Disney’s New Fantasy Series Is About To Make Avatar: The Last Airbender Look Small

Fantasy has often been seen as a lighthearted genre, but while fairytales are a staple of many childhoods, the genre itself can be much more complex. Fantasy shows aimed at kids can be surprisingly deep and mature, and this willingness to offer a complex world and epic story is a major reason why the young adult fantasy subgenre is booming. That said, there are plenty of great young adult fantasy TV series that appeal to viewers of all ages, with Avatar: The Last Airbender being one of the best fantasy TV shows ever created.

Avatar: The Last Airbender has some of the best worldbuilding in fantasy TV, with battles, coming-of-age storylines, and a redemption arc that has come to define the series. The show has a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score and has been critically acclaimed for the writing of different cultures and factions, and yet Disney’s upcoming adaptation of a bestselling novel series is set to make Avatar: The Last Airbender look small. Warrior Cats includes lore that is more expansive than virtually every other young adult fantasy franchise created, including religion, different cultures, and even its own language.

How Warrior Cats Became A Cultural Phenomenon

Warrior Cats, also known as Warriors, often resembles a combination of Avatar: The Last Airbender and the Narnia series. All three feature an entirely new world with its own rules and central characters whose coming-of-age journeys form the main plot arc. That said, Warrior Cats has brought something different to the fantasy genre by reviving the “animal society” setup. This is not a new concept, with Watership Down centering on rabbits and Brian Jacques’ Redwall series following more humanized woodland animals living in and around an abbey. However, Warrior Cats takes this to a different level.

The series seems made for expansion through its central Clan set-up in which the main characters belong to factions based on their circumstances and personalities. Many popular fantasy series appeal to the desire to categorize, from Pokémon to Harry Potter, but while Harry Potter‘s sorting system is deeply flawed in the context of the series, Warrior Cats makes more sense and includes a spiritual aspect that is not always present in young adult fantasy.

The best worldbuilding in fantasy books is always deep and immersive, even when aimed at a young audience. The Warrior Cats books combine a cat’s perspective of human culture with drama and intrigue that is far removed from human activity, deep in the forest. The nuanced central characters are rarely simple heroes and villains, making them more relatable to different kinds of people, while the series is diverse and modern, even without having a main human cast.

This combination of factors, including the fact that the main characters are lovable and familiar animals, made Warrior Cats a cultural phenomenon, with an ever-developing world and a fanbase that has evolved with it. As Warrior Cats is now 23 years old, the original fans have shared the series with a wider audience, and the books have inspired cosplays, fan art, and even manga. Now, with Disney’s Warrior Cats adaptation landing a Marvel showrunner and Star Wars director, the franchise is only going to grow.

Warrior Cats’ Single Book Failing Could Become Its Greatest Strength

One criticism of the Warrior Cats book series is their enormous cast of characters. There are currently nine series in the Warrior Cats franchise, each containing six books, and many of the books feature character guides so that the reader can easily refer back for a reminder about who everybody is and which Clan they belong to. This would not be remarkable in an epic high fantasy novel aimed at adults, with J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth requiring entire separate histories to incorporate all the lore, but it is virtually unheard of in a young adult fantasy.

Now, when even great standalone fantasy stories can become sprawling franchises with multiple spinoffs, this apparent failing of the Warrior Cats series could become its greatest strength. There are hundreds of named characters in Warrior Cats, with six main Clans including StarClan, the spiritual realm. This allows for virtually unlimited expansion and the opportunity for Warrior Cats to continue indefinitely, if Disney captures the existing fanbase with the first adaptation.