Avatar: The Last Airbender is an American animated television series that aired on Nickelodeon between 2005 and 2008. The series takes place in a fantasy universe in which a significant portion of the population can telekinetically manipulate, or “bend,” one of the four elements: water, earth, fire, and air. The four elements correspond to four different polities—The Water Tribes, The Earth Kingdom, The Fire Nation, and The Air Nomads—that have distinct cultures, bending styles, and philosophies, based on the element they bend. Only one person in the Avatar universe can bend all four elements: the Avatar, a pseudo-divine figure whose role it is to maintain global harmony. The Avatar is reincarnated as one of the four types of benders in an ongoing cycle.

The television series follows Aang, a young airbender who flees his home at the Air Temples after discovering that he is the next Avatar. He and his flying sky bison, Appa, almost drown near the North Pole, but Aang uses his powers to cryogenically freeze them underneath the water’s surface instead. A century passes with Aang frozen like this, and during that time, the Fire Nation wages a war against the other three nations.