the scar's not on the wrong side :(

hakoda thinks this is hilarious and decides to keep him on the crew and the whole "good work today zuko. i'll probably kill you in the morning" goes on for a few months until zuko eventually becomes the blue spirit (because no one would surrender to the dread pirate zuko)

aladdin would be sokka, and katara would be there too because duh. momo would make a great abu.

jasmine would be zuko, and iroh would be the sultan. in this AU, he orginally lived with ozai in a different kingdom but was burned and banished after speaking out against the general's plan. iroh convinced ozai not to kill zuko after the agni kai and instead offered to take zuko to ba sing se, where iroh ruled. ozai agreed, on the condition they take zhao (jafar) and long feng (iago) to "keep an eye on things".

now in ba sing se, iroh is a little overprotective of zuko and doesn't usually let him leave the palace blah blah blah. iroh keeps trying to get zuko to marry because he sees zhao (and others) are interested and wants zuko to be taken off the table. zuko, of course, doesn't see it this way and sneaks out all the time, eventually running into katara and sokka and things progress pretty similarly to the movie from there. oh and azula is rajah. because duh. (side note it would be so funny if long feng was a literal talking parrot and azula was an actual tiger)

the genie is aang, and appa is the flying carpet. zhao gets sokka and katara to find him the same way jafar does in the movie. he wants to deliver aang to ozai and he thinks that it will get ozai to approve/order his marriage to zuko.

mind you, it's still not justifiable regardless of if he fought back or not but i feel like him fighting back in the live action just isn't as impactful. zuko's decision not to fight and ozai's decision to scar him are major parts of their characters.

not to mention ozai goading him on during the duel AND having him look like he feels bad about burning zuko kind of waters it down. that man didn't give a single fuck! i know we dont see his face in the cartoon, and while i don't he was smiling/enjoying it, he definitely wasn't remorseful. maybe they're trying to add a layer of complexity to his character and ig if you never watched the original, it's a bit more plausible. having watched the original however... ugh. idk.