Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series creators reveal why they just want to retcon the whole franchise

The Avatar studio is focused on the expansion of the Avatar universe in new directions with the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The upcoming project in the Avatar universe, titled Avatar: Seven Havens, is the first animated series to take root in the franchise since the early 2010s and The Legend of Korra.

Avatar: Seven Havens is set in the Avatar universe after The Legend of Korra, and according to the creators, enough time has passed for the repercussions of Korra's actions as the Avatar to have found root in the world and in the people's minds.

Having a rich and complicated history backing Avatar: Seven Havens has its own host of pros and cons for the creators. In a recent conversation at the Avatar: Braving the Elements podcast, creators Mike DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko expressed how the pre-established characters and designs in Avatar: The Last Airbender make the creative process of a new project somewhat difficult, causing them to consider "retconning" these characters and designs moving forward.

Avatar: The Last Airbender creators are considering retconning the original characters in the new projects

Creating new characters in a franchise that has thousands and thousands of years' worth of history preserved and pre-established can be a difficult task for the creators who are looking to expand the franchise in several new directions.

Such are the problems that creators Mike and Bryan face as they set out on the path to bring the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe back to life in the animated series format with Avatar Studios (established in 2021). The latest project is Avatar: Seven Havens, which follows a young new Airbender who discovers herself to be an Avatar in a world that, after Korra, the last Avatar's actions, has a deeply ingrained hate directed towards the idea of an Avatar.

Creators Bryan and Mike reveal that as they set out on creating the newest installment to the franchise, they were faced with the issue of creating new characters in a world that had centuries' worth of history vaguely defined and even set in stone (quite literally) in the Statue Room.

They call the effort a "creative nightmare":

"These are characters we might be stuck with. [Character designer] Christie [Tseng] had to crank out 20 of these things in, in a week... Nothing against Christie, she's an amazing designer... You know, designing Aang, designing Korra, these were things that took weeks and months, you know, refining the design."

The creative limitation faced owing to these established designs even led the creators to consider retconning the existing narrative. In layman's terms, the creative nightmare led them to consider using new designs that would recontextualize the previously established designs.

Bryan Konietzko offered this option for future projects that would be added to the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe to have complete creative freedom.

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Only time will tell if such a change is observed in Avatar: Seven Havens; however, it appears from the Avatar: The Last Airbender creators' comments that they're only considering this move as a solution for future projects and not Seven Havens.

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