Avatar: The Last Airbender Fans Have To Accept Netflix’s Live-Action Has 1 Big Advantage

Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2, episode 5.Though it’s widely regarded as inferior to the original animated show, Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender has one huge advantage over the 2005 series. Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender is simply not as acclaimed as the animated show it adapts. The original was one of the most universally acclaimed and best animated shows of all time. The live-action version is a good show, but the animated series set too high of a bar to surpass.

To its credit, Netflix’s The Last Airbender season 2 was a marked improvement on the first season. That’s partially because the show has tried to carve its own path and find new and meaningful ways to expand upon the original series. Several of The Last Airbender‘s characters got new storylines in season 2, such as Toph Beifong’s problems with her family and Katara’s new role as the Painted Lady.

One of the absolute best changes Netflix made to The Last Airbender‘s story actually went beyond making it a good adaptation. Near the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2, the live-action show made one big character change that was significantly better than the animated original. Jet (Sebastian Amoruso) is a fairly minor character in both versions of the show, but his live-action counterpart gets a much better ending to his story than he does in animation.

The Original Avatar: The Last Airbender Had An Ambiguous Ending To Jet’s Story

In Avatar: The Last Airbender Book 2, Jet and his Freedom Fighters cross paths with Zuko on the way to Ba Sing Se. Jet was trying to atone for his terrorism and be a better person, but he becomes obsessed with proving Zuko and Iroh are firebenders. Eventually, Jet gets arrested by the Dai Li, sent to Lake Laogai for brainwashing, and eventually helps Team Avatar find Lake Laogai and Appa.

Jet serves quite a few purposes in The Last Airbender Book 2. He’s a perfect foil to Zuko and his own redemption, he serves as the show’s way to explore the mysteries of the Dai Li and Lake Laogai’s brainwashing, and his own story is a great exploration of how old habits can keep people from growing and being redeemed. The only problem is that the ending of Jet’s story is, frankly, not great.

While they’re in Lake Laogai looking for Appa, Long Feng uses Jet’s brainwashing to force him to fight Aang. He eventually snaps out of it, but Long Feng eventually grievously wounds Jet. Katara tries to heal him and fails, and then The Last Airbender is essentially done with Jet. His story ends very abruptly, he gets almost no resolution to his rocky road to redemption, and he’s essentially reduced to a plot device to show off Lake Laogai’s brainwashing.

The main problem with Jet’s ending is that it’s not even clear if he died or not. Toph says that Jet was lying when he said he would be okay, but he doesn’t actually die on-screen. Part of the reason Jet’s Avatar death is so vague is that the animated series was intended for children, so they couldn’t show him dying explicitly. Still, it was such a jarring and ambiguous ending to his story that it was directly referenced in Book 3, when the Gaang watches a play depicting the show’s events and Sokka says it’s “really unclear” whether Jet died.

Jet’s Death In Live Action Far Surpasses His Fate In The Animated Last Airbender

Image via Netflix

Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2 makes a few changes to Jet’s story, for better and for worse. Instead of struggling to be better, Jet is still focused on getting retribution against the Fire Nation and even hatches a plan to incite a riot against refugees from the Fire Nation. Likewise, instead of being captured and brainwashed by the Dai Li, Katara enlists Jet’s help to find the Spirit Library, and he offers to accompany and protect Team Avatar.

It’s there, in the Spirit Library, that the live-action The Last Airbender makes a massive improvement to Jet’s story. While talking to Katara, Jet reveals that the Duke, a member of his Freedom Fighters, died in his arms during a Fire Nation ambush. It’s a great moment with some great acting from Sebastian Amoruso, and it dives into the reason Jet is clinging so tightly to his hatred for firebenders and letting it get in the way of his redemption.

Most importantly, after Wan Shi Tong begins attacking Team Avatar, Jet offers to stay back and buy them enough time to escape. He ends up sacrificing his own life to drop a skeleton onto the owl spirit, and The Last Airbender makes it very clear that Jet didn’t make it out of the Spirit Library alive. Jet’s live-action death works as a much better and more conclusive ending to his story and his troubled road to redemption in Avatar: The Last Airbender than his animated death did.

Release Date

February 22, 2024

Network

Netflix

Showrunner

Albert Kim

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