More changes are on the way for the next season of Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender. Having premiered in February 2024, the live-action Avatar season 2 was confirmed alongside season 3. The biggest addition to the coming season will be Toph (Miya Cech), who will eventually serve as Aang (Gordon Cormier)’s Earthbending master. The rest of the cast is expected to return to reprise their roles, including Utkarsh Ambudkar’s King Bumi. Filming is still ongoing, so the sophomore season will likely not be released until 2026.
In an interview with ScreenRant at the WGA Awards, Ambudkar opened up about his character’s future. While he promised that the story would remain faithful to the animated show, he did also explain that there will be some changes. Because the show focuses on a more realistic portrayal of the war, he described that “there’s real human emotion involved“. As a consequence, he urges audiences to expect less humor. Check out his quote below:
I’m about to go to Vancouver in two days to shoot season 2 of Avatar. Yeah, I’m very excited for six hours of prosthetics, baby, and fake teeth! And to see my little homie Gordon [Cormier], who plays Aang. We’re going to have a good time together. We stay pretty true to the animated series, so if you’re a fan of the Airbender animated series, you know what’s coming! But everything is leaning more towards a reality-based place. Our characters are really going through a lot of stuff. It’s not a cartoon, obviously, and there’s real human emotion involved. Aang has a lot of responsibility now. He’s trying to learn and master a lot of things and, whereas the cartoon used humor for children, we’re really diving into what that means for a young man to go through that.
What The Bumi Changes Mean For Netflix’s Avatar
Bumi’s Return Will Be More Serious
Season 1 already featured some major changes to Bumi’s character. While the story remained relatively similar to the animated show, save for the addition of a rebellious Jet (Sebastian Amoruso), Bumi’s motivations were extremely different. After 100 years, Netflix’s Bumi is far more bitter. His trials were partly to instruct Aang about his duties to the Earth Kingdom, but they were also a means of punishing the friend who abandoned him. Aang quickly recognized Bumi’s identity, which made the king’s reaction surprisingly dark.
Bumi was introduced in Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender in season 1, episode 3, “Omashu”.
Considering that Bumi’s character has already changed, it should come as no surprise that he will continue to be more realistic. The once-whimsical king was plagued with war before season 2, and the future will only see more horror for Omashu. Ambudkar promised a faithful adaptation, which means that Bumi will suffer capture, the loss of his kingdom, and Fire Nation rule. Naturally, he will react more realistically to that situation, given Netflix’s existing portrayal of his character.
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Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 Cast & Character Guide
Netflix’x Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2 is in production, reuniting the cast from season 1 with some newcomers as Book Two: Earth is adapted.
Our Take On The Bumi Changes
Live-Action Demands Major Changes
The changes to Bumi are emblematic of the problems of adapting animated into live-action. While the original Bumi is portrayed as quirky and fun, it would not be quite as believable in the Netflix show. The show can attempt to be faithful, but viewers have been exposed to realistic-looking deaths by fire. In a more stylized animated show, that can be forgivable and may not leave much of an impact. To imagine the live-action Bumi watching his guards burn alive, however, is a far darker prospect. Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender truly had no choice but to make Bumi darker.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
7/10
- Release Date
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February 22, 2024
- Directors
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Michael Goi, Roseanne Liang, Jabbar Raisani, Jet Wilkinson
- Writers
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Albert Kim, Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko