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For Netflix’s live-action Avatar to work, Zuko had to find his heart a little faster

Avatar: The Last Airbender actor Dallas Liu turned to YouTube fan videos to sharpen his take on Prince Zuko.

But one of the first things people are going to notice about Netflix’s new live-action Avatar adaptation — which is much shorter at eight episodes — is how much more quickly it starts to unpack the origins of Zuko’s rage and pull back the steely emotional mask he wears to hide his feelings from the world. When I spoke with Liu recently, he explained that as much as the new Avatar ’s creative team wanted to do right by the original show, the changes made to his Zuko were all meant to present him as a more dynamic, human-feeling foil to the core group of heroes. By framing Zuko as a ruthless warrior in its early episodes and then delving into how his bloodlust was rooted in years of suffering psychological abuse, Avatar was able to illustrate some of the individual horrors that come with being born into and upholding fascist systems of power.

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