It’s the 20th anniversary year for Avatar: The Last Airbender, and both fans as well as the cast and creators of the show came together to celebrate at the most recent San Diego Comic-Con. From an anniversary panel to announcements about what’s to come in the future for the franchise, there was a lot to go around.

It’s been known for a while now that fans will get to see the Gaang once more when the upcoming feature film, The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender, heads to theaters next year. The first work to be announced following the formation of Avatar Studios in 2021, audiences will find the beloved group of characters on a mission, but as adults.

While the voice actors behind the characters have since grown up themselves, none of them will be returning for this upcoming Avatar story, and wisely so. As talented and memorable as they all are, it is odd in retrospect to see a show, set in a heavily Asian-inspired world, have its cast be voiced primarily by white actors. The Legend of Aang will be featuring actors more culturally aligned with their animated counterparts; including Eric Nam as Aang, Jessica Matten as Katara, Román Zaragoza as Sokka, and Dionne Quan as Toph.

Dante Basco — who voiced Zuko — was one of the few Asian Americans to be part of the original main cast, and while the assumption was that he would be the only one to reprise his role, show creators Mike DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko revealed at Comic Con that he too is being recast by none other than Steven Yeun.

Up until that announcement, the assumption was that Yeun would be reprising his role as Avatar Wan, as featured in the second season of the sequel series The Legend of Korra. And that’s one of the reasons why I take issue with this casting. Why have Yeun voice one of the most renowned characters from the franchise, when he already got to make a mark of his own in the role as the first ever Avatar? By having him voice both characters, it just takes away a level of momentum and significance from them. If audiences really want to hear Yeun voice a Zuko-like character, go watch him as Keith in Voltron: Legendary Defender.

As strange as it is to recast one of the few Asian American actors from the original series, I wonder if that decision was made because Basco’s voice still retains such a youthful essence. If that is the case, it’s a just as equally strange argument to make, considering that he did voice Zuko’s grandson Iroh in Korra, and I would argue he performed him in a way to where he showed what a different character he is than when his grandfather was a teenager. Nevertheless, if the role absolutely had to be recast, the creators should have gone with someone other than Yeun — preferably, another Filipino American actor.

Above all else, that’s what makes this recasting particularly disheartening. It’s a case of an actor of East Asian descent, taking a role either from or meant for an actor of Southeast Asian descent (remember that two-hour talk we did about all the East Asian actors who were in Raya and the Last Dragon?). Basco is one of the most prominent Filipino American actors working in Hollywood, and other than his role as Rufio in Hook, Zuko is the role he’s best known for (hence the title of his 2019 memoir). He, a Filipino American actor, performed one of the most complex and well developed character arcs on a TV series. That is never going to fade from the collective memory of both Avatar fans and the Filipino American community — so much to where author Randy Ribay incorporated Filipino cultural elements into his portrayal of the Fire Nation in his Chronicles of the Avatar novel, The Reckoning of Roku. The choice in casting Yeun as Zuko for this upcoming film makes it all the more tasteless — especially considering that the only confirmed Filipino American actor so far for the film, Dave Bautista, is playing the villain.

While this casting announcement is not going to stop me from seeing the film when it comes out next year, I feel that this change in Zuko’s voice should have been done a lot better. Yeun does not need to lay claim to two prominent characters in the franchise, I believe Basco does have the talent and skill to play Zuko as an adult, and if he absolutely had to be recast, perhaps another Filipino American actor would have been more meaningful and appropriate.