Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 Officially Makes Filler Canon

Warning! This article contains spoilers for Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2.

Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2 officially makes one of the original show's biggest "filler" stories canon. Netflix's adaptation of Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko's animated masterpiece is a different beast. While the original show was structured into 20-minute episodes and nearly 20 episodes per season, Netflix's approach is more cinematic, with seven roughly hour-long episodes chronicling Aang, Katara, Sokka, and new Gaang member Toph's quest to defeat the Fire Nation in the second season.

As a result, certain animated storylines and episodes have been shortened, cut, or shuffled to fit the live-action Avatar show's altered timeline. While Netflix's adaptation continues to follow the original show's most important plots and arcs, some of the cartoon's "filler" episodes, including (but not limited to) season 1, episode 11, "The Great Divide," season 1, episode 14, "The Fortune Teller," season 2, episode 5, "Avatar Day," and even season 2, episode 16, "Appa's Lost Days," have been omitted from the remake.

While Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of those rare shows in which nearly all filler episodes still have a genuine purpose within the story — they might not move the plot along, but they do offer important moments of character development or political insight — the Netflix adaptation's willingness to cut them from their version is telling. Even so, they did bring one filler episode into the live-action canon this season, making it a major part of Katara's arc rather than a one-off occurrence. Surprisingly, though, this filler episode's story isn't one from the original Book One: Water or Book Two: Earth.

In Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2, episode 1, "Somewhere Safe," Katara learns about the myth of the Painted Lady, an Earth Kingdom river spirit who "takes the form of a woman painted in red and gold." Once Team Avatar arrives in Ba Sing Se, Katara goes out at night disguised as the Painted Lady, offering help to those who need it and becoming a symbol of hope and resilience in an increasingly ravaged city.

Why The Painted Lady Is So Important To Katara's Story In Avatar: The Last Airbender

In the original cartoon, Katara and her friends don't learn about the Painted Lady myth until they're in the Fire Nation in Book Three: Fire. In the final season's third episode, the Gaang arrives in a small riverside town struggling to find food, clean drinking water, and medicine. The Fire Nation's army has erected a weapons factory nearby, polluting the river. Similar to the live-action version, when Katara hears about the Painted Lady, she decides to take matters into her own hands, providing clean water and healing the sick with her bending powers while dressed as the spirit.

It's an important episode for Katara's character. Not only does it prove her spiritual enlightenment — after she destroys the factory and helps the town clean up the river, Katara is visited by the real Painted Lady — it also helps her realize that her admirable need to help people can have unintended consequences. After she teams up with Aang to destroy the factory, the Fire Nation retaliates against the town. It's only because of the others' help that they manage to keep everyone safe.

All in all, Katara's experiences as the Painted Lady help her become an even better hero. She learns the value of teamwork, honesty, and caution, but she never loses sight of what's important to her. Above all else, Katara wants to help people. She just needed to learn how to do so without harming other people (or herself) in the process.

How The Painted Lady's Changed Background Affects Avatar's Story

While Katara learns many of the same lessons when she becomes the Painted Lady in Ba Sing Se, some of the original story's power is lost by making the Painted Lady an Earth Kingdom spirit. That animated "filler" episode isn't just about Katara's growth as a hero and healer. It's also about the Gaang learning that the Fire Nation's citizens have become victims of the Fire Lord's ongoing war, too. When the factory is destroyed, the Fire Nation's soldiers waste no time in targeting the villagers, vowing to get revenge against them when all they've done is try to survive under horrific circumstances.

Katara's willingness to help this innocent Fire Nation settlement is further proof of her kindness, and it only strengthens Team Avatar's resolve. Without that lesson, the group's trek through the Fire Nation in Avatar: The Last Airbender season 3 might lose some of its impact. Will the show use a different filler episode story to fill in the gaps? It should, but given everything still to come in season 3's seven-episode run, it seems unlikely. Hopefully, the Gaang will still get to explore the Fire Nation's complex society, anyway.

All episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2 are streaming now, only on Netflix.