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According to Kiawentiio, who plays Katara, the water-bending heroine in Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sokka, her character's brother, won't be as "sexist" as he was in the Nickelodeon original series, which ran from 2005 to 2008.
In an interview with EW, released on Monday, January 29, the actress opened up about Sokka's character change. Addressing this decision of Netflix, she said,
“I feel like we … took out the element of how sexist [Sokka] was. I feel like there were a lot of moments in the original show that were iffy”.
The news outlet further mentioned that there are Reddit threads devoted to exposing Sokka's misogynistic statements, in which the character says things like,
“Girls are better at fixing pants than guys, and guys are better at hunting and fighting and stuff like that. It’s just the natural order of things”.
However, netizens and fans of the show didn’t take the news well. Once it was uploaded on X, it went viral. Since then, X users took to the social media platform to criticize Netflix and this decision. Here is one comment from @PopBase's X post about the decision:
Netizens condemn Netflix as it decides to remove Sokka's sexist personality from the live-action Avatar series
In February, when Avatar: The Last Airbender premieres on Netflix, Sokka's misogynistic remarks will be significantly reduced. Cast members Kiawentiio and Ian Ousley told fans in an Entertainment Weekly interview that Sokka's misogyny was deliberately removed from the live-action series of Netflix during the development since it was unnecessary for the new version.
Kiawentiio further said that in this new adaptation, the writers decided to eliminate the "sexist" aspects of Ousley's character when translating the animated series into a live-action format.
Regarding this, Ousley stated in the same interview,
“There’s more weight with realism in every way”.
His co-star Kiawentiio, who plays Katara, also said that she thought the original series had a lot of questionable situations and statements. As per EW, she was referring to the incident when a group of women ambushed Sokka and Aang, and the former said,
“Who are you? Where are the men who ambushed us?”
Ousley, who plays Sokka, agreed with Kiawentiio and said,
“Yeah, totally. There are things that were redirected just because it might play a little differently [in live action]”.
However, fans of the action-packed series are disappointed with this new development. Hence, once the news was made public on X, they flooded the platform with their opinion regarding the decision. Here are some comments from @Popbase's X post about the live-action:
Avatar: The Last Airbender is an upcoming live-action version of the acclaimed Nickelodeon cartoon series of the same name. It centers around Aang, the young Avatar, and his quest to master the elements of Fire, Earth, Water, and Air to bring balance back to a world under attack from the frightening Fire Nation. It is all set to release on Netflix on Thursday, February 22, 2024.
