An unused animatic from Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender shows that the film nearly included a much more graphic version of a key battle. The deleted sequence would have made the apparent deaths of Aang’s friends explicit and violent, illustrating a darker direction considered for the first new animated Avatar instalment in over a decade.

In the released 99-minute Paramount Plus film, villain Tagah defeats Katara, Toph, Zuko and Sokka with wind attacks, with their deaths confirmed later before Katara revives them using spiritually enhanced water. Animator Tom Barkel briefly shared an alternate storyboard online, later deleted, in which Tagah’s attacks cause visible bleeding and he executes Sokka in front of Katara; fans preserved the footage. As a prequel to The Legend of Korra, the characters’ eventual survival is already established, but the scene reveals how much harsher the confrontation could have been.