Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender speedruns the whole first season of the animated show in eight episodes, which means cutting some scenes, patching other episodes together, and adding a whole new prologue. Results may vary: On the one hand, integrating some favorite characters earlier on makes for some fun reveals, but also makes for some weird pacing and exposition delivery.

The biggest and most glaring drawback, though, is that the rushed pace really buries some good character development and doesn’t let the young actors shine. And the thing is, we know that the young actors — particularly Dallas Liu and Gordon Cormier, who play Zuko and Aang — have a good grasp of their characters based on one really good scene that the show did add. It’s a glimmer of what could be, and hopefully an indication of where the show could go.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender and the original animated series.]

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