Writers for new 'Avatar' show, 'Seven Havens', hail from Midwest

ST. PAUL, Minn. - "Avatar: Seven Havens" Executive Producer Sehaj Sethi, as well as Story Editor, Chad Quandt, spoke to Fox Television Stations about their experiences as Midwesterners working on this new animated project. 

About ‘Avatar: Seven Havens’

What we know:

According to Paramount+, which airs the series, "Seven Havens" is about "a young Earthbender [who] discovers she's the new Avatar after Korra – but in this dangerous era, that title marks her as humanity's destroyer, not its savior. Hunted by both human and spirit enemies, she and her long-lost twin must uncover their mysterious origins and save the Seven Havens before civilization’s last strongholds collapse." 

The series comes following the original, "Avatar: The Last Airbender," which aired in 2005, starting the franchise, and its predecessor, "The Legend of Korra," which aired in 2012. Both series follow their protagonist, who is the "avatar," a chosen one within the franchise who has a special spiritual connection and the ability to manipulate four elements, instead of just one. 

In "Seven Havens," we follow a third avatar, a 9-year-old girl named Pavi. The series is presented as more of a mystery than its predecessors and takes place 200 years after the previous one. At the beginning of "Seven Havens," we discover that for the first time in the universe's history, there seems to be a second avatar, Pavi's long-lost twin, Nisha. 

Many questions surround the series, most notably: how are there two avatars, what caused the great cataclysm that destroyed the world, and how did these new havens form?

The show began releasing episodes on Oct. 9, 2026, with a batch of three new episodes being dropped each week on Fridays. The season finale is set to air Friday, Oct. 30, and has been renewed for three additional seasons.

Sehaj Sethi now calls MN home

Local perspective:

Sehaj Sethi is the executive producer, alongside franchise creators, Michael Dante DiMartino and Brayn Konietzko, for "Avatar: Seven Havens." She is also a co-lead writer on the series along with Ethan Spaulding. Sethi also developed the series. She is from Evanston, Illinois, in the greater Chicago area, but she currently lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her husband and children.

Sethi said she fell in love with the Twin Cities, completely loves Minnesota and now considers the state home. 

Sethi met her now-husband while getting her graduate degree at NYU. Her husband is a Minnesota native, and after living in New York City for a while, her family decided to move to Minnesota in 2020 to be closer to both her family in the Chicago area and her husband's family in the Twin Cities area. 

Sethi said the "Avatar: Seven Havens" team was very open to her working remotely, allowing her to work on the project — which began production in 2022 — mostly from Minnesota, despite most of the team being based in Los Angeles. 

The team is very flexible, according to Sethi, as a storyboard artist worked from Scotland, another writer worked from New York, and co-creator Bryan Konietzko also sometimes works from his home state of Vermont. 

How Sethi became executive producer

The backstory:

Sethi explains she was able to get the job through a team of representatives, since she's based in Minnesota, unlike most in the industry who are based in Los Angeles. Her manager saw a posting that Nickelodeon was planning a new "Avatar" series and needed assistance in leading the show. 

She then went out to meet one of Nickelodeon's executives, and Sethi admits at that point she had heard of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and "The Legend of Korra," but was yet to actually watch the show. 

Cut to 72 hours later, and Sethi says she was, "Curled up on [her] couch sobbing," and thought to herself, "Oh, I need to work on this. I love this." She further explains she loved the character building, complex and empathetic storylines, and the show really spoke to her. 

Thankfully for Sethi, the "Avatar" creators and producers had specifically not wanted a longtime fan to be hired as their co-executive producer.

She said they needed someone who would be able to "kill the series' darlings" when writing and be loyal to this avatar's specific storyline and not necessarily the previous beloved franchise's. 

Sethi said at the next meeting she stressed how badly she wanted to be a part of this new "Avatar" project. Months went by, and she worked on other roles, before finally hearing back from anyone on the "Avatar" team. It was then she met up with DiMartino and Konietzko's producing partner, and the two of them really hit it off. Afterward, she finally met DiMartino and Konietzko themselves, and the group of them "really clicked." 

Developing ‘Seven Havens’

Dig deeper:

Sethi said she really emphasized to the "Avatar" producers her love of complexity in storytelling, which the franchise had long echoed. "I've said a few times that I really think what matters is that there is no bad guy," Sethi explains. 

"Everyone has a point of view, every character has — you know — where they're coming from. Every character has an intent that's technically good. They all technically want to do the right thing. But how they go about that really confounds things. So all of us really loved that kind of storytelling. I was like, I'm totally on board, let's do this," said Sethi, speaking further on her experience of meshing with the rest of the "Avatar" storytelling team.

Sethi said working on "Avatar" was "some of the most fun [she] ever had just creating." She explained some aspects of "Seven Havens" had already been established when she joined the development team, but she got to create a lot of content of her own, including a series "Bible" for the program, which led to it being green lit by Paramount. 

From around August 2022 to about February 2023, the show was in its development stage. In the middle of all that, Sethi said she had gone on maternity leave and hoped to have a show by the time she returned. Which they did. 

The team then went on to the next stage of production in the TV series creation process known as "Blue Sky." This is a time used to get writers together and envision what you want your show to look like, including overall themes. From there, they were able to create a production schedule, start turning over scripts and summaries, and then hopped into production, which has been going on ever since. 

Sethi is excited for fans to see what comes next in "Seven Havens" and hopes fans resonate with this series' characters the same way they have connected with the characters of past shows.

About Chad Quandt 

Local perspective:

Chad Quandt is a television writer who primarily works within animation. He grew up in South Bend, Indiana, and currently works as a story editor on "Seven Havens." Quandt describes a story editor as "a fancy insider term for writer." 

Quandt says while growing up in Indiana, he played sports and was an "annoying film kid," who had a wall of DVDs. He liked inviting friends over for movie nights. 

Quandt attended Indiana University in Bloomington. There, he worked on student television at their campus station IUSTV and wrote for the Indiana Daily Student. Quandt also worked in production for WTIU PBS and hosted a children's program there. 

Additionally, Quandt did stand-up while in Bloomington, which he says helped prepare him for going into a writing room for TV. According to Quandt, it helped him with "not entirely dying inside when an idea is rejected." 

Something Quandt says he misses about the Midwest — aside from his friends and family — is Midwestern pizza.  Quadnt now resides in Los Angeles and says that while LA has great dishes, he misses the pizza from back home. 

‘Midwest manners’ inspire Quandt's characters

The backstory:

"Seven Havens" is not the only project Quandt has worked on. He has won an Emmy Award for his work on "Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia," as well as a Peabody Award for "Star Trek: Prodigy." Quandt shares that he believes the work was only possible because of "the talented crews, the writers [he] collaborates with, the storyboard artists who translate to screen, and the actors who make your jokes land." 

Quandt also noted that something he believes carries over into his work from his Midwest roots are his "Midwest manners." He said that a lot of his characters tend to be "overly humble heroes," such as characters that "would rather not bother someone to tell them the castle is on fire. They'll take care of it themselves." 

He also said he worked the closest with Sethi when collaborating to write on "Seven Havens" from the beginning. The Midwest duo worked to "figure out" the series' "seven unique havens," which ended up as the setting for the post-apocalyptic series. Quandt says he is "forever grateful" to Sethi. 

Working on 'Avatar'

Big picture view:

Unlike Sethi, Quandt had been a longtime fan of the "Avatar" franchise and noted his excitement at working at "the heart of one of the most acclaimed series of all time." (Early this month, "Avatar: The Last Airbender" placed at No. 37 on The New York Times reader-voted ranking of the 100 best shows of the 21st century.) 

Quandt said he then felt some "panic, hoping that [he] could do right by that legacy and make the best show possible that honors everything that came before." 

Quandt wanted to leave Midwest readers, in particular, with this message:

"If anyone reading this is in the Midwest and worries it’s impossible to make it out to an industry city, it’s not impossible! And it’s never been better to make stuff online. The indie animation scene is really exciting." 

Which, was a point Sethi had brought up as well, championing the indie animation scene in the Twin Cities. An example of this is the group "Nice Moves," which currently hosts different events throughout the Twin Cities. Sethi herself is also able to make it in the animation industry while living in the Midwest.

More on ‘Seven Havens’ 

What they're saying:

Sethi and Quandt spoke more about the series, explaining the decision to change the art style in "Seven Havens," and how that was an intentional stylistic choice for the show. And Sethi also brought up how the franchise handles representation in a way that has been impactful and important to many viewers throughout the years. 

For instance, one of the main characters of the original series, Toph Beifong, was a blind girl. However, she was able to use her special ability in the show, "earthbending," in order to sense movements in the ground and "see" that way. She was one of the strongest fighters on the cartoon's team, while showcasing a clear disability. 

Representation in ‘Avatar’

Why you should care:

Sethi mentioned she believes the series creators do earnestly care about representation in their shows. In "Seven Havens," one of the main characters, Pavi, is disabled. Pavi is missing one of her legs, and uses different mobility aids throughout the series to help her move freely. These challenges, which can be realistic to those in real life with limb disabilities, are presented clearly in the show, but aren't used to define the characters' personalities.

Behind the scenes, the executive producers wanted to ensure they had accurate representation in the writing room for their characters. They also wanted to make sure they looked beyond the identity of the writer, and homed in on their talent first and foremost. The team hired a writer named Peter Lee, who wrote the show's sixth episode. Sethi explained Lee is limb-different, but also noted he is a very "phenomenal" writer who wrote some of her favorite episodes in the series.

Sethi said she herself had experienced frustrations throughout her own career as an Indian American where people assumed she should be on the show just to "look good" in terms of representation. However, she said she found this perspective insulting, as she is confident in her abilities as a writer, first and foremost. 

LGBTQ+ representation:

Another main character in the series, named Jae, is gay and is seen early on in the show with his boyfriend. Sethi said the writers discussed making Jae's attraction to men part of the storyline, but ultimately decided to just make this universe "cool with the queer community." The team instead decided to focus on the internal dynamics of the couple and the external challenges they face in this post-apocalyptic world, instead of challenges related to their identities. 

In the prequel series to "Seven Havens," the main character in "The Legend of Korra," Korra herself, was one of the first characters in a mainstream children's animation to be depicted as part of the LGBTQ+ community, alongside her romantic interest, Asami Sato. 

Behind the scenes on ‘Avatar’

And while "The Last Airbender" and "The Legend of Korra" all take place in the same world and universe as "Seven Havens," they are not completely intertwined or the same story. Each one offers its own unique plot, characters, and new lore. 

Sethi explained the show had been planned for four seasons. Paramount recently announced the show was renewed through season four, but Sethi shared the writers had always written with four seasons in mind and a fully fleshed-out story within those four seasons. 

'Avatar' leaks:

Something Quandt spoke about was the recent leak that happened with another material within Avatar Studios, the studio that helps create anything related to "Avatar" animation. The film, "The Legend of Aang," was leaked earlier this year, leading to Paramount+ releasing it earlier than planned on streaming. The movie was originally slated for a theatrical release, but Paramount+ had opted for a streamed release instead. However, it wound up getting a very limited release in some theaters in New York City and Los Angeles. 

"It's really unfortunate, especially for an amazing crew who poured so much into the film. Even so, the film has gotten a great reception and is breaking all these streaming records. I hope our audience gets to watch Seven Havens unspoiled, how it’s meant to be seen," Quandt explains about "The Legend of Aang." 

Sethi also acknowledged the recent leaks, noting that Paramount+ had been good about keeping "Seven Havens" on lock since the leaks. She also touched on the recent merger, but noted that it was "above her," and that she was assured that "Seven Havens" would go on as planned through the merger, however that wound up. 

About the ‘Avatar’ franchise

Big picture view:

The "Avatar" franchise has been around since 2005, when "The Last Airbender" aired on Nickelodeon. The series was awarded multiple Primetime Emmy awards and has been recreated into live action iterations, including a Netflix remake that is awaiting its third season. 

The sequel series, "The Legend of Korra," also received several Emmy Awards. The franchise also has a litany of video games inspired by it. The franchise also has created several graphic novel series as well as novels about past avatars. 

At the NYCC this year, the franchise also announced another series coming soon, "Avatar Kuruk: Waves of Chaos."

Franchise legacy:

The franchise has been well-received, with the original earning a Rotten Tomato critic score of 100%, while "The Legend of Korra" holds an 88% critic score, and "Seven Havens" currently has a 100% critic score. 

It has also been culturally influential, even gaining a reference Monday by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, reported by NBC4, as he said at a press conference, "In Season 1, Episode 16 of ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’, Jeong-Jeong of The Order of the White Lotus teaches us water brings healing and life." 

The series also has its own rides and attractions in the Mall of America's Nickelodeon Universe park. 

And has its own spot at a desk at FOX 9 in Minnesota. 

Soundtrack concerts come to the Midwest

Things to do:

In addition to this spin-off material, live concerts featuring the soundtrack from "The Last Airbender" have also gone on tour, including to many areas in the Midwest. "The Legend of Korra's" soundtrack is also getting its own live concert tour. 

Some Midwest city dates for that include: 

• Omaha, Nebraska: Jan. 10, Orpheum Theater
• Chicago, Illinois: Feb. 4, Auditorium Theatre
• Waukee, Iowa: Feb. 5, Vibrant Music Hall
• Indianapolis, Indiana: Feb. 6, Murat Theatre at Old National Centre
• Kansas City, Missouri: Feb. 7, Muriel Kauffman Theatre
• Minneapolis, Minnesota: Feb. 16, Orpheum Theatre
• Akron, Ohio: Feb. 18, Akron Civic Theatre
• Detroit, Michigan: Feb. 20, Fisher Theatre
• Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Feb. 21, Riverside Theater

Where to get more ‘Avatar’

What's next:

You can watch the original, "Avatar: The Last Airbender," "The Legend of Korra," "The Legend of Aang," and "Seven Havens," all on Paramount+. 

New episodes are airing on the streaming service through Oct. 30, which will include the season finale. Season 2's release date is yet to be announced, but is confirmed for 13 episodes. 

Seasons 3 and 4 are confirmed to be coming, but the number of episodes and their release dates are yet to be announced. 

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