Yip, Yip! Seven Havens Launches a New Era for Avatar

It has been more than 20 years since Katara and Sokka found Aang under the ice in the first episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but recent years have proved the franchise is still very much alive. A new animated series, Avatar: Seven Havens, hits Paramount+ today, and the cast and crew took to the main stage of New York Comic Con to tease an energetic crowd of cosplaying fans with the next phase of the franchise. Seven Havens has already been green-lit for third and fourth seasons on Paramount+, and there’s actually another animated installment coming to this franchise: Avatar Kuruk: Wave of Chaos. But the primary purpose of the panel was to introduce Seven Havens, which sets up a new era for the franchise.

“It was a reset of the world and more of a fantasy-based one,” teased producer Ethan Spaulding, who recalled being asked by Avatar creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino to work on the show. “They’re like, ‘1970s anime — make it old-school anime.” Konietzko and DiMartino joined him on the panel along with Seven Havens co-producer Sehaj Sethi and actors Saheli Khan (voice of Pavi), Aishu Devan (Nisha), and Major Curda (Jae).

Artistically inspired by the works of Moebius, the Japanese woodblock artist Hiroshi Yoshida, and Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Spaulding said, Seven Havens takes place chronologically after the most recent Avatar animated series, The Legend of Korra. The new series picks up after Korra’s actions, which inadvertently lead to an apocalypse that forces humanity to take refuge in the titular Havens, all of which have visually distinct identities. One of the primary goals of the new show, Sethi said, was to create a series that feels fresh and complex, even if elements of the franchise feel familiar.

“What I really wanted to bring to this was the idea that there’s so much gray area to everything, to every story line,” said Sethi. “There’s no villains in this story. There are protagonists and antagonists.” 

“Grey areas!” joked panel moderator Janet Varney, the original voice of Korra. “She may not have done anything wrong!”

The show follows the recently released Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender. A second season had already been green-lit, but the announcement of another two, subtitled “Books” per Avatar tradition, as well as a whole new series, is a vote of confidence from Paramount+ — which is undoubtedly looking to exploit as much of its IP as possible in its post-merger era as a division of CEO David Ellison’s Skydance. Books 3 and 4 will continue the story of the new Avatar, Pavi, and her twin sister, Nisha.

The panel’s crowd of excited cosplayers also got a first look at Avatar Kuruk: Wave of Chaos, a show that will follow a rebellious teenage Avatar who travels the globe to learn the ways of the four elements — water, earth, fire, and air. True to Avatar form, we can expect to see pirates, spirit-world shenanigans, and a cute pet named Nikik. Konietzko will serve as showrunner on the upcoming series produced by Avatar Studios and Nickelodeon Animation Studio.

For the creators and cast, working on Avatar stories is an intensely personal job. Khan and Devan, now in their early teens, literally grew into adolescence while working on this show over the past three years. Curda grew up watching and theorizing about the original shows with family and friends, and Sethi shared an even closer connection: She made up a lullaby for her newborn child while working on the show that made its way into Seven Havens itself, with some help from composer Jeremy Zuckerman. “I was literally in labor while working on this show,” she quipped.