10 Greatest Season Premieres In TV History, Ranked

Published Nov 12, 2026, 11:01 AM EST Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Avatar: Seven Havens is a masterclass in how to expand a franchise. Most legacy sequels of its kind are just a carbon copy of the original classic. The most obvious version of an Avatar: The Last Airbender sequel show — the Scream 5/Force Awakens/Halloween Ends version — would catch up with Team Avatar when they’re old and bitter and miserable, and watch their much less interesting kids as they follow in their parents’ footsteps. Aang and Katara would be divorced and estranged, just like Han and Leia or Dewey and Gail, and their son or daughter would be the next Avatar, suffering from the same impostor syndrome that plagued their dad when he was their age. It would’ve been lazy, uninspired, and pointless (even more so than Netflix’s live-action remake), and it would’ve retroactively hurt the legacy of the original series. But Seven Havens leaves the legacy of the original series intact. It doesn’t undermine the original; it complements it. This new series does something completely fresh and exciting. It whisks us 200 years into the future, where all but the titular seven settlements have been devastated by an apocalyptic event known as “The Cataclysm,” and the Avatar is thought of as a harbinger of doom, not a beacon of hope. There, two identical girls, Pavi and Nisha, discover that they’re not just twins; they’re the first ever dual Avatars, sharing the responsibilities between them. It’s true to the spirit of The Last Airbender without just rehashing all its formulas and archetypes. It’s a brand-new story, with all-new characters and emotional arcs, set in the familiar world of Avatar. It expands the worldbuilding and deepens the mythology. Whereas The Force Awakens took us to yet another desert planet to blow up yet another Death Star, Avatar: Seven Havens has completely flipped the script. The Avatar is not a revered hero anymore; they’re vilified as a human bad luck charm. Avatar: Seven Havens Is The Estranged Twin Story The Acolyte Should've Been Avatar: The Last Airbender was heavily influenced by classic Star Wars, and now, modern Avatar is here to show modern Star Wars how it’s done. Not only is Seven Havens a better legacy sequel than The Force Awakens; it’s also a much better mystery than The Acolyte. The Acolyte was Disney’s first attempt at a Star Wars mystery-box show, and much like Seven Havens, it tells that story through two long-lost twins coming back together. Amandla Stenberg gave a wonderful dual performance in the lead roles, and the Force-fu fight scenes were awesome (especially the early one with The Matrix’s Carrie-Anne Moss), but The Acolyte’s plot was ultimately too dull and unengaging for the series to work. It didn’t help that the writers saved all the cool stuff (Yoda, Plagueis, etc.) for the finale, so they could tease a second season that would never come to pass. Avatar: Seven Havens succeeds where The Acolyte failed. Whereas The Last Airbender was a classic hero’s journey following Aang on his quest to master all four elements and defeat the Fire Lord, Seven Havens is more of an Acolyte-style mystery. It doesn’t overexplain where we are in the Avatar timeline; it drops us right in the middle of a harrowing period of uncertainty and leaves us to figure out how we got there for ourselves. The best thing about Avatar: The Last Airbender is that it didn’t underestimate its audience’s intelligence; it didn’t talk down to its young viewers, and Seven Havens is just as mature and thought-provoking and ambiguous. The Acolyte was about estranged twin sisters brought together by a Force dyad, and Avatar: Seven Havens tells a very similar (but much more fleshed-out) story through its long-lost twin Avatars. The plotting is a lot tighter, the visuals are much more striking, and above all, the emotions ring a lot truer.