One of the things I love most about the ATLA universe is the rich world-building, but while they are generally good at fleshing out governments and culture, they kinda dropped the ball on actual religion. Like, human relations with spirits never seem to go that far beyond the "don't tinkle in the ocean" school of environmentalist morality.
I feel sometimes that's why they don't want to expand on things like the Air Acolytes much. The world as a whole and especially the shows feel afraid of calling the Air Nomads a religious group and the Acolytes make that really hard to ignore. Seeing as they're just a group of people from all sorts of backgrounds who converted to the Air Nomad's religion as Aang taught it. The novels improve it a little bit (references to shrines to spirits, praying to avatars, having the Fire Nation refer to Ozai as "divine") but it feels like the team sees religion as this idea that just shouldn't be touched or something. It's something that I find frustratingly common. The idea that interesting and thought out religion isn't worth the effort or the idea that touching on religion as a concept is taboo in some way.









