Avatar: The Last Airbender was originally going to have an elite team of female firebenders, but it didn't happen. Creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko spent years refining their original concept into the show beloved by many fans today. In their book Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Art of the Animated Series, DiMartino and Konietzko reveal that one of these changes involved cutting a team of female firebenders, a team which bears a striking resemblance to Azula's team introduced in season 2.
Season 2 adds Princess Azula, Zuko's ruthless, ambitious sister, to its cast of characters. Tasked with capturing Zuko, Azula recruits the help of two of her closest friends from the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, Mai and Ty Lee. While neither are firebenders like Azula, both characters are capable of inflicting severe damage on enemies. Mai is an excellent markswoman, incapacitating opponents with her small blades and arrows. Ty Lee is both an expert gymnast and chi blocker. Her ability to temporarily remove a bender's powers makes her a deadly foe and an incredible asset to Azula's team.
Even though this fearsome trio did not appear in the first season, DiMartino and Konietzko had a similar idea for a group of female Fire Nation antagonists early on in the show's development. In Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Art of the Animated Series, they say that for Avatar's pilot, which differed greatly from the final show, "we had an idea about an elite group of female firebenders hunting Aang, but unfortunately it never found its way into the series." Even though this first iteration of their idea did not appear in Avatar, Azula's team does seem like a natural evolution of this concept.
A trio of fierce Fire Nation women, Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee are incredibly elite fighters. While neither Mai nor Ty Lee are firebenders, they are still highly skilled and can hold their own against some of the world's most powerful benders. When the group's focus shifts from solely hunting Zuko to also hunting Aang, they also come closer to the creators' original idea for the team.
This is not the only time ideas for Azula's team have shifted drastically. Azula was originally accompanied by a team of ninjas before the creators decided having individual companions with different skill sets would be more interesting. Both Mai and Ty Lee helped round out Azula's character: their friendship specifically helped set up Azula's arc in Avatar: The Last Airbender's final season, as their betrayal worsened her mental health. Even though DiMartino and Konietzko did not use their first idea for the trio of elite firebenders in the pilot, it is fascinating to chart the concept's evolution into the fascinating squad of fighters that is Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee.