Learn It!

A.ang here has come fresh from the Guru, where he was told he had to give up his attachment to Katara to master the Avatar state. He had the vision of Katara chained up and left to save her, instead.

That part on its own is fascinating enough. To him and the audience that vision appeared literal, since the preceding scene was Katara getting captured, but it's revealed later that she's not being detained like that at all. She's just chilling with Zuko. So in retrospect was it some clever narrative sleight-of-hand, making us (and A.ang) think it was literal when it should have been read as more metaphorical, about how A.ang is holding on to her? Was she yelling "Let me go!" to her captors, or to A.ang as he was confronting his desire to hold on to his attachment to her?

But I digress. A.ang (and the audience) has just been told that his attachment to Katara might be a problem that'll get in the way of his responsibilities as Avatar. This glare is the first moment in the story that we really see him start to get jealous and possessive over Katara.

And, crucially, Zuko clocks the impressive stinkeye. Then, there's a very interesting missed look back from Katara.

That means that the very next time we see Zuko make eye contact with any of our heroes, he's looking between A.ang and Azula...and he chooses to attack A.ang.

And just as importantly in that moment, Katara's right there, Zuko just had an interesting moment with her, why is his big moment of internal deliberation between A.ang and Azula instead?

They didn't have to animate A.ang glaring at Zuko like that. A.ang has previously tried to offer friendship to Zuko. Why would they waste frames introducing this animosity here? It's obvious that both Katara and Zuko were prisoners when Iroh and A.ang bust them out, and more importantly, they weren't fighting each other. They were staring into each other's eyes with Katara touching his face. A.ang wasn't jealous like this when Katara paid attention to Jet or Haru, so why is he suddenly so out of character?

I think those few frames, where A.ang silently makes sure Zuko knows he will be unwelcome if he defects and joins Team Avatar, is the key to it all.

Because if that's the feather that tips the scale for Zuko, then A.ang's first moment of jealousy over Katara (hot off the heels of being told his attachment to Katara is a problem) is starting to have real consequences. In a way it sets off the catastrophes that are about to unfold in the finale, so his attachment has already started to get in the way of his duties as the Avatar.

This is all perfectly on track still, from a storytelling perspective. This is the end of Act II of a three-act story, so this is the part with a downer ending where all hope seems lost before our heroes' ultimate triumph in the Act III finale.

And, the seeds of Zuko's eventual triumph at the end (fighting with Katara against Azula) are planted here in his biggest failure (fighting with Azula against Katara after a surprising moment of rapprochement with Katara).

The breakdown in the Zuko/A.ang parallel is, there are very clear seeds of a plotline for A.ang's ultimate triumph planted here in his failure as well (choosing his attachment to Katara over properly mastering the Avatar state, and his possessiveness over her immediately causes problems) that never get fulfilled. His chakra ending up blocked has no serious consequences, and he just accesses the Avatar state in the finale thanks to...a rock.

Zuko makes the worst choices he'll make in the entire story here, but A.ang also does. Because of his choices, because he resisted the Guru's guidance, prioritized his crush on Katara, and didn't take an extra few minutes to truly master the Avatar state when he had his vision (which by the way may have been interpreted as what he wanted to hear instead of what it was actually telling him), he briefly dies and Ba Sing Se falls.

The parallel between the two of them isn't broken yet. That happens when Zuko's choices are treated like they matter and they have real consequences that he has to face throughout S3.

A.ang's choices, on the other hand, get fixed for him by plot contrivance.

Because, let me be frank, A.ang makes the villain choice here and he gets away with it.

I don't just mean him lying to Toph and Sokka about mastering the Avatar state and no one ever finding out about that lie...though I do think that shows we were originally supposed to read A.ang's actions in this finale as bad, selfish choices and mistakes all around.

What I mean by him making the villain choice is, it's a quote that has floated around for ages that "a hero will sacrifice the person they love to save the world, but a villain will sacrifice the world to save the person they love." A.ang unambiguously chooses the second option in the S2 finale. That's the textbook villain choice.

Just like with Zuko this doesn't mean he's evil or irredeemable, but he made the villain choice and he needs to dig himself out of that hole. We need to see him redeem his actions here (and we never do).

And to dig in to that quote, choosing the girl over saving the world is the selfish, unheroic option: it's about what's best for you, what you want. But the girl lives in the world, and if you truly care about the girl you'll want what's best for her, and what's best for her is for the world to be saved even if you don't end up with her. What's best for Katara is mastering the Avatar state and ending the war as quickly as possible considering her life is at stake as long as it continues. Ultimately A.ang didn't give up god mode for Katara, he did that for himself--and that's what makes it the villain choice.

Now, again, this doesn't make him a villain, we just have to see him work to fix what he broke (which we don't). But you can look at the S2 finale, the way A.ang and Zuko are both paralleled in their terrible choices at the Crossroads of Destiny, and how the story still makes Zuko redeem his terrible choice throughout S3 (and it's one of the best redemption arcs in recent memory!) but not A.ang...and we can reverse engineer what that might have looked like if the parallels between A.ang and Zuko held.

You can see in the Crossroads of Destiny episode itself that Zuko makes his terrible choice and it sets him up to get everything he ever thought he wanted...and it's all wrong.

It wouldn't be too unbelievable for the original rough outline to have A.ang going through a similar journey--getting increased attention from Katara as he heals in S3, a romantic relationship with her seeming more possible than it ever has before (mostly because she feels guilty about him almost dying), and A.ang slowly realizing that it's tainted because her affection is built on lies and half-truths.

Hey, doesn't this sound like the Bato of the Water Tribe episode is foreshadowing this internal crisis for A.ang, now?

Just like Zuko, we could have seen him getting everything he thought he wanted and realizing that it was all wrong. We could have seen him do some soul-searching, confronting his mistakes, realizing that his attachment to Katara is getting in the way of his duty to end the war and he needs to come clean and work to earn the Avatar state properly if he truly, selflessly cares about Katara.

And, as a side note, this is another root cause of why many people prefer Zutara over kata.ang: we see onscreen that Zuko radically and selflessly sacrifices himself for Katara because it's what's best for her, and we see onscreen that A.ang chooses his crush on Katara even though that's not in Katara's best interest--he does what's best for himself.

I think Bryke were afraid that holding A.ang accountable for his actions would drive a wedge between Katara and A.ang--and it would, for a time, but they could have reconciled and ended up with a stronger relationship--but what we got instead is even worse for their desired outcome: Zuko being very selfless towards Katara, and A.ang being very selfish.

This is the exact point where A.ang and Zuko's parallels most directly intersect, and it's also the last point like that in the series before the parallel between them starts to really break down, never to be fully restored (much to the detriment of A.ang's journey as a character).

The way we could have had A.ang influencing Zuko's worst choice and Zuko influencing A.ang's worst choice at the same time if they had been willing to draw out that parallel...We could have seen Zuko and A.ang simultaneously wrestling with the consequences of their worst mistakes, two sides of the same coin, destined to meet in the middle. We could have had a double redemption arc, we could have had all the parallels and narrative interplay and polyvalent storytelling...

And instead we get a dance party and whatever the heck Nightmares and Daydreams was, all in service of making sure Katara never finds out about A.ang's villain choice so kata.ang can happen.

First of all, I'm going to be lazy and use "foils" and "parallels" a little interchangeably. They have technical definitions and they're different, I know. It'd take forever to spell out, point-by-point, the ways in which Zuko is a foil to Katara or A.ang, and the ways in which he's paralleling them. Maybe someone with more interest in that project than me can tease it out properly, but that's a little too into the weeds for what I'm saying right now.

Suffice to say, the characters are connected, and the narrative regularly holds them up against each other to compare (parallel) or contrast (foil) them so that we, the audience, can see the connection.

Characters can be foils or parallels to multiple other characters in multiple ways at the same time. It might be a weird rec for explaining this, but check out Kaguya-Sama: Love is War. It has a seemingly simple high school romcom anime setup. Don't be fooled. In terms of storytelling this show is first of all, hilarious, and second of all, deceptively brilliant. Like, study it if you want to tell good stories. Each of the five main characters is perfectly crafted to bounce off of each of the other four characters in such a way that all you have to do is stick two, or three, or all of them together in a room and conflicts and chaos between them will arise naturally. And the two romantic leads being perfect foils and parallels of each other in a particular way doesn't detract from them also being foils and parallels to the other three main characters at the same time.

So yes, the narrative can be doing something with Zuko and Katara's connection as complimentary opposites (sun and moon, fire and water, summer and winter) that spend the show circling each other and figuring out how to go from conflict to harmony, and at the same time have Zuko explicitly compare A.ang to Azula, and at the same time have parallels between Azula and Katara, and at the same time have Zuko and A.ang start opposite each other to go on kind of a mirrored journey that ends with them meeting in the middle (which is also similar to what happens with Katara and Zuko!).

Polyvalent storytelling is best storytelling (and yes, that's a Kaguya-sama reference!), and I think there's a lot of it in ATLA. That's why we're still talking about it decades later: There's multiple layers and connections to everything going on there.

So with that point out of the way, I keep coming back to the Crossroads of Destiny episode. I think S1 of the show is pretty great, S2 is pretty much perfect, and the finale sets up for a very, very delicious high-stakes S3. And then the first half of S3 turns into a strangely-paced, shockingly low-tension, filler episode bonanza. It starts to come together a bit better around the Day of Black Sun but there's still lots of bad character-writing decisions and plot holes.

The end of S3 is great in a lot of ways because it's the culmination of all three seasons of this story, but it doesn't quite gel together the same way the S2 finale does. There are too many unresolved or poorly resolved plots whereas the S2 finale is jam-packed with so many different characters and plotlines being woven together, without missing a beat.

My kata.ang friend claims that "there just wasn't enough time to cover everything." But these are the same writers who pulled off the S2 finale in a single episode (maaaybe two if you want to count The Guru as Part 1, but unlike most other two-parters in the series this isn't named like a two parter which is a weird anomaly) and made it look nearly effortless. By the end of S2, almost all of the characters that are heavily involved in S3 are introduced. It's not as if the job got exponentially harder because there were so many more characters and their associated plotlines to juggle. And, recall, the S3 finale takes not one, not two, but four episodes. So yes, there was enough time, and the talent and skill to use the time allotted.

Except...you might notice that the parts of S3 where the ball was dropped involve specifically A.ang. His lack of development and narrative focus in a lot of the early episodes in the season, even though he's the main character coming back from a serious defeat and he should be locking in right about now? End-of-series A.ang and Katara doing nothing but arguing with no resolution until suddenly they're making out in the last shot? A.ang getting emotional and running off, only to get supernaturally waylaid and disappear, i.e. him retreading the same exact mistake that started the entire story at the very end, demonstrating a complete lack of growth on his part, only to immediately get rewarded for it with TWO dei ex machina in a row? And, a huge problem considering who the main character is supposed to be, the stakes and drama of A.ang's big final fight with Ozai somehow feel less significant than the final showdown of Zuko v. Azula (or, frankly, even Toph, Sokka, and Suki's death-defying adventures taking down a fleet of zeppelins). And what about the Rock of Destiny? Anyone?

I contend that Zuko and Katara's thematic parallels get carried through to the very end, culminating in that last Agni Kai. It's excellent. It's probably the best part of the finale. And essays upon essays have been written about that. Here's a really good short one!

It's A.ang and Zuko's parallels that get chunked big time, in service of making sure that kata.ang happens. And it starts (or ends) with one specific moment in the Crossroads of Destiny.