We had been warning since the first images came out: Avatar: The Last Airbender could be the family vein that Netflix was looking for and that had given it so much joy with series like Stranger Things or Wednesday. It had attractions for children, young people and adults with first-class visual effects. As the first available audience data indicates, it is being the bombshell that the platform wanted: it accumulated 153.4 million hours of consumption and 21.2 million views in the first four days in the catalog.
The series is based on the recent children's animated classic by Brian Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, who worked on the development of the live-action adaptation until creative disagreements with Netflix led them to abandon the project. It is estimated that the first season of eight episodes could have cost around $120 million, so the platform would not have spared any expenses.
With Albert Kim at the helm, a screenwriter with experience in series such as Sleepy Hollow, it tells the story of Aang (Gordon Cromier), an air nomad who is the reincarnation of the Avatar, a messianic figure who controls all the elements (air, earth, fire and water) and that can restore peace and balance. And, after being frozen for decades, he wakes up and finds himself in a world devastated by the Fire Nation, which in his absence eliminated hope among the rest of the nations.
To understand its success, it surpasses the launch of recent Netflix titles such as Griselda with Sofía Vergara, although it is behind Deceptions, the surprise of early 2024 that made 238 million in its first week. Of course, the British miniseries premiered on a Monday and, therefore, the number of viewings of seven days could be counted instead of the four of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which premiered last Thursday, February 22.
Perhaps the fairest comparison would be with One Piece, which also adapted a cult animated series, the anime of the same name, and which also premiered on a Thursday. In that case, the American-Japanese production made 140 million hours watched and 18.5 million views in its first four days. It was considered a success because it was such a well-known intellectual property but adapted into live action, especially after the Cowboy Bebop disaster, and was renewed for a second season, currently in pre-production.
It also surpasses the initial data of Queen Carlota and, apart from the exceptional Deceptions, you have to go back to March 2023 to find another series with better audiences for its first week: The Night Agent added 168 million hours watched in its first week and Let us remember, it was also the most viewed series of the first semester of the previous year.
With these figures, Avatar: The Last Airbender can breathe easy after initial lukewarm reviews: it has 60% positive reviews according to Rotten Tomatoes and on Metacritic it has a scrappy approval rating of 56 out of 100 when accumulating reviews from the media. .
In La Vanguardia, in fact, the proposal was criticized for having no “ambition to build and fascinate” with the universe at its disposal: “It settles for an unimaginative representation of history. There is no anticipation or atmosphere. There is no such search for iconic moments with the introduction, for example, of Appa, the giant six-legged flying bison. No audiovisual tool is used to create one's own imaginary and transcend."
