Avatar: Seven Havens gifts us a perfect Halloween episode

When you think of Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel series, "horror" isn't the first word that comes to mind.

While the franchise has dealt with some frightening elements, from Koh the Face Stealer to Korra being haunted by visions of her poisoned self, it has rarely crafted an episode that delves fully into the horror genre.

SEE ALSO: 'Avatar: Seven Havens' episode 5 is chock-full of 'Last Airbender' Easter eggs The sole exception is The Last Airbender 's Book 3 episode "The Puppetmaster," the show's 2007 Halloween special.

Throughout the episode, The Last Airbender fashions an unsettling mystery about disappearances from a Fire Nation village during the full moon.

By the episode's end, the culprit is revealed to be Hama, a waterbender who's able to manipulate people's bodies by bending the blood in their veins.

The bloodbending reveal has lasting consequences, popping up again in The Legend of Korra in a major way, but it also opens the door for some genuinely frightening body horror.

No Avatar fan can forget the first time they witnessed the herky-jerky movements of Katara, Aang, and Sokka as they succumbed to Hama's bloodbending.

The Legend of Korra ups that body horror significantly, twisting bloodbending victims' limbs to impossible positions, but it's the sinister build-up and Hama's betrayal that keep "The Puppetmaster" standing tall as Avatar's scariest episode.

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Now, though, Avatar: Seven Havens has gifted viewers with a new addition to the Avatar Halloween canon with its sixth episode, "Night of the Afflicted." The episode's name references George A.

Romero's classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead , and it delivers on its promise with a storyline that can only be described as "zombies by way of Avatar." Want more film and TV news and reviews delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for Mashable’s Top Stories newsletter or get Mashable push alerts today.

The zombies in Seven Havens are not reanimated corpses, but rather citizens who have been "afflicted" by contact with the diamond anomaly from the show's second episode.

In the case of Brigade Commander Bountan (voiced by Clyde Kusatsu), that means getting zapped by the anomaly's energy ray.

In the case of Brigade members like Tala (voiced by Anjali Bhimani), that means making contact with the strange red crystals the anomaly left behind, which then embedded themselves in her skin in a case of gnarly body horror.