When Is Avatar: Seven Havens Set? (And How Soon After Legends of Korra?)
Between the live-action Netflix series, video games and comic books, hardly a year has passed since the release of The Last Airbender when the Avatar universe hasn’t received a new expansion.
Still, this has all been auxiliary stuff. Between that original series, which ran from 2005-2008, and its sequel, The Legend of Korra (2012-2014), new canon pushing the overall story ahead has been scarcer. The recent animated movie, Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, which bridged a little more of the decades-long gap between the original The Last Airbender show and Korra, was a gorgeously produced gift to the fanbase that reunited us with adult versions of the ‘Gaang’. But the next project hitting our screens will be the most significant addition since Korra.
Premiering October 9 on Paramount+, Avatar: Seven Havens is the latest Avatar animated series from original creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Since its initial teaser trailer, there’s been a lot of speculation about where the new Avatar sits in the Avatar Cycle, and when the show takes place. A newer, longer trailer has finally provided more clarity on the protagonist, and thanks to some pre-release press, we now also know where Seven Havens sits in the franchise's ever-growing timeline.
The Avatar Timeline: From Before The Last Airbender to the End of The Legend of Korra
In the way we divide real history into ‘BC’ and ‘AD’, the Avatar timeline is divided into ‘BG’ and ‘AG’ – Before the Air Nomad Genocide and After the Genocide. It is also split between the eras before the Avatar’s existence and after, which are further divided by the periods in which each Avatar is active.
The timeline begins during the roughly 20,000 years that we’d call prehistoric in our world – a time in which spirits start to take on physical forms, the first humans emerge, and, as we know from The Legend of Korra, Book 2, the dark, chaotic spirit Vaatu became the first to cross from the spirit to the mortal world. This era concludes with the first Harmonic Convergence, as Vaatu duels her lighter, more peaceful counterpart Raava, ending in a stalemate. Around 10,000 years later, the human Wan becomes the first Avatar when Raava fuses with him, setting off another Harmonic Convergence and the Avatar Cycle of rebirth.
The Hundred Year War (0-100 AG) kicks off the events of Avatar: The Last Airbender, when the Air Nomads are wiped out by the Fire Nation and the newly anointed Avatar, Aang, accidentally freezes himself for a century. When he’s awoken by Katara and Sokka, it takes the trio – and the new friends and allies they make along the way – about a year to end the Great War (yes, only a year) and bring peace to the Four Nations.
Following this is the Aang Era (100-153 AG) of post-war reconstruction and the establishment of Republic City, ending with the spiritual torch being passed from Aang to the newly-born Korra. The Legend of Korra starts in 157 AG with Korra’s confirmation as Aang’s successor, and concludes in 174 AG with Kuvira’s defeat. It’s after this point that things are far less fleshed-out.
When Is Avatar: Seven Havens Set?
In February, we got our first major lore drop about Seven Havens’ setting and premise. Posted across the Avatar Legends social media channels, the show’s synopsis reads:
“Avatar: Seven Havens is set in a world shattered by a devastating cataclysm. A young Earthbender discovers she’s the new Avatar after Korra – but in this dangerous era, that title marks her as humanity’s destroyer, not its saviour.
Hunted by both human and spirit enemies, she and her long-lost twin must uncover their mysterious origins and save the Seven Havens before civilisation’s last strongholds collapse.”
This places Seven Havens in future post-apocalyptic territory, but how much time has passed since Korra? Speaking to Polygon earlier this September, Executive Producer Sehaj Sethi clarified the gap is “about 225 years”, putting the new show in the late fourth and early fifth centuries AG.
What’s especially interesting is that, despite this big leap forward, Seven Havens’ young earthbending protagonist, Pavi – younger than both Aang and Korra when they discovered their Avatar status – is the next Avatar directly after Korra. This implies there has either been no Avatar for over two centuries since Korra, or that there have been no identified Avatars in that time since the role became reviled.
When asked by Polygon how the team landed on this setting and time jump, Michael Dante DiMartino explained: “Early on, we also decided we wanted this to be more of a mystery show than the last two series, so that a viewer would enter the story with a lot of questions: How did the world get so bad? Why does everyone hate the Avatar? How did Pavi lose her leg? We want the audience to always hunger to know more.”
Will Avatar: Seven Havens Have Two Avatars?
Another lingering – and the most intriguing question, at least for me – is to do with Pavi’s long-lost twin, Nisha. We know that the pair were separated for unknown reasons before being reunited at the start of the series, that they’re identical twins, and that Pavi will explore her “mysterious origin and links to the Avatar Cycle” with Nisha.
Korra’s connection to the Avatar Cycle was severed when she was split from Raava during a battle with Vaatu. The latter merged with waterbending master Unalaq to become the first (and so far, only) Dark Avatar. While she re-merged with Raava after defeating the Dark Avatar, thus renewing the Cycle, Korra’s link to her past lives didn’t return. This left the Cycle in uncharted waters.
In addition to Nisha and Pavi looking the same, their names, which seem to be drawn from Sanskrit in accordance with Seven Havens’ South Asian influences, have an interesting ‘light vs dark’ contrast: Pavi means ‘sacredness’ or ‘purity’ while Nisha means ‘night’. I can’t help but wonder if there’s a link between the twin girls and the warring spirits of light and darkness. While Pavi is the new Avatar, could Nisha have been born with the potential to be the next Dark Avatar? Even though Korra permanently nullified Vaatu’s ability to merge with another human, the world has seismically changed since Korra’s time, and there’s a vast swathe of history unknown to us.
As immortal manifestations of essential primordial forces, neither Raava nor Vaatu can ever be truly destroyed. Instead, if one is temporarily vanquished, they regenerate within the other over the course of thousands of years. It doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that a very weak form of Vaatu could have covertly seeped out of Raava into Nisha at the same time that Raava did with Pavi to make her the next Avatar.
The only precedent for an Avatar twin comes from Avatar Roku, who had an older (by minutes) brother, Yasu. Yasu tragically drowned at the age of 12; four years later, Roku learned he was the Avatar. In the novel, The Reckoning of Roku, we learn that the Firebender national was tortured by the thought that Yasu, whom he’d looked up to and considered himself inferior to, would have made a better Avatar. While his airbending training with monk Gyatsu helped him espouse these thoughts and come to terms with his grief, the idea that twins could equally possess Avatar potential was seeded – even if that wasn’t Roku nor the novel’s intent.
In Seven Havens, we should still be a good few hundred years from Vaatu being able to remanifest since her defeat by Korra and Raava. But again, we’re in unprecedented territory with a huge chunk of missing history between Korra and Havens. I wouldn’t rule anything out.
