Avatar: Seven Havens Book One Premiere Review - “On the Horizon”, “Into the Storm”, & “The Order”
Pavi, the 9-year-old protagonist of Avatar: Seven Havens, spends her days scrounging for scraps in the haven of Ellora, and she talks to the inanimate objects she keeps around because she has no one else to talk to. A shopkeeper leaves out kachoris for her, pretending not to notice who takes them. It is a small act of kindness in a world that seems to have run short of them, and it tells you what this series intends to be. Avatar: Seven Havens begins with an orphan, a snack, and a secret, and it earns its way to the larger story from there.
This three-episode premiere opens the eighth season of a franchise by creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko that began in 2005 with Avatar: The Last Airbender and continued with The Legend of Korra. It picks up from where the latter series left off by leaping 225 years beyond Korra’s finale, and the world it finds is unrecognizable. The four nations are gone. An environmental cataclysm has turned the world into a wasteland, and humanity has retreated into walled city-states, the seven havens of the title. The Avatar, once revered as the bridge between worlds, is now a bogeyman. The world blames Korra for the catastrophe, and anyone who bends all four elements has good reason to hide it.
That is a bold inversion, and what keeps it from being merely clever is Pavi. At 9 years old, she is even younger than Aang was when we met him, and the series understands what that means. Her reluctance is not just fear of being hunted. It is loneliness, self-doubt, and a wish to remain a wandering kid with no roots and therefore nothing to lose. Voice actor Saheli Khan gives her a softness that never tips into weakness, and the writing lets us love her before we are asked to worry about her. Her cat-monkey companion Geet, voiced by veteran voice talent Dee Bradley Baker, helps considerably. Her twin sister Nisha, voiced by Aishu Devan, is brasher and bolder, and the contrast between them promises more than any prophecy could.
Around them, the supporting cast fills in sketches that feel promising rather than finished. Jae, an airbender in Ellora’s Bending Brigade, begins as a loyal conscript and is forced to reconsider what he has been taught. His captain, Karthik, carries burdens he does not share. The show is clear-eyed about how fear makes propaganda easy to swallow, and the forced conscription of benders is presented as the wrong turn it is, even as the people carrying it out tell themselves they are doing right. Benders are also being born in ever smaller numbers, which gives the world a ticking clock.
The craft deserves as much praise as the premise. The Harshlands are drawn in warm oranges and pinks, a haunted, almost Saharan beauty that feels very different from earlier Avatar series. The creatures are delightful, from the monkey-tailed cats to camels that roll into balls. Ellora’s arches and towers draw on South Asian architecture, and the food, names, and music carry that influence through. Jeremy Zuckerman’s score adds electronic textures and South Asian vocals to the franchise’s familiar mysticism. The result is a new Avatar that still feels like Avatar, and the bending sequences remain a pleasure to watch.
The team around Pavi may have yet to become a unit, and a few characters are still more outline than person. But Avatar: Seven Havens’ three-episode premiere builds enough curiosity about its world to earn the patience it asks for. With the series confirmed for a full four-season run, there is room for the story to unfold with some care.
These three episodes do what a good premiere should. They introduce a hero worth caring about, a world worth exploring, and a question worth asking: what becomes of hope when the world has decided it has no use for it? I can’t wait to see where Pavi goes.