“Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked...” are the words that opened every single episode of the animated Avatar: The Last Airbender series. For those of us who grew up with the show, Katara’s opening monologue is engrained in our memories.
However, like many of the changes made in ATLA, there’s a good reason behind the opening credits being different, and showrunner Albert Kim explained the choice to CinemaBlend.
However, like many of the changes made in ATLA, there’s a good reason behind the opening credits being different, and showrunner Albert Kim explained the choice to CinemaBlend.
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00:00We always knew that you couldn't do that monologue in the first episode because of the way we've
00:04structured our episode and we start a hundred years ago, right? So you couldn't have Katara
00:11saying those words. So I always knew I wanted to get it in somehow, which is why it ends up as a
00:17grand grand speech for, again, and it's a bit of an Easter egg for fans and for new viewers. It's
00:23a way to understand what happens with the world, right? And then we also added this other prologue
00:30kind of in the first episode, again, as a little bit of a handholding technique for new viewers
00:36who may not be as familiar with the world of Avatar. And we borrowed kind of elements from
00:41the opening titles from the original. After that, in the subsequent episodes, to be honest, it's
00:48kind of a Netflix specific situation. Their platform is one that they know better than I do,
00:58and they felt like the way their episodes flow from one to the other in the binging model,
01:05that it worked best with the title card so that we get right into the story.
01:10That's not to say that it won't come back in subsequent seasons, but for the first season,
01:17that felt like the way to go.