Thunder sings her name across the battle field.

Thus much Haze already knew when she chose to turn her back on Silco. When she breathes the air in the shadow of the leaves that feels so much lighter in her lungs, she confronts the sheer scale of what Silco seeks to destroy, and the extent of what would be possible if he hadn't made it perfectly clear that he had no will to see the potential of the Firelights, even less to nurture it.

Haze is aware that this single tree, as unbelievable and impressive as it might be, is no solution. Its capacities are limited. One tree can only cleanse so much and shelter so many. Either you'd kill it by overexhausting its limits or gatekeep it, creating fresh exclusive circles of who does and doesn't get access. Thus, it is a lung that can be overworked. It is a miracle and a bottleneck, a shelter and a queue. If there remains only one tree. However, if you're not considering this giant tree a solution, but a prototype or at least a proof of concept, everything changes.

Think about it. There must be some explanation for why this tree survives and thrives. Maybe it's something in the soil, maybe there is a fungal network or a bacterial knot that metabolizes waste, maybe this specimen grew from a strain with a mutation that made it immune, or at least highly resistant, against the heavy pollution of the Undercity. If you manage to identify the variables that allowed the tree to thrive, you can measure, hack, culture, and replicate them.

Haze knows the man intimately who has the money, the chemists, the smugglers, the bribed inspectors, the production sites, and the entire (clandestine) supply network that could research, study, and scale these variables. Silco has done something similar before, as Shimmer is a highly reactive mutagen. He supervised and organized the development of a chemical agent that melts and reshapes mammal bodies in seconds (and plants are arguably less complex organisms in comparison to mammals). He produced this agent at scale and distributed it extensively locally and beyond borders. He has the necessary skills to take on such an immense project. He has the skills, he has the resources, he has the experience, but he lacks the will.

He already works with experts who understand selective and targeted mutation, controlled exposure, and directed evolution. Pair that with Firelight tinkering, and you get treatments that make seedlings more resilient, allowing the microorganisms in the soil to explode, which let the original tree thrive initially, or maybe you even achieve both. Even more so, the tree might teach you what you need to know to breed algae to cleanse the polluted water, eventually building a trifecta of bioremediation tailored by Zaunite hands for their future: soil, air, and water. Nothing here requires Hextech to potentially multiply that one tree and detox Zaun. It only takes time, the infamous Zaunite ingenuity, commitment, and empowering your people instead of subduing them.

That kind of cure would create actual independence beyond any formalities and graces of Piltover. They wouldn't have to rely on the ventilation or water supplies managed from Piltover's territory for Zaunite survival.

However, Silco wouldn't see a path to liberation to blaze alongside his people. At this point, after all her failed attempts to motivate him into cooperating with the Firelights instead of hunting them down, she knows he'd consider the tree a competition and a threat, as it holds the very potential for healing. Healing creates independent people. Healing makes people strong enough to resist and make demands of him, instead of just swallowing the poison he claims is the only way to independence and liberty.

Haze knows Silco can never ever be trusted with the knowledge about the existence of the tree. He'd send in Jinx with colorful charges and explosives to blow up the biological alternative, which could free the people of the chemical chains he forged. And Jinx would smoke out the "street rats" (that's how Jinx has referred as to the Firelights in canon, after all) with glee.

I think I actually give Silco more grace than the source material. By indicating Haze as aware that Silco saw the inevitable, catastrophic social and political fallout of murdering Vander, I preserve the potential of Silco as a tactical and strategic character. He has arguments, and without deeper interrogation, they seem convincing at first glance, but also they also mask that he acted out of an emotional need for vindication, not tactical considerations. Errare humanum est. To his own and Zaun's detriment, Silco has a self-sabotaging streak and a brittle ego. That is the point of tragedies: a 'better' ending was possible, yet unachievable.

Haze: "Maybe. But it wasn’t scorched yet. You should’ve fanned the flames. Spread rumors, leaked all the dirt you had on him, and fabricated some more. Let the grievances fester and the anger grow until the people turn on Vander themselves. No one mourns the man after the myth faded. You know best; that's your story. But you killed the man and immortalized his myth. As it was already dying! You think that was a coup? No. That was a resurrection. You ripped Vander from the Lanes like you were answering a demand. But no one called for you. No one asked. You didn't lead the people; you robbed them of the last word. Because you forgot for a moment that not everyone almost died with Vander's hands around their neck. Eliminating him wasn’t strategy, Silco. That was vanity."

Silco: "Vander surrendered. Enforcers had him. He was halfway to Stillwater when I intervened. Without me, he would've been out of our reach. For good."

Haze: "All the better for you. Vander arrested after shielding the Lanes? Hauled off despite holding the line for Piltover? Punished while protecting their peace? The people would’ve raged! At Vander, for surrendering. At Piltover, for dragging him away. That was the moment! Piltover's cruelty was ready to shine, turning Vander into living proof that his peace with them was a lie. That was your rallying cry! If you hadn't choked it. You could’ve walked into the Lanes promising justice and dignity for this humiliation. For the theft of a hero. Anyone still defending peace with Piltover would've looked like a fool. If not a traitor. People would've been up in arms, thirsting to follow you. Into fire. Into storm. Into war."

Silco: "Until the day Vander comes back. You can’t build a house on a foundation drenched in the poison of betrayal and haunted by a ghost of lingering loyalty."

Haze: "Come on now, don't fool me or yourself. Nobody comes back from Stillwater. You have Enforcers in your pocket now, don't you? If you needed him gone, all it took was coin and an instruction. A noose. A knife. A sip of poison. No blood on your hands. Vander was your token to trade in for loyalty. His arrest would've sparked rage you could've used as fuel for unity. Instead, you blew it up. Literally. The end of Vander's story could've been a new chapter in our history, but you scared everyone from turning the page. This was the worst tactical mistake you could make, and you knew it before you acted."

Silco: "Vander wasn't Piltover's to judge. He let Zaun and our people down. They could never make him answer for the crimes that matter."

Haze: "I get that. Stillwater is their justice, not ours. They've taken so much, you couldn't let them have him."

Silco: "Then why are you so hysterical over a dead traitor?"

Haze: "Because we can't afford you lying to yourself. You didn't kill Vander for Zaun. You did it for yourself. And you have to remember that when you look at the Lanes now. Or you'll see mourning and treat it like mutiny. You'll look at our people and see enemies. Give them the chance to side with you."

Silco: "They had their chance. Years ago. They made their choice and never looked back. Not once. Vander isn't the only one who betrayed the fight. They all did."

Haze: "And what now? Do you want to punish the Lanes for that? For not mourning you when you vanished? For giving Vander all their trust and devotion, but never calling you back home? For scrubbing your sacrifices from their memory? For forgetting you like they forgot the cause?"

Silco: "Can you blame me?"

Haze: "Not for the temptation. Only for the indulgence."

Children in the Reach grow up learning that the ground beneath their feet might shift or vanish in water. Their parents teach them principles rather than rules. Not “don't go there,” but “test your step.” Not “be careful,” but “pay attention.” Thus, it is customary to cross a threshold with the left foot first. That has no superstitious reasons of the nature, 'bad things will happen if you enter or leave a room stepping out with the right foot first.' It is summoning a moment of awareness, of telling yourself, "Be awake for the next move." Reachers treat their environment as temporary and mutable. That understanding informs everything from their architecture, which is mostly modular, to their ethics. Morality is situational. There is no fixed right way to do anything; there are only appropriate responses. The question is rarely “Is this right?” but gravitates towards, “What does this set into motion?”

In contrast, I'm under the impression that the Lanes shape people who grip tight what little they have—love, grudges, friends, memories, even enemies. It's a mining district built around extraction, around digging down, securing tunnels, and reinforcing chambers. They brace against tremors and collapse, preserving structure. I think that is apparent in Vander, Silco, Jinx, Vi, Sevika, and even Ekko. Their culture seems to revolve around memory (Vi who can't let go of Powder and begs Caitlyn under tears to not change, Vander's statue, the Firelight's murals, Jinx's puppets of her dead brothers, Silco's complete inability to move past Vander's betrayal, Vander keeping stability, keeping the anger of his people from boiling over, keeping the Lanes safe). They stand their ground. They valorize opposition to change (because change tends to mean loss) and sacrifice, and there’s an unspoken code of honor around staying, especially when it hurts (I mean, look how much Sevika has to endure and suffer under Silco and still stands with him when chem-baron Finn tries to recruit her into his coup).

Thus, intracultural tensions and stereotypes they project onto each other arise organically from these communities of two different localities, even though they're all subjected to pressure, containment, and instability. In the Lanes, people from the Reach have the reputation of being unreliable, disloyal, opportunistic, and undisciplined. In the Reach, people from the Lanes are considered stagnant and inflexible, doomed to drown, strapped to all the weight they refuse to release, too fixated on holding on to even see what's unfolding.

In the Lanes, the integrity and reasoning of the Reach look ambiguous, sometimes even dubious, because the Lanes teach you to stand for things. You plant your feet, draw a line, hold the perimeter. Virtue is tested through loyalty. In the Reach, it’s measured through adaptability. A good Reacher is someone who understands what’s needed right now. There’s no honor in holding onto a decision made sincerely when the circumstances shift. There's no purity in conviction for its own sake. Reacher wisdom means to move when the terrain shifts.

It's not like Haze learns the spiritual ways of her people through doctrine; it settles and grows in her through visceral experience and immersion, when her mother Ballad takes her hunting to one of the subterranean bodies of water to teach her to hunt.

Ballad hands Haze a speargun, adjusts the seals of the diving mask, and fastens the weight belt around her hips. As Ballad's hands graze and test the gear, she explains that she and her daughter are about to share hunting grounds with beings stronger, bigger, and faster than them: "All creatures in these waters deserve your respect; some will demand it."

She tells Haze to stay aware of the entire surroundings, even when focused on a target. When you hit a fish, chances are it will bleed and dart, instead of dying instantly. That plume of blood and motion of distress are summons. The predators in the water don’t care about human scent, but the sharp tang of fish blood attracts them. Injured fish often dive deeper and thrash against the rope in your hand, making it harder to retrieve and putting the hunter in direct competition with the larger predators. Haze learns quickly that hunter and the hunted are tied together. You can’t threaten without also becoming vulnerable. Killing is as much a beginning as it is an end. It’s a spark that ignites countless, invisible threads weaving this moment. You take life, and other creatures around feel the reverberations. No action or decision exists in isolation, and there is no separation between you and the ripples you catalyze. That's the Pulse.

The first thing we need to do is to get rid of the kidnapping subplot, without replacement. There are no kidnappings in this version of the episode. Period. It is entirely unnecessary and literally in the way. This way, not only do we free ourselves from around 95% of the contrivances that make both Hama and the plot incoherent, but we also clean up about half the episode for screentime we can actually spend on Katara, her choice, motivation, conflicts, etc. Passing on knowledge generated under duress, oppression, and for protection and liberation are such significant ways of resisting Empire and erasure. The episode puts the entire focus on the corruption of that knowledge by using it against innocent civilians, and I think that is an unwise narrative decision because, instead of allowing the people who created this knowledge to painstakingly figure out what this technology means, bloodbending is exclusively measured through the anxieties and risks for the oppressor. Thus, as a third effect of just scratching the abduction-and-detective subplot, we avoid inviting the audience to judge the knowledge of the oppressed by the anxieties of the oppressors.

Without the kidnapping B-plot, there is also no need to delay the revelation of bloodbending. When Sokka asks Hama how she managed to escape this prison, she just tells the kids. Why wouldn't she? Bloodbending participated just as much in her imprisonment as dehydration, abuse, cages, and guards. etc. That leaves room for the psychological aspects of studying the bodies of the rats and the influence of the moon. The hope that this can be her way out of this hell is obvious, but it also gave her something to do and kept her sane. She can look forward to each full moon. She can keep track of time. Between full moons she can contemplate what the last experiments taught her, and what she wants to test next. I argue introducing bloodbending like this and with transparency rather than obscurity, which invites shame and fear, immediately changes the moral and emotional terms of the technology.

Now, there is some room for the other characters to respond which the kidnapping plot forecloses entirely.

I see Aang react with shock and concern. I just think that's in character and respects his commitment to Air Nomad morality. He's the Avatar, after all, and it would not be unreasonable for him, as the idealist he is, to sincerely worry about the spiritual implications for the art of waterbending. Especially because of his affection for Katara, whose courage and compassion he deeply admires and associates with the ideal of waterbending I decided, he points out that flow and healing are the core of waterbending. To use these principles to invade the body instead and violently colonize the nervous system to force it into submission.

Hama is well in the place to counter that this isn't what she did. She didn't invent waterbending to conquer. She didn't do it for fun. She didn't do it because she craved domination. She wasn't the one initiating invasion, violence, incarceration, or overwriting bodies. She wasn't the aggressor; she was the victim.

Sokka, I actually see siding with Hama. I know, but hear me out! Remember, Sokka is the strategist and warrior of the team. Remember that he's the head behind the invasion plan. Remember that he lied to Wan Shi Tong, who is basically a God of Knowledge, to search the Library of Wan Shi Tong for a strategic edge against the Fire Nation. He is the one who came up with the plan to weaponize a cosmic phenomenon against the enemy. If he's comfortable, even enthusiastic, with exploiting the eclipse that incapacitates the bodies of firebenders at scale, why would he be scandalized that Hama did something parallel, at a much smaller scale, through the Moon? Additionally, the Fire Nation raids are not abstract for him. He lived through them and knows what it means when black snow falls. I think he's entitled to have some emotional investment and respond to Hama as a fellow warrior of the Southern Water Tribe with the same strategic acumen and wit he deployed to develop the plan for the invasion. I also think, as a non-bender, he might deem it a little hypocritical to think bloodbending is more dangerous than any other bending. The show never really goes there, but he is constantly fighting with and against individuals who weaponize the environment. He is well aware that his sister could bend water into his nose and down his lungs to drown him on dry ground. Aang could suck the air out of his lungs. Toph could bury him alive and crush his body at will. Just because they don't do it doesn't mean that he doesn't constantly think about all the ways he would be defenseless. He's smart, sure, but as a non-bender, he's well aware of the asymmetries that stake against him in every battle. He might even question if Aang's discomfort is less philosophical and more unfamiliarity with such asymmetries in vulnerability. (Sorry, I just started to think of reasons why Sokka specifically would back Hama, and more than I expected kept emerging. He is from the Southern Water Tribe, too. He has skin in the game.)

I don't know if Toph would have a strong opinion (again, we scratched the kidnapping), but I deem it plausible that she can respect the craft, maybe even feel solidarity, right? The technical ingenuinty would undoubtedly impress her. She, too, developed metal bending when capturers put her into a cage designed to incapacitate her body. As if she wasn't terrified under the fury. As if she didn't dread that her parents would keep her in metal clad rooms once she's delivered back home, forever trapped in a coffin. Not even by enemies but by people who love her. Toph loves her freedom and literally broke the taxonomy of earthbending to keep it. How can she truly judge another woman for doing the same after years of deprivation, isolation and abuse?

See how much character work we can do if we are not preoccupied with boring and incoherent kidnapping mysteries?

In my vision, Katara is initially overwhelmed by the flood of information, her compassion for Hama, and the conflicting flickers in her chest because she wants to agree with all three of her friends, but it's just a lot. I would not underestimate how scary it must be for Katara to know what might happen to her if she was ever captured and incarcerated. I mean, remember the episode in Book One where she lets herself be arrested on purpose to help Haru after he got in trouble because she encouraged him to not hide his earthbending. She notices how that prison was far less scary to her because it was an iron construction surrounded by water. She was arrested as an earthbender, not a waterbender. Now she knows what waits for her when she's ever locked away.

This gives us an entirely different argument for Katara to consider when Hama offers to teach her bloodbending. It need not be framed through domination, coercion, and transgression. The appeal can actually focus on what bloodbending did for Hama: protect her. "You may never need to use this, but this form of waterbending may save your life and freedom if the Fire Nation ever captures you. I spent years developing it to walk free again. You wouldn't have to, because I can arm you with the knowledge and capacity that no one, Fire Nation or otherwise, can ever hurt another waterbender like they hurt my comrades and me. My suffering can spare yours."

Again, without kidnapping plots interfering, we have time. Katara doesn't have to decide right away, but the full moon is tomorrow, so she has about a day to make up her mind. The kids are on a schedule, and if they move on, they won't be able to or have time to come back in a month.

In this version of the episode, we can structure it a little like "Zuko Alone," focusing on Katara's interiority and her trauma, and sprinkle in some flashbacks to give it more texture. We can have her cook with Hama, and after sharing so much about how Hama was harmed and violated, she can also tell Katara about the Water Tribe of her childhood. I mean, Kanna isn't native to the South Pole, and we don't get a clear timeline on when she arrived and settled in as far as I'm aware. Hama isn't only a witness of the annihilation and aggression of the Fire Nation, but also a witness of the before. We can show how meeting Katara gives her reason to hope: for the end of the war and for returning home. Hama would love to see home again, maybe teach some young waterbenders before her time comes. Katara won't have to bear the burden of keeping their lineage alive alone. They don't even talk about bloodbending to really make clear to the kids' audience that this is Katara's choice, not Hama's curse.

Aang may discourage Katara, or at least implore her to really think about what carrying on this technique means, what obligations she'll have, and how it might change her relations to others once she has the power to control others. For whatever purposes. (Look, Aang is written to set the moral standards. This version is less what I would find cool and more about staying as close to the source material as possible to show another version was available within the scope and characterizations.)

However, I don't think I would make Aang central (at least as input) in her contemplations. I think this version of the episode has a lot of potential for some intimate and vulnerable moments between Sokka and Katara. He encourages her to learn from Hama. At this point, we established that it's plausible for Sokka to actually see Hama's point, and her words really got to him: What if Katara is captured by the Fire Nation? Ever since Hama told her story, Sokka can't stop seeing Katara in one of the cages she described. He can't stop seeing her tied up by her hands and feet just to drink. His motivation to encourage Katara is simply because he wants his little sister to be safe. They are moving through Fire Nation territory; currently, Katara is more vulnerable than ever before. Of course, they all are, but with Hama's story in mind, he wants Katara to have a way out of this situation because he's not satisfied with leaving it up to chance. (I think it's so wild that Sokka's most vulnerable moment related to his sister is when he talks to Toph and Katara merely overhears it coincidentally. I think the siblings would've deserved such a moment where they really talk about how losing each other would break them.)

It's a controversial choice Katara is about to make, so I think it's valuable to let several characters counsel her because they love her so much they cannot not care and leave her to herself with the contemplation. However, I think Katara (I mentioned "Zuko Alone" style flashback storytelling) has been through so much that we have so much material to let her make her own considerations. Besides maybe some moments with her mother, where she subtly shares little waterbending lessons Katara didn't understand when she was a little child, I think Zuko's betrayal and moments when she feared for Aang's life for weeks. How powerless she felt. How she agonized that all her skill and knowledge wouldn't be enough to save him after the damage was done. She remembers how little healing could do once Azula's lightning struck and penetrated Aang's body.

When she tells Hama at last that she wants to learn bloodbending and is ready for the lesson, she shares her reasoning under four eyes with her; waterbender to waterbender: She thought about what Aang said about healing, and that he's right; her waterbending heals. She values that. However, healing is reactive; it means people have already been hurt. Violence has already succeeded, already harmed, already killed. Bloodbending, though, can interrupt the harm and violence. It can prevent the body from performing the form to make lightning, the guard from locking the door, the soldier from killing when their knees buckle under them. Depending on how much Kataang the writers would've wanted, they could've adjusted the intensity, but Aang's severe injury after Zuko's betrayal, when Katara truly believed that he might've changed, is the catalyst for her choice to seek and embrace the knowledge and skill of bloodbending. She's tired of waiting for violence to hurt first and for her to heal after the damage is done.

I think that's the way to give Katara agency in learning bloodbending in a way that keeps compassion and care the driving forces of her desire to learn the technique. When you establish this as her motivation, I think her later usage of bloodbending for revenge hits harder, actually, and also intensifies her agecy and responsibilities when she first uses bloodbending to avange her mother, but then stand back.

Last but not least, we have time and opportunity to apprach the actual teaching session with Hama under the full moon as teaching, instead of predatory coercion. In the original episode, Hama forces Katara into bloodbending (without any instructions because even when the episode earlier went out of its way to establish that it took Hama years to develop the technique, you actually just have to terrify peope into skill and that's all the teaching depiction of Southern Waterbending we got... I mean, come on) by forcing Aang and Sokka to attck each other and the only way to safe them is to interrupt Hama through bloodbending (see, didn't even change the "mechanism" through which Katara learns bloodbending: interruption of harm, but in this version, bloodbending as inerruption of harm is insight Katara gaind from her own painful experiences and her desire to protect people from violence). In this revised version, it can be consensual.