One of the many questions I keep asking myself is, why now? Why does Hama start now to abduct civilians? If I remember, it's quite directly stated that the disappearances started recently, a few months ago. However, even if it wasn't stated, anything else creates considerable timeline issues. If Hama had been doing this for years, there should be many more victims, bodies, searches, rumors, patrols, or investigations. Keep in mind: Sokka suspects and investigates her immediately. I know he's a smart young man, but I don't see why no one else in the area would've come up with a similar idea.

For an antagonist, if you insist on making Hama one to impress and register as evil and dangerous, they have to work for their crimes. If she has been doing this for years without any friction because people are that easy to fool, I am not buying the threat. Since all context clues imply that she has been committing these abductions for a few months, the episode owes us an inciting event. What changed? What is the causal bridge between survivor and refugee Hama and kidnapper and predator Hama? The episode doesn't bother to answer this question beyond "They deserve the same." Again, I said it before; it's funny that the story actually thinks that what Hama went through as a prisoner of war and a genocide survivor is symmetrical to the kidnappings she does.

But why did Hama go through all the trouble to build a life at all? Do you, writers, know how much labor hospitality is? Do you, writers, care at all how much work it is to take care of such a big house with multiple guest rooms, apparently, alone? Have you, writers, considered for a moment how Hama managed to OWN PROPERTY and START A BUSINESS?! The paper trail? Hello? Did you not show me repeatedly how bureaucratic the Fire Nation is? What about a title deed? You need documentation for that. And, well, money. Taxes? Inspectations? Travelers? Suppliers (since Hama is stocked well enough to feed four children for several days)? An inn is pretty much the least anonymous business imaginable, and Hama has every fucking reason to stay as anonymous as possible.

Let me remind you of the fucking background story the writers conjured for her with meticulous detail: A high-profile waterbender escapes a purpose-built detention facility by controlling guards from inside their bodies. As far as we know, Hama is the only waterbender who ever escaped, and HOW she did it should make her THE most explosive and terrifying fugitive the Fire Nation has ever seen. You cannot tell me that this happened and the Fire Nation just shrugged and called it a day. No way, people. I don't buy it. You cannot come up with this escape story and expect me to think that this is the end of it.

There is no plausible version of that event in which the Fire Nation doesn't set hell in motion to hunt Hama down. Just imagine the witness reports of the guards on this waterbender with a bending ability that bypasses walls, weapons, and will. The officials paniced, I would bet. Hama is a security nightmare and folklore material, haunting the Fire Nation. She should be, at least.

You want me to believe that Hama performs one of the most terrifying forms of bending in the franchise and the Fire Nation just forgets it? Put some respect on this woman's name when you insist on writing her that formisable! No, no, no. There was a bounty on Hama's head; in fact, there still is, I decided, but there is no data to update the picture for decades and age has changed her so much that people don't recognize her anymore.

Multiple versions of her tale are circulating through the Fire Nation because the story travels far, growing a life of its own. How would you coordinate the search if you don't pass on what happened and who's on the run? The authorities have to pass on minimal information, at least, but the event is so horrifying and incredible that details leak anyway. Therefore, the propaganda specialists spin Hama's tale as a ghost story. I headcanon that Zuko and Azula grew up with it because some servant kid told it to Lu Ten when he and his parents spent the summer in some holiday palace of the royal family.

I mean, that is the magnitude her escape story deserves. How did she not become one of the most wanted fugitives across every territory controlled by the Fire Nation? That is one of the basic mechanisms of storytelling: if you make Hama's escape and the skill she developed to achieve it that extraordinary, the consequences of her action have to match the scale and intensity.

Now, as I said, running an inn is one of the least anonymous occupations, and it doesn't really match what Hama can plausibly afford. I mentioned the paper trail that would lead every scout and bounty hunter to her sooner or later. However, the writing insists she achieved it. Granted. That makes her even more formidable.

Decades of successful concealment suggest someone capable of regulating impulses, making long-term calculations, and tolerating intimate proximity to the society that destroyed her people as Hama RUNS AN INN!!! Her field of trade is, therefore, hospitality! Are you, writers, not paying ANY attention whatsoever to the story you are writing? Do you not keep track of the creative decisions you made? She was a prisoner of war, spent years under the worst "living" conditions and then decides to to HOST guests of the Fire Nation (not exclusively, sure, Earth Kingdom travelers may pass through, but see what I mean)? What was the motivation for that? Revenge? Lure guests in and murder them? Why go through the trouble and RISK of buying (or even renting, which is even riskier if you have a landlord or landlady to answer to) and maintaining an inn? She could just move into a little appartment in a big city somewhere, scout the sewer system, bloodbend victims underground, and let them rot there. Or kill them and dispose of them in the sewer water. Get away with it for decades. Much more anonymous. That's not a story I would suggest, but if the writers wanted to make her a scary villain, that's what it would take to convince me. And, again, as elaborated in detail, we have to assume she only recently started abducting people. We know she didn't silence the one man who escaped her. So, what is her masterplan supposed to be? It doesn't compute. The setup makes Hama exceptionally bad at terrorism, actually.

Now, IF the writers insist on making her run an inn..... Here is a sneak preview of my rewrite/AU take on Hama: The White Lotus. She is a member of the White Lotus. Yes, you don't get the villain one-shot (as we established, none of the elements required to achieve the plot, arc, and conclusion of the episode make sense; neither alone nor in isolation), but Hama's story never had to go there to begin with and this decision would resolve multiple issues of Hama's post-escape story (not that the writing consideres these decades part of her character, please keep your attention on the crimes, but don't bother about the timing or an indicing event because the writers didn't either). The White Lotus would have every reason to recruit her after performing the feat of escaping the prison designed specifically to render waterbenders utterly helpless. It would explain how she evaded the Fire Nation for years: the White Lotus can hide her, shelter her, help her recover, and give her a mission and a purpose. Running an inn would still mean she's super exposed, but if the operation runs through the White Lotus, the administration issues are resolved plausibly enough. It would give Hama a meaningful way to resist because, of course, this inn would be an ideal remote operation base. Genuine travelers passing through provide an organic flow of information. Agents can blend in, leave messages, recover from injuries (it's reasonable to assume Hama is a healer), hold meetings, coordinate operations, or store and move resources.

We don't spend any time on what bloodbending meant for Hama because the succession of events structures the reveal entirely through the judgment of the Fire Nation citizens and Katara's guilt. I think Hama deserved more ambiguity (compare it with how much grace and depth the story gives Iroh, who cracked jokes about burning Ba Sing Se to the ground, laid seige on the capital for almost two years straight, which certainly starved the poorest people of the population first, and is still allowed to return as liberator, leading the charge and is the one burning the Fire Nation banner) and Katara deserved to feel more conflicted about bloodbending: both disturbed and mesmerized. Bloodbending is born from the Fire Nation's machinery of extermination, which makes it unquestionably a technology of resistance, power, and dignity.

The narrative never asks what the Fire Nation made, what justice could look like for someone like Hama, or what Katara owes to a survivor from her destroyed tradition. It asks whether Katara can defeat the scary old woman and agonize over learning that skill. When it comes to metalbending or lightningbending, it mostly gets framed as extraordinary achievement. Bloodbending is terrifying and intrusive, yes, but so was what its creator had to endure. The technique is inseparable from the brutality of the Fire Nation's annihilation of the Southern waterbenders. The show should've sat with the immense political and ethical weight it created itself, instead of making it evil and resolving the episode with the abhorrent picture of the elderly prisoner of war being dragged away by the people who destroyed her culture with false moral high ground and pseudo-vindication.

He fails at being the last Airbender

So first of all: Others have pointed out the hypocrisy of A.ang holding to Air Nomad teachings so tightly that he was willing to let the world burn rather than kill Ozai, and then turning around and violating them (specifically the apparent celibacy of monks and lack of traditional marriages or families in their culture) to be with Katara. I don't have a ton new to add there.

Aside from bringing it up way too late in the game, I don't hate the angle of A.ang taking Air Nomad teachings as seriously as possible. He's the only one left who can live them out. That could have been a really good story beat.

It's such a bad look, though, that he was willing to let the world burn for his values...but throws them to the side so he can get laid. The girl he has a crush on lives in the world!!! Saving the world is more important than getting the girl, and if you actually care about the girl she kind of needs a world to live in. If you're gonna violate your beliefs it should be with killing Ozai and not getting Katara!

To put a finer point on it, he's not a stone cold killer by nature, but he does have a crush on Katara. When his beliefs say "Don't kill" he has no problem sticking to them (he didn't want to kill anyone anyways), but when his beliefs tell him something he doesn't want to hear, like "you need live like a monk if you're gonna be a monk, so let go of your attachment to that girl", he ignores them and does what he wants.

So...in the end he only follows Air Nomad teachings when they align with what he wants to do anyways, which means he's not following Air Nomad teachings at all, he's following his own selfish desires. Him ending up with Katara renders his position as the last airbender, the last person alive who can truly live as a genuine Air Nomad monk in accordance with their beliefs and teachings, ultimately meaningless because his actions make it apparent that he doesn't actually take that role seriously.

He fails at being the Avatar

This one is more subtle so stick with me.

I know someone in real life who will defend kata.ang with the refrain of "But A.ang had to have kids!" and I always think, "But did he?"

I didn't watch much of LOK but I know there's some hand-wavey stuff that happens to bring back airbending en masse so in the end it renders his repopulation efforts kind of moot, but I'm not talking about that.

There's this early Christian heresy called Pelagianism. The details aren't important but the relevant gist of it is they believed that although the supernatural exists, there was no need for divine grace or supernatural intervention. Humans can just white-knuckle our way to perfection. You can do it alllll on your own through sheer willpower.

So I'm kind of going to accuse A.ang of pseudo-Pelagianism here.

The world of ATLA is one where the spirits are very active and present, and supernatural intervention is a regular occurrence. I don't think we're supposed to read it as a lucky break that A.ang got safely frozen away right before Sozin's Comet's first pass, and woke up in time to avert disaster with its second pass. I think that's supposed to be divine intervention at work in the story.

The grand finale of the story even hinges on this point: A.ang has disappeared, they go find Iroh to try and figure out another way to fix the problem of who will take on Ozai, and Iroh tells them to do as they planned anyways and trust that destiny is on their side. The fate of the world is at stake, and it essentially all works out because they have a little faith. They don't try to white-knuckle their way through fixing every problem via purely material means and purely human agency.

And while it could have been way better written to not be such a random eleventh-hour surprise, I do like that it's the divine intervention of the lion turtle and A.ang doing something mystical that only the Avatar can do that ultimately saves the day. I think that works great! It makes a lot of sense in the context of the worldbuilding and the storytelling, it's actually a very fitting resolution.

And the Avatar, of all people, is supposed to be the bridge between the spirit world and the earthly plane. Surely, when faced with a seemingly insurmountable crisis like the end of the airbenders and the breaking of the Avatar cycle, the Avatar will find some similarly fitting solution with the aid of the spirits...oh...oh no, the only way we can solve this problem is through purely material means and human agency, by having kids.

The thing is, attacking a problem with earthly, non-supernatural solutions is how Sokka would solve it, not A.ang. A.ang should solve Avatar-level problems in a way that only the Avatar can, if him being the Avatar actually matters in this world.

The Avatar should have been solving this problem with some cool soul journey and spirit shenanigans and inner growth or something. I personally think his new ability to energy bend should have given him the power to not only take away, but to give bending to people. That would have been a great solution that flows naturally from the plot.

The fact that he supposedly has to solve it like a scientist in charge of repopulating a nearly extinct species instead of like a powerful spiritual figure violates the worldbuilding in general and undermines the role of A.ang as the Avatar specifically.

And he renders everyone else's story meaningless

At the end of season 2, A.ang's crush on Katara is presented as an attachment he needs to let go of in order to master the Avatar state and end the war. Cool--that makes his crush on her actually relevant to the plot instead of an unimportant side story, it sets up a classic wants vs. needs conflict that the hero has to face down to save the world, it was almost great writing.

And it sets A.ang firmly on the same path as so many other characters in the story. You see the same basic character arc play out over and over in ATLA: character has an attachment, a fixation, an obsession that is causing them to make self-destructive and harmful choices in pursuit of their goal. They either need to learn to let go of their attachment, or it will destroy them.

Iroh is, in a way, destroyed by his fixation on conquering Ba Sing Se. Zhao is destroyed by his fixation on killing the moon spirit. Jet and Hama are destroyed by their fixation on getting revenge on the Fire Nation. Ozai is destroyed by his fixation on ruling the world. Azula is destroyed by her pursuit of power and perfection. That professor from Ba Sing Se University is destroyed by his obsession with Wan Shi Tong's library. The cabbage guy is destroyed by his attachment to his cabbages?

I think Zuko is the only character who lets go of his unhealthy attachment to finding the Avatar/being the perfect crown prince/winning his father's love and approval before it destroys him and he comes out the other side a more self-actualized, healthy person who ends up getting rewarded with everything he was fighting for in the end and then some (i.e. he becomes friends with the Avatar, becomes Fire Lord, accepts that his father's love and approval isn't something he could or should ever have to try and win, and that Iroh was more of a father to him the whole time). Which means Zuko's the only character that actually, like, completes the central arc of the story successfully.

And then there's A.ang. The main character, the center of the story, the guy in the narrative that all the other side stories ultimately serve. The show's named after him! Surely his reckoning with this repeated thematic arc in the story will crown off the whole damn narrative.

(We all know the answer here).

In the end, A.ang never actually lets go of Katara...he makes no sacrifice, he does not confront the conflict between want and need within himself, he does not overcome his attachment, he holds on to that fixation with both hands until the bitter end...and it doesn't destroy him. The solutions to his problems get handed to him in the form of a magic rock and a lion turtle. He does nothing to achieve self-actualization or growth or meaningful change, he learns no hard-won lessons, and he still gets rewarded with the object of his attachment.

So...in the end, what was the point of watching all those other characters learn the same lesson over and over and over and over and over again about letting go of your attachment before it destroys you? Especially if, the most important time this arc plays out, the capstone message is actually, "Well, sometimes you were right all along to cling to that attachment and you'll get rewarded for it instead of destroyed?"

Anyway, that's why I think the final shot of the show renders everything in it ultimately pointless, and why everything post-canon has been kind of unsatisfying...lacking that spark, that je ne sais quois that made so much of ATLA great.