notice that the titular Airbender looks considerably older.

Indeed, as soon as season 2's poster dropped, fans immediately took to social media to share their disbelief at how much more mature Cormier seems, so much so that he's no longer remotely convincing as the silly 12-year-old he's meant to be playing. One person joked that Aang "got that 'Stranger Things' aging," in reference to how the cast of Netflix's smash-hit show stopped looking like convincing teenagers years ago, while another individual compared Cormier as Aang to Carlos the "12-year-old" from "The Benchwarmers." There were also many people who (not unfairly) noted that Aang now appears to be more grown-up than everyone else in the show's main cast despite being the youngest.

This is why animation is so hard to remake in live-action. After all, you never need to worry about your voice actors aging when you can just draw their characters exactly the same for years on end.

All jokes about little Aang suddenly looking like a grown-ass man aside, though, this particular fumble only exacerbates the biggest problem with Netflix's "Avatar: The Last Airbender": It's a show that desperately wants to work as both an expensive live-action fantasy epic and a redo of a cartoon for kids.

This issue was obvious throughout the show's first season, which suffered from a mismatch of tones as it tried to maintain the original animated series' silliness while also telling a darker and more mature version of the same story. Stranger still, the live-action "Last Airbender" series removes pivotal character traits as well, which inadvertently makes it feel simpler rather than more complex.

As one person put it on Twitter/X, Aang looking significantly older in season 2 similarly clashes with the character's behavior. You see, it's important not only to the character but the series itself that Aang acts like an immature 12-year-old. The whole point of "Last Airbender" is that it's a story about children having to navigate an adult world. 

Cormier's Aang, however, has never really gotten to be a child. He was already confusingly serious in the first season, but now, it's hard to imagine the character joking around and messing with weird little animals without the whole thing feeling off-putting and uncanny. And if this is no longer a story about kids dealing with a conflict for grown-ups, then what sets it apart from any other fantasy epic?

"Avatar: The Last Airbender" season 2 hits Netflix in early 2026.