Why Aang From Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender Looks So Familiar

If you're a fan of beloved animated series "Avatar: The Last Airbender," you likely know that Netflix has announced the stars for its upcoming live-action adaptation of the show. While the initial "Last Airbender" casting decisions divided the community, the young actor tapped to bring Aang to life seems to fit the role in some important ways. The original 61 episodes chronicled Aang's story, which means the person who portrays him in the live-action version needs to have the ability to carry the show. It's a lot of pressure, but also the type of challenge many actors relish. In this case, the actor's name is Gordon Cormier, and he's 11 years old. That matches up nicely with Aang's state at the beginning of "The Last Airbender," when he emerged, still at the biological age of 12, after being frozen in an iceberg for 100 years.

You might think with such little time under his belt, this actor might be new to the Hollywood scene. But you'd be wrong. Cormier may stand in tween territory, but he's already got the kind of resume that older actors might aspire to after just two years in the business. He started his career as an unnamed "Guatemalan urchin" in the "Get Shorty" TV series on Epix cable channel in 2019, and had small parts in the Hallmark holiday movies "A Christmas Miracle" and "Christmas Under the Stars." He's also an accomplished skateboarder, if his Instagram account is any indication of his talent. This role in the new "Avatar" project could very well be Cormier's biggest break yet. Here's where else you might have seen this up-and-coming star.

In Paramount+'s "The Stand" from 2020 and 2021, Cormier played the supporting role of Joe in eight out of the nine episodes that were made. Nadine (Amber Heard) finds the mysterious child sitting along a road in Pennsylvania, brings him with her and calls him "Joe," which is how she always referred to students whose names she could not remember when she was a teacher. Joe, who is 11 years old and mute as result of trauma (although he apparently talks in his sleep), turns out to be a musical prodigy. 

The character is actually more prominent in the recent take on the Stephen King book than he was in the original source material or in previous screen adaptations. In this new series, Joe is the first to see through Harold Lauder's facade and warns Larry (Jovan Adepo) of Nadine's turn to the dark side. He also finds Mother Abagail (Whoopi Goldberg) in the woods after she was attacked by Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård). He turns out to have some psychic abilities, too.

This was a blink-and-you-missed-it moment for the young actor, and Cormier's character didn't have an actual name in the final episode of "Lost in Space" — he is credited in the cast, though, as "Young Boy."

In what turned out to be the two-season series' finale, the story of "Ninety-Seven" focused on the Robinson family seizing control of the Resolute while an invading army of robots boards the ship to retrieve the alien engine. Judy (Taylor Russell) captains a desperate mission to send the ship's 97 children to safety through the rift and to the colony at Alpha Centauri in one of the Jupiter ships, leaving the adults behind to deal with the robot attack.

As you can imagine, Cormier played one of the 97 children. So, it's not much screen time, but even a small role in a Netflix television series is nothing to sneeze at. You never know — such things could lead to bigger roles in the future.