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Celebrating Nickelodeon fan favorite Avatar: The Last Airbender’s 20th Anniversary brought out a lot of feelings. Mostly happy sentiments, great memories and few sad ones too. So many cast members at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 were there to reminisce about making one of the best shows on television, but sadly, the great character actor Mako Iwamatsu, who played the beloved Uncle Iroh, passed away in 2006 after recording 30 episodes over the span of Seasons 1 and 2 of the series. 

Uncle Iroh was a former Crown Prince and Fire Nation general. He was the uncle to Zuko, played by Dante Basco. He treated Zuko as his son and urged him to forge his own path despite whatever burden his family put on his shoulders. Iroh would eventually be labeled a traitor to the Fire Nation after he repeatedly helped Aang and his friends in their plight against his brother, Lord Ozai. 

“I've known Mako since I was 12,” shared Basco. “So he's been my uncle and my father several times in my career, in my life. So he was one of those touchstones in the industry, especially for Asian actors that, you know, there was not a lot of us growing up.” 

“He was just someone I looked up to and was a real life on fire to me. He would check in on me and my career and what I was doing, the choices I was making and give me advice along the way. And so he impacted me a lot, even when he passed."

To this day, Iwamatsu is remembered for countless roles in front of the camera and in the voice booth including Aku in Samurai Jack, the Wizard in Conan the Barbarian, and was Jackie Chan’s sifu in The Big Brawl to name just a few. He was Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the 1966 film The Sand Pebbles in the role of Po-han. But it was his performance as the chill-natured Iroh that has its own legacy with Avatar fandom. Iroh was the heart of The Last Airbender and the epitome of achieving balance in life.

“He taught me lessons,” Basco remembered fondly. “He started East West Players, which is one of the oldest theaters of color in the country.  I grew up there doing plays and writing plays and being a part of that.”

“So when he passed, I realized I was part of that lineage of Asian American actors and I created an Asian film company, creating projects to pay it forward, just like him, to the next generation.” Basco’s film company, Kinetic Films has produced six films and gave many Asian American filmmakers a lift they needed to pursue filmmaking.

“So rest in peace, Mako. He's a goat, man. He's a legend. For real.”

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