Nickelodeon executive Brown Johnson says the new series will focus on a teenage girl avatar named Korra. Brown describes her as hotheaded, independent and "ready to take on the world."

Nickelodeon said in a release that “The Legend of Korra takes place 70 years after the events of ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ and follows the adventures of the Avatar after Aang – a passionate, rebellious, and fearless teenaged girl from the Southern Water Tribe named Korra.”

Korra’s quest eventually leads her to Republic City–the epicenter of the world of “Avatar.” A metropolis powered by steampunk-type technology, the city is inhabited by people from all nations. Korra finds that Republic City suffers from rampant crime and is also dealing with an anti-bender revolt. Korra is tutored by Aang’s son, Tenzin, is the ways of airbending.

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If there’s a new Avatar, that means Aang has passed on. If he died around age 70, isn’t that pretty young for an Avatar?

Konietzko: You gotta keep in mind that he was frozen in a state of suspended animation for 100 years, so he kind of burned up some of his extra Avatar time.

The new “Avatar” is a woman. What inspired you to change the sex of the protagonist of the series?

Michael DiMartino: It’s not so much about changing because we had Avatar Kyoshi before Aang. We’d established that the Avatar can be male or female and we just thought let’s explore one of those more in depth, because Kyoshi was a popular character with a lot of fans and it seemed like a great opportunity to not retread what we’d done with Aang, who was a great hero, we all loved him, but we really wanted to try something different. And we have so many great female fans out there, who really responded to Katara in the first series, we thought we have the fan base who are really going to enjoy seeing the Avatar be a female.

Konietzko: Mike and I, we love those characters too, and we’ve encountered countless fans who are male who really like those characters too. We just don’t subscribe to the conventional wisdom that you can’t have an action series led by a female character. It’s kinda nonsense to us. [I love you, guys!]

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Will we see characters from the previous series pop up?

DiMartino: I don’t want to give anything away, but rest assured there’s a definite link between the old series and this one.

Republic City is a city plagued by crime. There’s an anti-bender revolt. Does this new series deal with more mature themes?

Konietzko: Mike and I like a balance of tones. We never set out to make an overtly silly show or an overly serious dramatic show. We like dealing with all those things. It’s fair to say we’re dealing with some sophisticated things and the show is growing up a bit. But that said, we’re not in a calculated way trying to target another demographic. Even in the first series, it was about a world war and some pretty serious issues.

If Tenzin is Aang’s son, who is his mother?

DiMartino: [To Konietzko] We can say that, right? [To Speakeasy] It’s Katara. It’s not a huge surprise.

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