Warning: This review contains full spoilers for Avatar: Seven Havens Season 1, Episodes 4-6!
With the next batch of three episodes of Avatar: Seven Havens now on Paramount+, we’re nearly halfway through the first season of the series. The show has clearly hit an episodic rhythm and is amping up the danger for our twin Avatars, Pavi (Saheli Kahn) and Nisha (Aishu Devan), as well as their supposed safe Haven of Ellora. But we’re also still in Ellora, and other than a very menacing red diamond and a group of raiders called the Faceless, it’s curious that we still don’t quite have a sense of what the overall thrust of this story is as of yet.
Okay, that’s not exactly true; the thrust of Book 1: Survival (the overarching name for the season) certainly seems to be Pavi and Nisha regaining the lost memories of their past while the tensions and distrust in Ellora bubble over to unbearable levels, mostly focused on the unseen threat of the Avatar — after all, we’re told it was the previous Avatar, Korra, who broke the world two centuries ago, leading to what’s left of humanity living in Seven Havens.
But the real tense question for viewers watching the show is: When are they going to leave this One (1) Haven and explore the other Six (6) Havens, to make Seven total Havens? Look, it’s gotta happen — probably — but this isn’t the single-city focus that mostly consumed Legend of Korra. There, it made sense to spend a lot of time in Republic City; the steampunk-inspired home for all four types of benders and humans was a vast array of landscapes and social strata. Ellora, by design, is smaller and more in line with where we first met Aang with the Southern Water Tribe before heading off to explore the wide world of Avatar.
In fact, if you look at a similar span of time on The Last Airbender, team Avatar had left the Southern Water Tribe by Episode 6, went to the Southern Air Temple, met the Kyoshi Warriors, headed to the Earth Kingdom of Omashu, and fought the at-the-time villainous Zuko multiple times. Not that Seven Havens needs to ape that formula, but the curiosity factor about the new landscape of the world after Korra’s cataclysm (Korraclysm?) is high. We end Episode 6, “Night of the Afflicted,” with Ellora calling the other Havens for help; however, that likely means the other Havens are coming to Ellora, not Pavi and Nisha going to them.
This would be much less of a problem if every episode didn’t include the twins talking about how they want to go find their parents and see if they’re alive. Yet not once does anyone say, “okay, let’s check outside Ellora,” which is the last place they were seen. Yes, Ellora and its citizens are getting plenty of time in the sun, and they’re all interesting in their own right. But at this point, it feels like Seven Havens is fighting against itself to keep our characters in town instead of following the quest structure the season seemed to be setting up.
Those five paragraphs aside, let’s not also forget that this is a very fun show and a great addition to the Avatar canon. While the season-long view raises some questions about the show’s direction, it’s still lovely to look at on an episode-by-episode basis, adorably funny, and doing a nice job of slowly fleshing out the expansive cast. And thanks to the news out of New York Comic Con that the show will now run at least four seasons, there’s a little bit more breathing room for Seven Havens to stay in Ellora before Pavi, Nisha, and presumably Jae (Major Curda) head out to repair this broken world. When they had just announced two seasons, you could hear the clock ticking away in the background; now, they can hang in Ellora for Season 1 but hopefully get on the road in Seasons 2-4.
Okay, enough long view. To break down the plot more specifically, Episode 4, “The Faceless,” focuses on what seemed to be the big threat last week. As it turns out, they’re really raiders taking grain and other goods from Ellora — late in the episode they kidnap a herd of cameldillos. The smart thing this half-hour does is take this threat and pair it with a very small, personal quest for our three leads to find missing Bending Brigade member Uki (Kimberly Woods). Not only does this allow Pavi to get much weirder, building on her “actually, I talk to rocks and they’re my friends” moment from Episode 3, but it gives us more of a chance to understand the increased fear and panic in Ellora that’s caused or amplified by what was left behind by the red diamond.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/avatar-seven-havens-episodes-4-6-recap-and-review
