Bryan Konietzko, a co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender, discusses pushback from Nickelodeon when it came to Toph's gender. The fan-favorite animated series ran from 2005 to 2008 until season 3, but experienced a modern revival when it released on Netflix. Created by Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, the series is set in a fantasy world in which certain members of the population can control the elements. The show follows the Avatar, Aang, and his team Katara, Sokka, Toph and Zuko, as they go on a journey to save the world from the Fire Nation.
Avatar: The Last Airbender enjoyed success as the highest-rated animated television show for its demographic at the time of its premiere. Ratings continued to climb, and the show's finale was the best rated installment in the series. As a result, The Last Airbender spawned comics and a sequel series after its conclusion, as well as a poorly received movie adaptation in 2010, directed by M. Night Shyamalan. However, since the film only covered The Last Airbender season 1, Toph (voiced by Michaela Jill Murphy in the original Last Airbender animated series) wasn't adapted.
Surprisingly, despite being one of the most popular characters in the original animated series, Toph could have been written very differently. During an interview on the iHeartRadio podcast Avatar: Braving the Elements, Konietzko describe the pushback from the network when it came to Toph's initial conception. The network apparently had issues with her being written as a female character. Here's what he had to say:
"You know, we would fight our battles. […] And like I said, we had quite a battle to convince the network to let us make Toph a girl. You know, it’s just, they were still clinging onto this idea that they wanted, like, a ‘boy audience.’ But Mike and I have always been like, when I was a kid, I watched shows with girls, all the time. And I was never, like, it wasn’t a problem! If it was a good show, I was into the show. And I think I remember this tough-looking, muscular teenage kid, and we were like, ‘So, who’s your favorite character?’ And he said, ‘Toph.’ [Laughs] We got so many of those, but that one was really memorable, and it’s just vindicating, you know? You’re just like, ugh, if you could just get the suits to understand."
Audiences may remember an episode late in The Last Airbender season 3, in which the main characters attend a play about their lives. Knowing the network originally wanted Toph to be written as a muscular male character adds another layer of humor to her portrayal in that play. Luckily, in the end, the creators held strong to their decision to feature one of their most powerful characters as a blind girl, not to mention the youngest member of the group. That decision sparked a wave of increased diversity and inclusion that was furthered in the show's sequel, The Legend of Korra, which famously faced many bitter battles with the network and was eventually forced to air its final season online.
The stories about a network trying to change an ultimately popular decision is not unique to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Fortunately, the creators trusted in their product enough to dig their heels in and tell the story they knew would be the most effective, and now the show lives on as a critically-acclaimed cornerstone of animation. With a new Avatar: The Last Airbender film being produced by Netflix, audiences are anxious to see whether the movie will live up to their love of the original series, or disappoint like the previous film. Hopefully, the studio and creators will remember the ingredients that made the original show an instant classic, which certainly includes the beloved Toph.
Source: Avatar: Braving the Elements