History Series / AvatarTheLastAirbender2024

** Jeong-Jeong, and the events of "The Deserter" as a whole, are skipped entirely, so Aang ends the first season without any grasp of firebending.

** The events of "Imprisoned".
** Jeong-Jeong, and the events of "The Deserter" as a whole, is skipped entirely, so Aang ends the first season without any grasp of firebending.

** King Bumi in the original series was a goofy CoolOldGuy who only gave Aang the runaround during their first meeting to give him [[TricksterMentor a new perspective]] on how he could face the obstacles in his future. Bumi in this series has actually become jaded and cynical from the events of the Hundred-Year War, giving Aang a hard time in part because he had legitimate grievances with Aang disappearing at the start of the war.

** Aang is able to fly without his glider in this show, an ability that he never acquired in the original series and would explicitly require him to detach himself spiritually from earthly attachments in that canon.

** A minor example in the season one climax. Just like in the original, [[spoiler:Yue must give her own life to revive the Moon Spirit in order to restore the bending abilities of the waterbenders and prevent an implied ecological catastrophe. Additionally, this version makes the Ocean Spirit’s possession of Aang a permanent consequence of its partner’s death, meaning that Yue has to sacrifice herself to stop its rampage and save the Avatar as well]].
** The Agni Kai between Zuko and Ozai is framed considerably differently than the original. There, Zuko completely refused to fight Ozai, and his refusal to fight was part of what made Ozai decide to banish him. This version has Zuko actually trying to to put up a fight against Ozai, and he actually does fairly well for a time, but hesitates and refuses to land a potentially serious blow, which displeases Ozai and causes him to consider Zuko weak for refusing to strike his own father.
* AdaptationalDiversity: In the animated version, the Tale of Two Lovers has Omashu namesakes Oma and Shu as a female and male respectively. In the live action, they are still lovers and both are referred to as women.

** ''Incredibly'' downplayed, but Ozai in this series actually shows appreciation towards Zuko's determination to hunt down the Avatar and is willing to praise him from afar for eventually locating Aang, while in canon, he basically sent his son on a wild goose chase because he saw him as a disgrace.
** [[spoiler:Hahn in the original show was a sexist bully who only saw his betrothed Princess Yue as an accessory to make himself look better and relentlessly antagonized Sokka. In this show, he's a genuinely nice guy whom Yue broke up with due to her greater destiny. While he is clearly still upset about it, he doesn't hold the fact against her, nor does he bully Sokka for being interested in her.]]

** Azula getting more focus earlier on means more exploration of her "tutelage" under Ozai, and the effects it's already having on her psyche, which are made a lot more clearer.

The show is set in a world where beings known as benders can [[ElementalPowers manipulate]] the elements of [[NaturalElements water, fire, earth, and air]]. A powerful being capable of bending all four elements known as the Avatar traditionally maintains balance between the four {{Elemental Nation}}s: the Air Nomads, the Fire Nation, the Water Tribes, and the Earth Kingdom.

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Much like the original, the show draws heavily on East Asian culture and imagery for setting, though it does tweak some of the iconography, the most prominent being Omashu, which draws much more visibly on India rather than China.

* AdaptationalWimp: Katara is still capable of waterbending here, but starts off unable to do more than create ripples in a small pool of water until Aang gives her some advice. Only then is she able to levitate a sphere of water like in the original animated series.

* AscendedExtra: Of the avatars prior to Aang, Kuruk didn't really show up in the original series until the end of the original series. But in the live action series, he gets a shrine and a scene where he talks with Aang, explaining why he can't do what Roku did in the original, or Kyoshi did in the remake.

* BookEnds: The season starts and ends with the Fire Nation invading The Airbenders and respectively the Northern Water Tribe.

* AdaptationAmalgamation: Elements of the WesternAnimation/TheLegendofKorra, Literature/TheRiseOfKyoshi and VideoGame/EscapeFromTheSpiritWorld are mixed with elements of the original series.

* ShownTheirWork: Beyond the examples from the original series that are adapted here, during Lu Ten's funeral, those present are dressed in white. While black has become an accepted funeral color due to western influence, white is the traditional color to wear when honoring the departed in Chinese.

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** Aang had no intention of running away after learning of his identity as the Avatar, despite still showing reluctance in taking the responsibility. He merely takes a midnight flight with Appa to clear his head and then tries to return home when a large storm suddenly began acting up. Unfortunately, it was also the same night Sozin and his army invaded the Air Temple to murder the airbenders using the power of the Great Comet.

** Katara and Sokka are the ones who go down the Cave of Two Lovers instead of Katara and Aang this time, with their subplot focusing on the platonic sibling love between them rather than the friendship/implied (and later official) romantic bond between Katara and Aang.
** A minor example in the season one climax. Just like in the original, [[spoiler:Yue must give her own life to revive the Moon Spirit in order to restore the bending abilities of the waterbenders and prevent an implied ecological catastrophe. Additionally, this version makes the Ocean Spirit’s possession of Aang a permanent consequence of its partner’s death, meaning that Yue has to sacrifice herself to stop its rampage and save the Avatar as well.]]
** The Agni Kai between Zuko and Ozai is framed considerably different than the original. There, Zuko completely refused to fight Ozai, and his refusal to fight was part of what made Ozai decide to banish him. This version has Zuko actually trying to to put a fight against Ozai, and actually does fairly well for a time, but hesitates, and refuses to land a potentially serious blow, which displeases Ozai, and causes him to consider Zuko weak for refusing to strike his own father.
* AdaptationalDiversity: In the animated version, The Tale of Two Lovers has Omashu namesakes Oma and Shu as a female and male respectively. In the live action, they are still lovers, and both are referred to as women.

** Sokka is more willing to hand Aang over to Zuko to get him to leave, not doing so only after being dissuaded by Katara, is more hesitant to rescue Aang after he surrenders to Zuko, and is more willing to abandon Aang on his journey after he enters the Avatar State for the first time and scoffs at the idea of saving the world. That said, he does have a motive for this under BigBrotherInstinct.

** Sokka lacks the sexist streak his animated counterpart had at the start of the series. His dismissal of Katara's waterbending also doesn't have to do with him fundamentally considering bending weird magic but rather him trying to protect her from the Fire Nation, who have been systematically wiping out the waterbenders in the Southern Water Tribe.
** ''Incredibly'' downplayed, but Ozai in this series actually shows appreciation towards Zuko's determination to hunt down the Avatar and was willing to praise him from afar for eventually locating Aang, while in canon, he basically sent his son on a wild goose chase because he saw him as a disgrace.
** [[spoiler:Hahn in the original show was a sexist bully who only saw Yue as an accessory to make himself look better and relentlessly antagonized Sokka. In this show, he's a genuinely nice guy who Yue broke up with due to her greater destiny. While he is clearly still upset about it, he doesn't hold the fact against her, nor does he bully Sokka for being interested in her.]]

** [[spoiler:Hahn in the original show was a sexist JerkJock who played the role of romantic rival to Sokka over Yue's affections. Here, he's a genuinely nice guy who Yue broke up with due to extraneous factors.]]

** Ozai manages to be even ''more'' of an AbusiveParent than his original counterpart, mixing in psychological abuse alongside physical and emotional abuse: while in the original he had a clear favorite and unfavorite child (Azula and Zuko, respectively), here who his favorite is depends on whoever he thinks is the more accomplished of the two at the moment and actively pits Zuko and Azula against each other for his very conditional love. This makes Azula even more desperate to please her father and fosters her increasing resentment against her brother, especially since Zuko is first in line to the throne.
* AdaptationalWimp: Katara is capable of water bending here, but starts off unable to do more than create ripples in a small pool of water until Aang gives her some advice. Only then is she able to levitate a sphere of water like in the original animated series.

** In the cartoon, Aang buys a bison whistle from the market in "[[Recap/AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheWaterbendingScroll The Waterbending Scroll]]". Here he already has one after emerging from the ice, and uses it after awakening in the South Pole. And speaking of "The Waterbending Scroll", Katara ends up retrieving it early as soon as the trip to the Southern Air Temple, as Gran-Gran gave it to Katara in a bag given for the trip to save Aang.

** Azula, Mai (played by Thalia Tran), and Ty Lee (played by Momona Tamada), who didn't appear until the second season of the original show, make their first appearance in the third episode here (technically Azula appeared in the first season, but unidentified, and only in cameos).
** Wan Shi Tong (played by Creator/RandallDukKim) also makes his debut in season 1 here when he was first introduced in season 2 of the original show.

** [[BigBad Fire Lord Ozai]] shows himself as early as episode 2 in the remake where in the original show, he was TheFaceless in both seasons 1 and 2, and doesn't fully reveal himself until season 3.

** The cartoon [[Recap/AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheWaterbendingScroll had Katara steal a scroll with waterbending diagrams from a crew of pirates]], who later served as antagonistic figures during the episode in question. Here, Katara is simply given the scroll in question by Gran-Gran when she and Sokka first set off after Aang, Katara's mother having secretly left it in her care before her murder.
** To compensate for the fact that the live-action show only has eight episodes compared to the original's twenty, various episodes from the cartoon are either excised completely or get mixed up into one (for example, "Omashu" mixes up elements from "[[Recap/AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheKingOfOmashu The King of Omashu]]", "[[Recap/AvatarTheLastAirbenderJet Jet]]", and "[[Recap/AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheNorthernAirTemple The Northern Air Temple]]").

** Lu Ten being a BigBrotherMentor to Zuko is only briefly alluded to in the original, but here it's made clear that they had a close bond, with Zuko offering his condolences to Iroh during Lu Ten's funeral and remembering him as his beloved cousin.

** Initially seems to be played straight with Zuko, whose motivation is not to restore his honor, but to return home and be recognized as heir to the throne again. However, as the show goes on more layers to this show up, not least that Zuko clearly has no plan for what to do ''after'' that.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Heavily of the "bitter" part. After defeating Zhao's forces attacking the Northern Water Tribe and restoring the Moon Spirit, Team Avatar vow to work together to stop the war and help train Aang to master the other elements in order to defeat Ozai. Meanwhile, Zuko and Iroh are now alone, with no hope of rejoining their crew now that they're branded "traitors" by the Firelord, but are still alive and have each other. Unfortunately, it's revealed that Zhao's attack on the Water Tribe was merely a diversion; the Fire Nation's real target was ''Omashu'', now taken over by Azula whose taken Bumi captive. Not only that, but Ozai learns that Sozin's Comet is returning soon...]]

** The original show was (mercifully) vague on just what happened to Kya. Here, it's shown she was in fact incinerated, right in front of Katara.
* DarkerAndEdgier: While the original series was already quite dark for a children's show, the live-action show's TV-PG/TV-14 rating and appeal to a wider demographic means that it can push the boundaries even more. Along with featuring a good deal more onscreen violence and death than the original, some mild cursing is uttered here and there, and a bigger emphasis is put on how the war has affected the world, showing that most people prefer to stick to their own nation and have a distrust of outsiders and that everyone has been pretty worn down by a century of war and tyranny.
* DeathByAdaptation: Katara states that the Fire Nation killed off the rest of water benders in the Southern Water Tribe here rather than capture them like in the original series.

* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: While the original cartoon and 2010 movie are vague on the consequences of killing the Moon Spirit beyond people being hurt and the world being thrown out of balance, here Aang explicitly warns Zhao that this will cause the world to cease to exist. [[LackOfEmpathy Not that this stops Zhao]].

* ElementalPowers: Naturally given the source material, characters in the setting can control the elements. Aang is seen [[BlowYouAway airbending]] and Zuko [[PlayingWithFire firebending]]. During the show proper, Katara learns waterbending.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Subverted. Zhao balks at the idea of killing the Ocean Spirit, not least because of the sheer impracticality and that it would kill every Waterbender, and he draws the line at outright genocide... but he still wants to kill the Moon Spirit, which isn't any better.
* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: The series does not shy away from the implications of people being burned to death by Firebenders, with multiple characters being visibly burned to death.

* FinalSolution: Sozin's idea of stopping the Avatar from being reborn, is to kill every Airbender in existence.
* FireWaterJuxtaposition: Aang and Appa flying above the ocean in the middle of a powerful typhoon is intercut with scenes of Sozin and his army of firebenders massacring the Air Nomads from the Southern Air Temple. The scenes become even more impactful when Sozin kills Aang's mentor, Gyatso, in the same time Aang and Appa are hit by a giant wave and he forms an iceberg around themselves to avoid drowning.

** The show lacks the "water, earth, fire, air" opening, but Kanna recites the rest of Katara's speech in the first episode.

** In "Warriors", Aang is seen riding an Air Scooter before slamming into a statue, just like in the opening title sequence of the cartoon.
** Azula's fire tends to be the same color as everyone else's... except for one instance where she gets ''really'' angry, and it burns blue.
** While the events of "The Great Divide" are left out, Zuko and Iroh do overhear some people in a bar claiming they heard about Aang saving people from Canyon Crawlers.

* NamedInTheAdaptation: In the original, the Mechanist's [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep real name was never revealed]]; here, he's named Sai. Several characters do still call him the Mechanist, though.

* ThePerfectionist: Azula, same as, refuses to believe "''almost'' perfect" is good enough. Unfortunately, even perfection isn't good enough for Ozai, and she pushes herself well into the night practicing.

* SlipknotPonytail: Katara's braid getting loose when she fights Pakkun

* TookALevelInCynic: The events of the Hundred-Year War have done this to Bumi, turning him into a jaded old man who gives Aang a bigger runaround when he arrives to Omashu and causing him to express his grievances with Aang's departure at the start of the war.
* VillainRespect: Unlike his canon counterpart, who expressed disgust with Zuko all the way until the start of season 3, Ozai here, instead, actually develops some degree of appreciation for Zuko's {{Determinator}} nature in hunting the avatar and eventually successfully finding him. However, he also seems to show little regard for Azula in turn for accomplishing less than her brother and scorns her attempt to manipulate him with flattery to support Zhao with more resources, even if he supports the logic and agrees with her plan to do so.
* WarIsHell: This adaptation doesn't shy away from how a hundred years of war has a nasty effect on people. Making them embittered and cynical.

** Aang is able to fly without his glider in this show, an ability that he never acquired in the original series and would explicitly require him to detach himself spiritually from earthly attachments on that canon.

** ''Incredibly'' downplayed, but Ozai in this series actually shows appreciation towards Zuko's determination to hunt down the avatar and was willing to praise him from afar for eventually locating Aang, while in canon, he basically sent his son on a wild goose chase because he saw him as a disgrace.

* AdaptedOut: Jeong-Jeong, and the events of "The Deserter" as a whole, is skipped entirely, so Aang ends the first season without any grasp of firebending.

** Azula, Mai (played by Thalia Tran), and Ty Lee (played by Momona Tamada), who didn't appear until the second season of the original show, make their first appearance in the third episode here.

* AdaptationalRomanceDowngrade: Unlike the original series, Aang does not show any signs of having romantic interest in Katara.
* AdaptationalVillainy:

** While Zhao is still as ambitious as his original counterpart, here he also intends to usurp Ozai as Fire Lord.

* BooksEnd: The season starts and ends with the Fire Nation invading The Airbenders and respectively the Northern Water Tribe.

* BooksEnd: The season starts and ends with the Fire Nation invading