Light spoilers for Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender are ahead, if you haven’t seen it yet, you can stream it all with a Netflix subscription.
While critics’ responses to Avatar: The Last Airbender are all over the place, one thing that can’t be denied is the attention the creative team paid to making sure they included tons of details and easter eggs from the animated series. So, when I got the chance to interview the cast of ATLA as well as its showrunner Albert Kim, I had to ask about their favorite callbacks to the beloved OG series. Along with revealing their favorite easter eggs, they also explained what made them special.
The Avatar: The Last Airbender Cast Loves The Food Easter Eggs
When I spoke with the four leads of the Avatar: The Last Airbender cast about their favorite Easter eggs, Kiawentiio, who plays Katara, Ian Ousley, who plays Sokka, and Gordon Cormier, who plays Aang, all talked about food. Generally speaking about the meaning behind the delicious Easter eggs, the Sokka actor told CinemaBlend:
I think that something that was really cool like transporting the world was the food. Like what you just said [referring to Kiawentiio]. I think there is a scene where there's lots of food and they're all from the Avatar universe that was really cool to watch that just be like a carbon copy from the animation.
Making this point clearer, Kiawentiio told me that her favorite Easter egg had to do with a traditional Water Tribe meal in the live-action show that is cooked by Sokka and Katara’s family friend Bato in the animated series:
I mean, the stewed sea prunes is a thing, for me. That's the first thing that came to my mind.
As for Gordon Cormier, his favorite food-related Easter egg also presented a challenge, because he really wanted to eat it. Telling me about one of the Air Nomad’s delicacies that made it into the live-action series, the Aang actor said:
I would like to say banana cakes. They were delicious on set. And they were just so nice to look at. I'm just staring at them. I'm like ‘Can I eat them yet?’ And they're like, ‘No six more takes come on.’
While he had to wait to eat the airy and gorgeous cakes, the Easter egg stuck with the young actor. And even though this trio had food on their minds, Dallas Liu, who plays Zuko, and the showrunner Albert Kim had other memorable callbacks to share.
Avatar: The Last Airbender's Dallas Liu And Albert Kim Show Some Love For The Creatures
Along with the recreation of bending powers and lands in Avatar: The Last Airbender through special effects, the creatures from the animated world also made their way into live action. Speaking about seeing the animals and spirits brought to life, Dallas Liu told me that they were his favorite Easter eggs in the show, saying:
Yeah, I'd have to say the animals of our series are done so well, and they look so spot on. Shout out to Jabbar and all of our VFX team involved, because I noticed that when the trailer had dropped one of people's favorites of our entire trailer was the animals and the different spirits as well.
It’s true, the trailers for Avatar: The Last Airbender showed beloved animals, like Appa and Momo, but it also showed spirits, like Hei Bai.
Like the Zuko actor, the showrunner, Albert Kim also adores the Easter eggs that pay homage to beloved creatures from the animated series. During our interview, he explained that one of his favorites was how they incorporated King Bumi’s pet goat gorilla Flopsie:
There are big statues of Flopsie all around him, right? We couldn't do Flopsie in our version for a variety of reasons. For one thing, we would have blown an entire creatures budget just on doing that. But I wanted a reference there. So our art department built these beautiful statues of Flopsie, real giant 3D statues of Flopsie and paintings on the wall if you actually look up Flopsie. So there's a little Easter egg there for fans as well.
So, while Liu pointed to literal creatures used in the series, Kim took it a step further pointing out ways they honored animals that they couldn’t directly incorporate, like Flopsie. And as a big fan of the Bumi’s massive pet, I’m so here for it!
Albert Kim Explains Why The Easter Eggs Are So Meaningful
As Albert Kim explained while talking about Flopsie, because of the challenges that come with live-action, like their budget and episode count, they couldn’t include every storyline they would have liked. However, they planted meaningful Easter eggs throughout the series to pay homage to beloved moments from the animated show. For example, Kim said:
In one of the episodes Zuko and Iroh go to a tavern, and there's some bar patrons talking about the Avatar and they just rattle off a series of things. ‘No, I think, you know, wasn’t he with the Canyon Crawlers?’ And like, all of those references are to actual original episode stories.
Kim said this Easter egg helps show that our main trio has “gone through other adventures that we did not see.”
In the same vein, he also said he loved adding these Easter eggs because it allowed them to reference iconic moments from the animated series, even if they didn’t fit directly into the plot. For example, in the Omashu episode, the kids don’t get into the city by Aang disguising himself as Pippinpaddleopsicopolis. So, in a later episode, Sokka says the silly name in reference to a doll to nod at the way the kids enter King Bumi’s city in the original series. Kim said:
Like you said, Pippinpaddleopsicopolis was also a great sequence in the original. It didn't quite work for the live-action version, the way they get into [Omashu]. But I knew I wanted to drop that reference somewhere. And it worked really well in the episode with a little girl, you know, just drops this kind of off-hand line. Again, for new viewers. It's not going to mean anything. Fans, it's just a little bit of an Easter egg.
Overall, these Easter eggs help show how much the cast and crew care about Avatar: The Last Airbender’s source material. As a lifelong fan, it was so fun to pick these references out while watching, and learning more about the meaning behind them just made it even better.
To see the Easter eggs in action, you can stream both the live-action – which just premiered on the 2024 TV schedule – and animated Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix.
