So here's a rundown of mysteriously abandoned characters and plotlines from another television series my entire family was in total agreement of and that none of us wanted to end. Supposedly, the producers are working on some feature-length direct-to-DVD sequels. Hopefully, these will be at least be addressed if not fully wrapped up.
Mind you, I love the hell out of this series. Unfortunately, this kind of thing kinda comes with the territory when the network decides that they're only going to give you half a season to wrap everything up in your epic fantasy series. Wah.
These are in no particular order:
The White Lotus Society
They built this up so badly in the final season. This secret society made up mostly of cool older characters did show up in the finale, but their previous mentions in the series were so mysterious. So this isn't technically a dropped plot, but it's one of those things, like the Blue Spirit and Combustion Man and, infamously, Uncle Iroh's jailbreak, that we expected to have a much, much bigger payoff
Toph's Family
For a lot of people, this is one of the big ones. So Toph is a character who joins the main cast early in the second season, and she quickly becomes one of the best characters in the show. Thing is, she is a runaway; she went off on her adventures with Aang and company without saying anything to her rich parents. In the *final season* she decides to send a message to her mom to let her know she's alive. This is never again acknowledged. Heck, we don't even know if Toph's family received the message, as it was sent via Sokka's messenger hawk. And since I brought Hawkie up, that leads us naturally to...
Dropped Characters
This is a series with loads and loads of characters. Not all of them are going to appear more than once, but there were several who seemed to have been developed enough that they were going to have larger roles later on. Among them are Aang's mentor Guru Pathik, eerie spirit Koh the Face-Stealer, the aforementioned Hawkie, and probably many more that I can't remember right now. But the big one here deserves her own entry:
OK, So What's the Deal With Ursa?
She is Zuko and Azula's mother. She has been missing, presumed dead, since before the series began. There is a great deal of evidence that she's still alive in the series, she appears -as a hallucination- in one of the final episodes, and in the very last episode it is revealed that she is indeed alive. It is wildly speculated that the first DTV film will focus on her somehow.
And Finally, What's the Deal With Bosco the Bear?
Katara: (reading a newspaper) "The king's having a party tonight for his pet bear!"
Aang: "You mean platypus-bear?"
Katara: "No, it just says, 'bear.'"
Sokka: "Certainly you mean his pet skunk-bear?"
Toph: "Or his armadillo-bear?"
Aang: "Gopher-bear?"
Katara: "Just... 'bear.'"
(There is a pregnant pause.)
Toph: "This place is weird."
That dialogue pretty much speaks for itself. Bosco is the pet bear of the Earth King and he is one of the odd little non sequiters in the show that was treated as kind of a joke for those of us who were paying attention. However, this "joke" has some pretty weird implications for the Avatar universe. All of the non-supernatural animals seen in "Avatar" are weird hybrids, very likely in tribute to "Dungeons and Dragons" (Owlbears anyone?) Taking for granted that the very act of calling a Turtleduck a Turtleduck is a translation convention and normal animals like Bosko are unknown, if Wuzzles/Firffels are normal for the Avatar world then...?
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Totally unrelated, but happy Towel Day!!!
Also, here's a nifty interview with Don Hahn via the wonderful /Filmcast.
Also via /Film, a preview of illustrations for Josh Cooley's upcoming book Movies R Fun! Oh good lord, they are beautiful
ALSO also via /Film, our first look at fully-rendered CGI Wile E. Coyote in Three-Effin-Dee. Dear reader, you can probably guess with 99% accuracy how I feel about this...
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Sketch of the day!
Let's consider this a teaser for the next post:
