The hiatuses! New fans don’t know about the hiatuses!
So, remember the episode where Aang dies? Katara brings him back a few minutes later, but it’s definitely implied that he was dead? The very last episode of Book Two? The Crossroads of Destiny? They somberly ride out of Ba Sing Se while Kuei remarks, “The Earth Kingdom…has fallen”? Remember that? Good times!
The thing is, if you didn’t watch Avatar when it was released weekly on Nickelodeon, back in the mid-2000s, you might not realize that there was an extremely long hiatus after that episode. Okay, 9 months, but up until this point, every other hiatus was fairly short, usually 2-3 months. 9 months was a good chunk of our childhood lives spent waiting to see if Aang was okay. The only thing we really knew was that he was Probably Not Dead, Zuko had betrayed Iroh, and Azula had captured Ba Sing Se. We had to wait nine months before The Awakening premiered.
Of course, we were still given some content, during that time. Among the other games on nick.com, an interactive comic called Escape From The Spirit World came out. I don’t have the link to the game but someone put together all of the panels:
I highly recommend watching it. It’s the first time that we, as the fandom, were exposed to Kuruk and Yangchen. It also dives into more of Roku and Kyoshi’s backstories, including Kyoshi’s connection with the Dai Li. I also love the final message on why the Avatar must be human…
So, we had that going for us. We also had some other games, some bumpers and commercials, the first video game, some content in the Nick magazine, etc. We weren’t completely blind, but we also didn’t know when Avatar was going to come back on or what was going to happen.
Then, this epic trailer dropped over the summer:
Still one of my favorite Avatar scores. If you want to listen to just the music alone, here’s a link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l4rZG8skjo
Aang was alive but Aang was in the Fire Nation, Aang had hair?! Iroh was in prison, everyone had new outfits, Appa had armor, Aang’s glider was destroyed, and we didn’t know what was going on.
Then, in September, 2007, Nickelodeon started premiering weekly episodes of the first half of Book Three. This continued all the way up until the end of Day of Black Sun. The last thing we saw was Zuko sailing in the Fire Nation balloon. Then, another hiatus. This one went from November - July.
Again, we weren’t left with nothing. The Burning Earth video game was released. We were getting a few updates about the new live-action movie which surely had to be good, right? Right? ……Right? Fans were making Zuko - Linkin Park AMVS left and right. Kornersphere started The Last Puppet Bender series (link). There were still some really cool games on nick.com. AvatarSpirit, DistantHorizon, and Piandao were much visited websites. I know there were a lot of message boards (I personally didn’t visit many). It was well on its way to become the cartoon with the most fanfictions. We didn’t have tumblr, back then (I don’t think), but we did have a fandom.
And…ah…when the second trailer was released….that fandom reacted. Here’s a video someone posted of the New York Comic Con 2008. I remember watching it from the comfort of my own home (one day, I will go to a comic con), both blown away by the trailer and by the intensity of the fandom’s reactions). Warning: Screaming. A lot of screaming.
Also, here’s a link to the clean version of the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5avd9_8rXH0
And that’s the story of how a bunch of children/teenagers collectively lost their minds, twice, because streaming services had yet to be invented, so we were completely reliant on the weekly schedule (and the hiatuses in between) to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender.
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