A More Tactile World
Cover Looks – Gordon: Full Look Hiromi Asai, Shoes Adieu, Accessories Lagos. Kiawentiio: Shirt Valentino, Jacket + Shorts Marcell Pustul, Accessories Lagos, Loafers Bared Footwear. Ian: Full Look Anamika Khanna, Shoes Off-White, Accessories Lagos. Dallas: Vest YSL, Pants Helmut Lang, Shoes Adieu. Elizabeth: Shirt Onarin, Pants Sehnsucht, Shoes Lubello, Accessories Lagos. Miyako: Jacket The Mannei, Shoes Prada, Accessories Lagos.
Editor-in-Chief Kelly Mi Li @kellymili
Photography Steve Limones @stevelimonesphotography
Fashion Director Benjamin Holtrop @benjaminholtrop
Creative Direction Aleksandar Tomovic @alekandsteph
Movement Director James Burke @jameslukeburke
Video Alberto Gonzales @alberto_filmdirector
Photography Assistant Nick Ahmet @nick_amet
Fashion Styling Assistants Emily K.E. Johnson @emilykejohnson & Welsh @awelch.ingram
Social Media Tesia Kuh @thefirstthree.co
Production Assistants Lizzie Mansour & Aisha Dandia
Location The London Hotel West Hollywood @thelondonweho
Special Thanks to Mei Coble & Netflix
Season one belonged to water and air, to the long sleep and the colder edges of the world. Season two, now streaming on Netflix, sets its feet on the ground. Avatar: The Last Airbender returns with seven episodes that follow Aang, Katara, and Sokka across the Earth Kingdom toward Ba Sing Se, where an Earth King has chosen not to look at the war pressing against his walls. Sozin’s Comet is coming, and so is the reckoning.
What the new season understands is weight. Showrunners Christine Boylan and Jabbar Raisani spoke of building a more tactile world, and the phrase holds. Earth is the element of consequence, of things that cannot be willed away or floated past. Aang, who has spent his young life evading the responsibility stitched into his name, has to learn to stand still long enough to feel it. His teacher arrives in Toph, a blind earthbender who reads the world through her soles and suffers no illusions. Miyako plays her with the flint the season was waiting for. The children of the first season are no longer quite children. Gordon Cormier‘s Aang carries a new gravity beneath the lightness, a boy starting to understand the cost of the title he once tried to outrun. Kiawentiio‘s Katara has grown into her power and her grief in equal measure, and Ian Ousley‘s Sokka sharpens from comic relief into something steadier and more bruised. Across the divide, Dallas Liu‘s Zuko walks the refugee roads with Iroh, stripped of crown and certainty, while Elizabeth Yu‘s Azula moves through the season like a held breath, lovely and unsurvivable.
For our cover, we photographed Dallas Liu, Elizabeth Yu, Gordon Cormier, Kiawentiio, Ian Ousley, and Miyako. In front of the camera, the dynamic that drives the series came loose from the script and turned into something you could see. The ease between the four who have spent two seasons in one another’s company. The watchfulness of Yu, who plays the sister built to undo them. Miyako, the newest arrival, already holding her own ground.
There is a reason the Earth Kingdom chapter has always been the heart of this story. It is where the war stops feeling distant and where Aang finally meets the people he’s fighting to protect. The season asks its young Avatar to grow up without losing the thing that makes him worth following. It asks the same, quietly, of everyone around him.
The walls of Ba Sing Se were always going to fall. What matters is who is still standing inside them when they do.
This week, Character continues the journey with a series of individual interviews spotlighting each of the Avatar: The Last Airbender cast members featured on our cover.
