Avatar: Seven Havens – Episodes 1 to 3 Review

Avatar: Seven Havens is the long-awaited return of the Avatar animated series. The first three episodes set up a radically new world.

225 years ago, the Avatar caused the Cataclysm, a world-ending event. Civilisation has rebuilt itself as The Seven Havens, with one of them being Ellora. In Ellora are long-lost twin sisters Pavi (Saheli Khan) and Nisha (Aishu Devan), Earthbenders and the first of their kind because they are both The Avatar. Their reunion coincides with a strange entity attacking Ellora during an extreme weather event.

The Avatar series is having a big 2026. Earlier this year, the second season of the Netflix adaptation and the Avatar Aang movie were released. Avatar: Seven Havens was the project I was looking forward to the most because it actually moved the series forward. Paramount clearly have faith in the series because they have already renewed the show for a third and fourth season.

Avatar: Seven Havens was a big departure from what had come before. There’s a big-time jump, and the art style was radically different. There are already a lot of mysteries: why Pavi and Nisha were separated, what was the Cataclysm, and why there are now two Avatars.

The first two episodes did have some similarities to Avatar: The Last Airbender. They both showed the world had fallen into chaos after the Avatar had disappeared for a long time, and the Avatar comes from an unlikely place. In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang was found in the lands of the Southern Water Tribe, where there was only one water bender left, whilst in Ellora, bender numbers were dwindling and the city was struggling to replenish the ranks of the Bending Brigade. There were differences because the world had radically changed and the threat at this point had been environmental.

Avatar: Seven Havens seems to have two major influences: Attack on Titan and Mad Max. Attack on Titan was a seminal piece of anime where the remnants of humanity live in a walled city, and people are trained at a young age for military service to face the threat beyond the city. Assuming Avatar: Seven Havens follows a similar path as Attack on Titan, the people of Ellora will learn that there’s more to the world and history than they were led to believe. Jae (Major Curda) is already experiencing that because he believed Avatar Korra destroyed the world and the Avatar is someone to fear, but the reality is the Avatar is a couple of young girls with the weight of the world thrust upon them.

The Mad Max parallels were obvious since the world around Ellora was a desert wasteland. Mad Max: Fury Road was particularly fitting because the second episode showed Ellora facing a storm that had tornadoes and lightning. In that episode, Pavi and Nisha acted like superheroes as they used their bending abilities to save people from disaster.

There was also a little bit of Dune and Aladdin in the first three episodes. The desert environment meant that the architecture and clothing were Middle Eastern-inspired. Pavi was an Aladdin-like character since she was a good-natured street kid struggling to survive. The first episode felt like the Disney version of Aladdin because one of her first acts was to save a lot of bugs being sold, resulting in mayhem, and she was avoiding the authorities so she wouldn’t be pressed into military service. Being a street kid meant she knew what the citizens of Ellora really thought of the Avatar and why she wanted to hide her powers.

The first three episodes did do a great job of introducing the new cast of characters. Pavi was lovable because she was so kind and good-natured; she was remarkable because of her tough background. She had a great sense of compassion, as shown in the third episode where she calmed a possessed armadillo-camel instead of using force to subdue it. Nisha was a more headstrong character because she had been trained for three years, and she wanted to prove herself, as seen in the second episode. Pavi was like Aang, whilst Nisha’s personality was closer to Korra. When the twins saw pictures of the past Avatars, Nisha said she wanted to be like Avatar Kyoshi. The weight of responsibility was more enormous on them because of their young age and the dire state of the world.

Jae was the character who experienced the most change in these three episodes. He wanted to impress his father because he was so eager to volunteer his platoon to do whatever task possible, and show he was a good leader. He struggled with the knowledge he had to keep secret about the Avatars. Jae was made to be the goofy, comedic-relief character, making him similar to Sokka or Bolin. He got to act as an older brother figure to Pavi and Nisha.

Karthik (Akshay Khanna) was the other major character introduced. He was a senior officer in the Bending Brigade who was navigating the fine line between being a leading figure in Ellora and leading the secret society the White Lotus. He had a calm, gentle authority with a sense of gravitas: he didn’t go around shouting and barking orders like a stereotypical military officer. He was a great father figure to Jae, Pavi, and Nisha.

On a final note, these episodes had a futuristic, trance-like music score. It was a radical departure from The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra. It was music to relax to, not the backing track to an action-fantasy show.

The first three episodes did a great job starting a new book in the Avatar saga. It set up a lot of intrigue and introduced some fun, likeable characters. It will be interesting to see where the series goes from here.