Avatar: Seven Havens Hands the Avatar to a Newcomer. Saheli Khan’s First Screen Role Is Now Four Books Long
Avatar: Seven Havens arrived on Paramount+ on Friday with three episodes, a new Avatar nobody in her world wants, and a lead voice who had never carried a screen role before. By the afternoon, the same Friday, the series had been renewed through Book 4.
The show is the third animated series from Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. It is set 225 years after Korra, and it hands the title role to Saheli Khan, whose Pavi is nine years old by most critics’ count, hunted, and not at all sure she wants the job.
The Avatar nobody wanted
Paramount+ sums the premise up in one line: Pavi is a young Earthbender “who discovers she’s the new Avatar after Korra, only to find that in this dangerous era, that title marks her as humanity’s destroyer, not its savior.” A cataclysm blamed on Korra has pushed what’s left of civilisation into seven walled havens, and the Avatar has become the thing people fear.
Pavi lives in one of those havens, Ellora, in a cave outside the walls with a giant cat-monkey called Geet. Geet is voiced by Dee Bradley Baker, who was Appa and Momo in the first series, and who also voices a second cat-monkey, Ruhi. When Pavi’s powers are discovered, she meets a long-lost twin, Nisha, voiced by Aishu Devan, and the two of them start pulling at the mystery of where they came from.
The cast around them is Akshay Khanna as Karthik, the captain of Ellora’s bending Brigade, Major Curda as Jae, an Airbender in the Brigade who becomes Pavi’s friend and mentor, Sakina Jaffrey as Agam, Darren Barnet as Daemin and Dianne Doan as Zi. Jeremy Zuckerman, who scored both earlier series, is back for the music, and the animation comes from the French studio La Chouette Compagnie.
A newcomer not much older than her character
Paramount+ describes Avatar: Seven Havens as Khan’s “first major screen role.” That’s a big ask for a franchise that waited twelve years between animated series, and the early reviews keep coming back to how young the two leads are.
Rollin Bishop at GamesRadar+ wrote that the twins “are voiced by Aishu Devan and Saheli Khan, respectively,” and that this “also helps bridge the gap a bit given they’re roughly as young as Zach Tyler Eisen was when voicing Aang in the original Last Airbender series. There’s a throughline there, whereas Korra always felt more like an adult.”
Callie Hanna, reviewing for FandomWire, made the same point about the sisters’ chemistry: “her sisterly dynamic with Nisha is fun, heartfelt, and very true-to-life, helped by both Saheli Khan and Aishu Devan being not much older than the duo they’re portraying.”
Khan, Devan and Curda spent premiere day at New York Comic Con, where they joined the creators on the series panel and sat for a round of press interviews at the Javits Center. The three of them were filmed at the press table by the outlet blackfilmandtv, laughing through questions while the first episodes were landing on the service behind them.
Image: blackfilmandtv, New York Comic Con press table, 9 October 2026
What the critics heard
The reviews split on the animation and agree on the voices. Angie Han at The Hollywood Reporter gave the show the bottom line “Feels good to be back,” and said its characters “make immediate and likable impressions.” She singled out the pairing of “earnest airbender Jae (Major Curda) and himbo waterbender Daemin (Darren Barnet)” as “a particularly amusing pairing,” and said Khanna and Jennifer Sun Bell, as Karthik and the chancellor Kayoko, “add some welcome gravitas and just a touch of romance.”
Michel Ghanem at TheWrap called the first six episodes “a marvel” and said the show “sounds incredible,” crediting Zuckerman’s score as “perhaps one of the best scores on television.” He also noted something the franchise had not managed before: “not only do we have a predominantly Asian voice acting cast, but an Asian writing team as well led by head writer Sehaj Sethi.”
VoiceEditSuiteClean a session in ninety seconds, not three hours.Hanna put it more bluntly at FandomWire: “it’s a much-welcome shift to see these Asian and South Asian-inspired character designs be voiced by actually Asian and South Asian people, a far cry from the talented but mostly white casts of ATLA and Korra.” She also praised Curda for “bringing the stickler-turned-rebel Airbender Jae to life,” and Baker for bringing “his iconic penchant for animal noises to the twins’ cat-monkey companions.”
Not everyone was won over. Katie Doll at CBR scored the opening six episodes 6 out of 10 and wrote that “no amount of cuteness can fix her passivity in large-scale situations. In fairness, this is the drawback of a nine-year-old protagonist.” Bishop’s verdict at GamesRadar+ was “Charming leads” on one side and “Flat designs” and “Difficult-to-follow animation” on the other. The TV Cave’s review landed on four out of five, and said “Saheli Khan anchors the character nicely” and that “the ensemble voice cast is strong across the board.”
Renewed before the first weekend
The renewal came on stage at the Javits Center. DiMartino and Konietzko announced it during the Seven Havens panel, alongside executive producer Ethan Spaulding, co-executive producer Sehaj Sethi, and the three young voice actors. Janet Varney, who voiced Korra, moderated. Deadline’s Katie Campione reported that the news confirms “that the story of Avatar Pavi and her twin sister Nisha will continue through Books 3 and 4,” and that “more details on Books 2, 3 and 4 will follow at a later date.”
Book 2 had already been ordered, so the show is now guaranteed four Books, the same run as The Legend of Korra. The rest of Book 1 arrives in weekly batches on Paramount+ through October 30.
The panel had a second surprise. Variety’s Joe Otterson reported that the creators “also revealed that the animated series ‘Avatar Kuruk: Wave of Chaos’ has been ordered at Paramount+.” It follows the Water Tribe Avatar who lived three generations before Aang, as a rebellious teenager. Konietzko will be its showrunner. No cast has been named.
From the script page to the screen
The clip Paramount+ put out for Comic Con is the most useful thing a voice actor can watch this week. It is a script-to-screen reveal: typed screenplay lines sit over rough storyboards, then over colour animatics, and finally over the finished animation, so you can read the direction the cast were working from. “Pavi, asleep. Geet lies at the foot of the bed,” one scene heading reads, then Karthik, in voice-over: “You can’t have found the Avatar because…”
Image: Paramount+, Avatar: Seven Havens script-to-screen reveal
The scene ends on the twins meeting for the first time, and the script’s last line is the one the whole series hangs on: “We end with our twin Avatars staring at each other, with no idea of the epic journey they’re about to go on. Together.”
The official teaser, released at San Diego Comic-Con in July, shows the world Pavi is hiding in: Ellora, the storms beyond its walls, and the cataclysm the havens blame on Korra.
What people are saying
Readers reacted to the renewal under Deadline’s story within hours. One wrote: “so so so excited for all this avatar content :)”. Another remembered the way the last series was handled: “I remember how Nickelodeon handled seasons 3 and 4 of Korra. Sad that it took a takeover for Paramount to finally acknowledge the value of one of their biggest franchises.” The Legend of Korra was moved from television to online release partway through its third Book in 2014.
For the actors, the four-Book order changes the shape of the job. Khan’s first screen role is now a multi-year one, with a character who will grow up on screen the way Aang did. Han’s review at The Hollywood Reporter ended on the same thought: “Where it’ll take Pavi now remains to be seen. But should Seven Havens borrow a page from its predecessors, I think it’s safe to say she’ll do her Avatar ancestors proud.”
Sources: Paramount+ (Sneak Peak cast guide and the Avatar: Seven Havens Comic Con reveal and official teaser), Deadline, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, TheWrap, GamesRadar+, CBR, FandomWire, The TV Cave, blackfilmandtv (New York Comic Con press table video), Wikipedia for episode counts of the earlier series. Images: Paramount+; press table frame: blackfilmandtv.
Lee este artículo en español: Avatar: Seven Havens le entrega el Avatar a una debutante. El primer papel en pantalla de Saheli Khan ya tiene cuatro Libros
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