It's canonically important that he's permanently and severely disfigured. I feel like they're trying to go for that dark brooding thing teenage girls go nuts for (I sure as hell did) but don't realize how important the severe injury / disability is to the exact story arc that made him catnip to teenage girls. And they're honestly wildly overestimating how much that affects his "attractiveness"; like I said, it certainly didn't matter to my stupidly horny tween self. It really reflects how shallow these people are. And honestly part of the reason I don't care about that kind of thing as an adult might even be attributable to watching atla at that age, which is a great example of why that representation matters so much.

Also tbh the way he the injury looks in the original animation, I'm surprised if he can even see more than maaaybe vague dark vs light shapes out of the damaged eye, meaning he's also disabled. I've had partial blindness in one eye since before I can remember and it can make sports that require depth perception difficult. The fact that he got the injury as a teenager / young adult would be even more disabling because he wouldn't have the neuroplasticity of a toddler / infant to help him adapt like I did. Yet he still competently engages in ranged combat on the regular!

TLDR network / tv show executives are cowards and don't actually understand what real people who don't essentially live in the hunger games capital city actually find attractive.

https://x.com/ZaroryArt/status/1811083421747147017?t=WEh4u4Jm9Gfnv36wwumfzQ&s=19

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YedGwY

Source: https://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/4115/team-avatar-returns-in-the-avatar-the-last-airbend

Supposedly for petty personal reasons:

The woman who controls the company, Shari Redstone, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory last week as she scuttled a planned merger with David Ellison's Skydance Media.

Redstone had spent six months negotiating a complicated deal that would have given control of Paramount to Ellison and RedBird Capital, only to call it off as it neared the finish line.

The chief reason for her decision: Her reluctance to let go of a family heirloom she fought very hard to get.

The fandom doesn't want to talk about it, but the Avatar franchise is in trouble.

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/comments/1dgrkis/my_attempt_at_an_appa_cake/