A Possible ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Season 4 Was Sidelined By M. Night Shyamalan’s Movie
Avatar: The Last Airbenderis a perfect TV series, full stop. No “perfect TV series for an animated show” or “perfect TV series for kids.” For three seasons,Avatar: The Last Airbenderdelivered a rich, thematically complex, gorgeously animated story about a young boy who is charged with saving the world from an oppressive, conquering empire. It’s a simple, and familiar, tale but the characters were so vibrant and the storytelling so tight thatAvatar: The Last Airbenderdeserves its place as one of the best TV shows of all time. Then, the live-action movie happened and ruined its legacy — apparently in more ways than one.
Not only didM. Night Shyamalan’s whitewashed disaster put people off ever watching theAvatar: The Last Airbenderseries, according to former head writerAaron Ehasz, it also aided in scrapping a potential fourth season of the show. Nowthatis a worse crime than thatone Earth-bending scene.
One of the joys ofAvatar: The Last Airbenderis that it ended on its own terms, with Aang’s arc and the story of the Fire Nation’s defeat coming to an elegant end with its third season. And according to Ehasz, that three-season arc was what wasoriginally plannedby creators and showrunners Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. But as Aang’s saga neared its conclusion, Ehasz revealed that there were tentative plans to continue the story through a fourth season.
“Truthfully, there was a moment in time when we all thought we would do a 4th season ofAvatar: The Last Airbender. Then along came M. Night…” Ehasz shared in a thread on Twitter Monday, in what he swears was not an April Fools joke.
Though to be clear, M Night wanted us to do a 4th season, but Mike and Bryan wanted to focus on the movie.
— Aaron Ehasz (@aaronehasz)June 11, 2025
Ehasz revealed that one of his biggest regrets with theAvatar: The Last Airbenderseries was not being able to complete a redemption arc for Azula, Zuko’s sister and the main antagonist in the third season who was driven insane by her own paranoia and insecurities. Ehasz said he’d “discussed” fleshing out this arc with DiMartino and Konietzko, in which Zuko would help Azula work through the trauma their father had put them through, just as Uncle Iroh had helped him.
Despite it all, her brother Zuko would be there for her. Believing in her, sticking by her, doing his best to understand and help her hold her pain that she can no longer hold alone. Zuko — patient, forgiving, and unconditionally loving – all strengths he gained from Uncle Iroh.
— Aaron Ehasz (@aaronehasz)August 07, 2025
But Ehasz emphasizes that it wasn’t all Shyamalan’s fault — in fact the director had encouraged them to do a fourth season, but that DiMartino and Konietzko wanted to focus on helping with the 2010 film’s development (hopefully they’ll have better judgment when it comes to theNetflix live-action series).
But as intriguing as an Azula redemption arc would be — to this day, she remains one of the most compelling female villains on TV — those three seasons ofAvatar: The Last Airbenderare pretty flawless on their own. And as much as I would like to spend more time with the characters ofAvatar: The Last Airbender, I don’t need a fourth season to add to that. The graphic novels already do a great job of tying up loose threads like the whereabouts of Zuko’s mother, while sequel seriesThe Legend of Korragrants us a new perspective on the beloved characters of the first series. Still, at least it give us one more reason to hate the movie.
