Avatar: Seven Havens Co-Creator Says There Was No Secret Avatar After Korra

Minor spoilers for the first three chapters of Avatar: Seven Havens.

Korra was the Avatar right before Pavi and Nisha, and nobody came in between. Co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino settled that in an interview with GamesRadar+ published October 14. "There wasn't a secret Avatar in between. I feel okay debunking that theory," he said.

That answers part of a question our Korra explainer left open. It also makes the rest of it harder.

Why the gap is strange

A new Avatar is born when the previous one dies. Sehaj Sethi told Polygon that Seven Havens takes place about 225 years after The Legend of Korra ends, as Nerdist reported. Yet JustWatch notes that the characters treat the twins, who are nine, as the first Avatars since Korra. Ellora sees the Avatar as a destroyer after the Cataclysm, and the first chapter shows the city celebrating Korra's demise. Our Avatar cycle guide shows how the line ran up to her.

The theories still standing

On October 12, JustWatch laid out three explanations. One was that other Avatars lived between Korra and the twins but were hidden, perhaps by the White Lotus, or killed, perhaps by a returning Red Lotus. DiMartino's answer rules that one out. The other two line up roughly with the options GamesRadar+ raises.

Korra lived a very long time. GamesRadar+ points out that Kyoshi lived to 230 by extending her life, so a Korra who passed 200 is not out of the question. JustWatch adds that Aang reached 165, though he spent a century of that in the iceberg. It also notes that characters say Korra was vanquished or defeated, never that she died, and that a trailer shot shows her fighting with gray in her hair.

Someone spent the gap in stasis. GamesRadar+ suggests Korra may have been stuck in some kind of stasis, possibly tied to the Spirit World, that kept the Avatar from being reborn for two centuries. JustWatch floats a different version: the twins themselves may have spent time in suspended animation, as Aang did.

Both outlets are speculating, and the show has confirmed neither. GamesRadar+ also wonders whether the gap connects to the arrival of twin Avatars.

What DiMartino has promised

DiMartino told GamesRadar+ that twin Avatars were something he and Bryan Konietzko had not done before, and that they wanted to make a mystery show. Over the course of the series, he said, they will be "unpacking a lot of those mysteries."

Before the premiere, he told Animation Magazine that the show builds off the events of The Legend of Korra and things that happened between Korra's time and Seven Havens, with some links to the earlier series kept under wraps for now.

For more on the twins themselves, see what the premiere twist changes about the Avatar cycle.