The news about the live-action Avatar prompted Alasdair Stuart to look at the current state of streaming…

Three years ago, Kevin Feige was asked about whether Disney Plus shows would ever appear on physical media. The answer he gave was, depending on where you stand, either obfuscatory or refreshingly honest.

“The truth is, I don’t know. That’s a good question for which I will look for the answer. I don’t know.”

Which is fine, refreshing even. This next section hasn’t aged as well.

“You can pay a very low fee per month and have access to something that you can put it on your TV whenever you want!”

Three years is a long time in streaming and things look very different now. Disney Plus’ chunky price increase hasn’t been popular outside the company and some of the choices made haven’t been popular inside it. We don’t have time to get into the escalating nightmare Marvel have had over the course of Phase Five but returning CEO Bob Iger has made it clear he’s making changes. One of those is, worryingly, a page from the Netflix book:

‘You have to kill things you no longer believe in.’

Who knew there was a CEO out there who was more of a coward than David Zaslav?  What a brave new world. More pertinently, and hopefully, the Disney Plus shows are all starting to appear on physical media. Loki Season 1, WandaVision, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Moon Knight, Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi and the first two seasons of The Mandalorian are all either out or available for pre-order. The other shows can’t be far behind. So that’s good! Kind of! Perhaps it’ll all be o-

Oh. Hey Netflix.

Netflix clearly work a specific way and that’s fine. What’s less fine, for everyone, is that that method is unclear and entirely fails to mesh with the fandom culture that’s been in place since the first letter writing campaign to save Star Trek six decades ago. Fan voices carry and if a show is cancelled, those voices have often carried it back to air. It’s not an exact science, and there’s a whole sub discussion to have about fan entitlement there but the point here is stark. It doesn’t work anymore.

Lockwood & Co. Fate: The Winx Saga.  Shadow and Bone. Archive 81. 1899. The Brothers Sun. Warrior Nun. Netflix have cancelled dozens of shows over the last three years alone and that handful are just examples, all with strong fan communities, good reviews and no future. Only Warrior Nun has been saved and that, again, is a whole discussion given how few of the creative team are returning. Lined up next to the Disney Plus situation and the countless other brushfire wars being waged across streaming (Witness the fact the Roadhouse remake was not originally intended for streaming) and it becomes clear the model is either evolving, in serious trouble, or both. Either way, creatives aren’t happy, fans aren’t happy and shareholders are never happy, despite the murderous cuts everyone is going through to try and make them happy.

Which is why Netflix’s recent combination renewal/cancellation of the live-action Avatar caught my attention. It’s unusual because it mirrors the shape of the original show, which aimed for four seasons and got three. It’s also unusual because it gives the live-action version both a road map to follow and an end date. Most interesting of all, it plays like a response to three straight years of increasingly enraged viewers. ‘Yes we’re pulling it but it gets an ending’ is a hell of a lot better than ‘We know you loved that show it’s dead now.’ Cynically, it pulls the teeth of viewer apathy AND makes sure the show is a set cost at the same time. Everyone’s happy. Or at least happier.

I’m not saying this is the thinking behind the decision because I’ve got no evidence. But looked at with those Disney Plus physical releases and their recent rediscovery of Showrunners, it’s hard not to view this as an attempt to do something positive in a field that’s been so full of negative news for so long we’ve almost forgotten what good news looks like. It’s not restoring balance, but it is a start. Aang would like that.