The Avatar Project

I really love how Roku and Sozin’s story is almost an exact mirror of Aang and Zuko’s - everything that happens in Roku and Sozin’s story happens in Aang and Zuko’s, but in opposite order. 

A hundred years ago, the world started off in an era of peace and balance.  Roku and Sozin grew up as best friends, but then Sozin began to lose his way and go corrupt with power, beginning the Hundred Year War.  This created a rift between Roku and Sozin, and they became bitter enemies to the point where Sozin simply watched as Roku died.  Fast forward a hundred years, and we see in “The Boy in the Iceberg” that Zuko watches as Aang is freed from the iceberg (and thus kind of reborn in a way).  Both characters were bitter enemies from the start, and the rift between Avatar and (future) Fire Lord continued.  Yet as Iroh points out in “The Avatar and the Fire Lord,” “what happened generations ago can be resolved now, by you. [...]  Born in you, along with all the strife, is the power to restore balance to the world”:

And Zuko does restore balance!  He finds his way (in contrast to Sozin, who lost his way) and lets go of the corruption thrust upon him by his forefathers.  This closes the rift between Avatar and Fire Lord, ends the Hundred Year War, and brings the world back into an era of peace and balance.

So, by forging his own destiny, Zuko not only became the glorious Fire Lord he deserves to be, but he also brought the legacy of the relation between Avatar and Fire Lord full circle, fixing all his ancestors’ wrongdoings and resolving the conflict within himself forever.

-Thought she was attractive when he first met her (”The Boy in the Iceberg”)

-Superficially tries to impress her with an airbending marble trick (”The Warriors of Kyoshi”)

-Really starts getting infatuated with her (”The Fortuneteller”)

-Risks his life to make sure Katara is safe from falling debris (”The Cave of Two Lovers”)

-Chooses Katara over pure cosmic energy and also openly admits he loves her (”The Guru”)

-We start to see some hints of Aang’s feelings being reciprocated (”The Headband”)

-Gains the confidence to finally directly reveal his feelings for Katara (”The Day of Black Sun, Part 1″)

-Both communicate their feelings for each other but the future of their relationship is uncertain (”The Ember Island Players”)

Instead of letting Azula join him in taking down the Earth Kingdom, Ozai makes the decision to have Azula stay behind in the Fire Nation.  Take a look Azula’s reaction to this in the right picture: she looks vulnerable for the first time ever (well, I guess you could argue there was that one time around the campfire in “The Beach,” but that was very brief and mild compared to this).  It’s because she realizes that her own father treats her as expendable and merely uses her as it benefits him, which is exactly how she’s treated everyone she’s met her whole life.  But now that she's the one being manipulated, she starts to mentally unravel because she’s never been in this position before.  She almost falls into a tantrum and spits out the line, “you can't treat me like Zuko!” - this signifies her realization that all this time, she thought that Ozai only treated Zuko as expendable, yet in reality he also was treating her as expendable without her realizing it.  Her father’s praise for her caused her to feel contemptuous towards her brother and fueled her authoritative personality, but all of a sudden this power is being shattered right in front of her face.  Although Ozai attempts to sugar-coat this by saying she’s the new Fire Lord, the damage has been done; reality has hit Azula that she’s no longer in a position to manipulate others to her will like she’s been able to do her whole life.  And what happens when you make such a brash change to someone who’s been used to having complete power and authority her entire life?

Well, part 3 shows us that Azula first enters a state of paranoia and denial.  She refuses to accept that she’s inferior to someone. She’s Azula, the Princess of the Fire Nation.  Power and others fearing her is something that runs in her blood - that’s all she’s known since she was born.  So, we see her taking ridiculous actions to desperately try and cling to that power she feels she’s entitled to:

-Banishes one of her servants for there being a cherry pit in her cherry -Banishes the Dai Li for taking 5 minutes to get to the Royal Throne Room -Banishes her trusted advisors, Lo and Li (right after attempting to make them fight an Agni Kai against each other even though they aren’t firebenders)

All of these represent attempts on Azula’s part to exert her remaining authority to convince herself that she still has power.  But alas, her attempts are fruitless, as she merely sinks further and further down into paranoia.  A lot of this is fueled by what Mai said at the Boiling Rock - that she doesn’t fear Azula as much as much as she loves Zuko, and that Azula doesn’t know people as well as she thinks she does.  Realizing that she can’t read people, she gets all paranoid that they’ll all turn out like Mai and Ty Lee, so she automatically assumes they’ll all betray her and thus banishes them.

Her subsequent hallucination of her mother emphasizes Azula’s denial of her inability to use fear to get her way all the time in life:

Azula: “Trust is for fools. Fear is the only reliable way. Even you fear me.” Ursa: “No. I love you, Azula. I do.”

Azula demonstrates again that she just won’t accept the fact that making others fear her doesn’t work and that sometimes trust and true friendship is the better option.  Her mother loved her, but this concept of actual love and trust is so foreign to her that she outright rejects it.

All this frustration and insecurity builds up to this moment, when Azula is defeated by Katara:

First of all, Azula loses the battle, which only adds to her feelings of inferiority.  But more importantly, she loses the last of her sanity upon realizing she doesn’t have any control anymore.  You might wonder why the same mental breakdown doesn’t happen to Ozai when he loses - at the end of this post, I touched on that.  I think it’s because Azula was actually born evil.  She was born lucky - she was a prodigy at firebending, she naturally was very good at reading other people, and her pragmatism and tact was unmatched by any other character in the series - but all of these traits also made her intrinsically sadistic and manipulative towards others.  Even Ozai himself wasn’t like this, since he was born an innocent baby (see that post I linked earlier in the paragraph) and merely got corrupted by his father.  Thus, Azula’s downfall is much more catastrophic to her character because her entire personality was built on having power and control, and now that that’s been taken away, her character essentially destroys itself and there’s nothing left inside that she can fall back on.

Throughout all of Book 3, we’ve seen Sokka’s leadership skills reach their peak level of maturity, and “Sozin’s Comet” demonstrates them nicely.

Back in “The Boiling Rock,” Sokka mentioned that he wanted to play things by ear more often because he noticed that a lot of times his extremely detailed plans that he devises ahead of time don’t exactly work out like they should.  He’s learned that yes, careful planning is important, but developing a sense of flexibility and the ability to adapt to the situation is of equal importance - after all, when you’re out there fighting, you can’t ever precisely predict exactly what your enemy will do, so adapting as events unfold is a must.

This is exactly what Sokka shows mastery in during the finale:

-Left picture - Sokka, Suki, and Toph are able to get into the control room of one of the Fire Nation airships, but they need to figure out how to get rid of the rest of the crew.  Sokka comes up with the brilliant/amusing idea to announcing it was someone’s birthday over the loudspeaker and consolidate all of the crew on the bomb bay doors so he could drop everyone into the water. -Middle picture - Sokka uses his intellect to come up with an ambitious plan on the spot to perform an “airship slice,” aka use their ship to ram into all the other ships, destroying everyone.  It’s dangerous and stupid, but also a very clever and efficient way of taking all the airships down. -Right picture - In order to perform his airbending slice again, Sokka has the idea to have Toph metalbend the rudder to switch the airship’s direction and go backwards to ram into all the airships a second time.  This shows Sokka’s quick wit in coming up with effective plans that utilize the skillsets of his team (i.e. Toph’s metalbending).

These are from the first half of the season.  Episodes seen are: -”The Awakening” -”The Painted Lady” -”Sokka’s Master” -”The Beach” -”The Avatar and the Fire Lord” -”The Puppetmaster”

Then, in “The Day of Black Sun,” the solar eclipse happens, which means it must be a NEW moon.  That actually makes sense - since one lunar cycle is 28 days, that means roughly 14 days passed between “The Puppetmaster” (the last time we saw the full moon) and the invasion.  What doesn’t make sense is how the moon is full for the entire first eight episodes, in which multiple weeks surely must have passed.

Here’s what I could find in the second half of the season:

Episodes seen: -”The Boiling Rock, Part 2″ -”The Southern Raiders” -”The Ember Island Players” -”Sozin’s Comet Part 2″

The fact the moon is still full for three episodes (from “Boiling Rock” until “Ember Island Players”) is still a bit weird because I estimate that a week’s time probably passed in that time, so the moon should have gone through a quarter cycle and not be full anymore, but at least it’s not as bad as the first half of the season.

I think this emphasizes that Aang’s Avatar spirit is very pure and uncorrupted, perhaps referring to the fact that Aang’s finally gotten in touch with the pure cosmic energy required for the Avatar state that Guru Pathik mentioned back in “The Guru.”  This all is further explored in this amazing scene where Aang energybends.  First, there’s the flashback of Aang with the lion turtle:

The contrast between orange sky / blue water hints at the whole corrupt / pure idea, which is then expanded upon in the following scene:

Here, it’s pretty clear cut that this is a battle between corruption and evil - the orange and blue consume the entire landscape. 

Ozai’s evil spirit, however, begins to corrupt Aang's Avatar spirit, and Aang almost succumbs to it, but at the last second, he fights back and succeeds in purifying Ozai to bend his energy and take away his firebending.

Additionally, there’s a blue beacon of light that shoots up into the sky at the end, which parallels the beam of light that shot up when Aang first got out of the iceberg:

It’s pretty neat - a beacon of blue light was what started everything in the first episode, and a beacon of blue light is what ends everything in the last episode, which kind of bookends the series.

Random thought, but this kind of reminds me of what happened in the finale of Book 1.  The corrupt Fire Nation succeeded in invading the Northern Water Tribe, all the way up until Zhao destroyed the Moon Spirit, which made it seem like the Avatar had lost and evil had won (just like in the bottom left picture from the energybending pictures where orange had consumed almost all the blue).  However, just when things seemed hopeless, Aang combined with the Ocean Spirit to wreak havoc upon the Fire Navy fleet and successfully ward off the attack to cleanse the Northern Water Tribe of Fire Nation soldiers.  And in that episode, there was blue/orange imagery as well.

Now, though, I want to revisit something I touched on before in my Book 2 finale post.  I noticed that the fact that Azula’s fire is blue seems to contradict what we know about the blue/orange motif.  After all, look at scenes, like this:

It seems pretty backwards.  If blue is good and orange is evil, then wouldn’t that mean Azula is the good one and Zuko the bad one in this Agni Kai? 

Well, let me point out something I noticed.  Look at one of Azula’s attacks:

She attacks with blue fire, but that fire cools to orange. In my Book 2 post about this, I said that the blue represents how Azula’s pure EVIL.  This is further evidence for that - the fact that her fire cools to orange is symbolic of how deep inside, Azula is truly just 100% corrupted and power-hungry.  From birth, Azula was always sadistic, manipulative person who relied on instilling fear in others to gain authority over them.  This is something that isn’t true of any other character.  Zuko, for example, was born with a heart.  Though he did become corrupted by his father, he was able to reclaim his honor and identity by following his own path, which is perhaps reflected in his orange fire - yes, it’s orange because he was corrupted at one point, but he found a new motivation for it ever since “The Firebending Masters,” so his fire is more beautiful and full of because of that. 

Even Ozai himself as a baby was cute and innocent, as shown in part 1 of this finale:

This demonstrates that Ozai had to be raised to be corrupt; he wasn’t born that way.  Azula was, and we saw that throughout flashbacks of her as a child in “Zuko Alone.”

Suki: “It's weird to say, but the comet actually looks beautiful.” Toph: “Too bad the Fire Lord's about to use it to destroy the world.”

Parallel between “The Day of Black Sun Part 2” and “Sozin’s Comet Part 3.”

Left picture from “The Crossroads of Destiny”; right picture from “Sozin’s Comet Part 3.”

Right before a huge battle (against Azula in “The Drill,” against Ozai in “Sozin’s Comet”), Momo’s initially on Aang’s shoulder, but Aang tells him to leave:

From “The Drill”: “Momo, get out of here!” From “Sozin’s Comet Part 3”: “Momo, time for you to go.”

Then, after the fight, Momo comes back to perch on Aang’s shoulder again as he overlooks the wreckage from the battle:

Let’s start with Iroh.  In “Sozin’s Comet Part 2,” he states, “when I was a boy, I had a vision that I would one day take Ba Sing Se. Only now do I see that my destiny is to take it back from the Fire Nation so the Earth Kingdom can be free again.”  So, Iroh knew that his destiny was to take Ba Sing Se, but he thought it would be in the name of the Fire Nation; instead, he accomplishes this goal in the exact opposite way, by reclaiming it in the name of the Earth Kingdom:

So that’s Iroh.  Aang’s story unfolds in a way more reminiscent of Zuko’s.  Starting in “Sozin’s Comet Part 1,” we see Aang’s first hesitations at the thought of having to kill the Fire Lord:

I put a picture of Zuko from “Nightmares and Daydreams” on the right because what they say in their respective scenes is similar.  Aang says, “it just didn't feel right. I didn't feel like myself,” after not being able to kill the Melon Lord in training, and Zuko says, “during the meeting, I was the perfect prince. The son my father wanted.  But I wasn't me.”  Both characters are thus going through a realization that this isn’t what their destiny should be.

Zuko himself even starts to see how similar his own story is to Aang’s.  Later in the episode, Katara and Aang start arguing over having to kill the Fire Lord, and Aang storms off in frustration.  Katara tries to follow him, saying, “Aang, don’t walk away from this,” but Zuko stops her:

He puts his hand on her shoulder and tells her, “let him go. He needs time to sort it out by himself.”  Zuko says this because this was the exact same situation he went through in the first half of Book 2: he got extremely angry at his circumstances and ended up leaving his uncle to sort through things by himself, and by the end, he had gotten a much better hold of his identity (these events occurred in “Avatar Day” through “The Chase”).  Therefore, Zuko knows best that alone time is the way that Aang will be able to figure out what to do, and this is why he stops Katara. 

Continuing into part 2 of the finale, we come upon Aang trying to seek advice from his past lives on what to do:

However, we see that every last one of them hints at the same thing: he needs to prioritize killing Ozai over his morality.  It seems that everybody is telling him he needs to follow a certain path, just as everybody in the Fire Nation (minus Iroh) seemed to be telling Zuko that he needed to follow a certain path. 

In part 3, Aang demonstrates more than once that he’s still sticking by his pacifist morals.  First, he tries to reason with Ozai before engaging in battle with him:

This continues Aang’s tendency of never resorting to violence unless absolutely necessary - even though he fully knows there’s zero chance of Ozai backing down, he tries to avoid fighting anyway because that pacifist aspect of him is so deeply ingrained in his values.

And next, when Ozai shoots lightning at Aang, Aang is able to use the lightning redirection technique he learned from Zuko, but when the moment comes, he makes a conscious decision to aim the redirected lightning away from Ozai as not to kill him:

This again just shows that Aang won’t sacrifice his values; he won’t change his morals just because others are telling him to.  He has the inner strength to follow his own moral compass and not let others convince him otherwise. 

Then, finally, in part 4, he proves everyone else wrong when he demonstrates that he was right to not sacrifice his own morals:

By using energybending to take away Ozai’s bending, Aang successfully creates his own destiny: he finds an alternate path - one that he follows because *he* feels it’s right, not one just succumbing to one that everyone else wants - to accomplish his end goal of defeating the Fire Lord and bringing balance to the world.  Thus, Aang becomes the glorious fully-realized Avatar he was destined to be, but he does so by following his own heart.

Aang, Iroh, and Zuko, while all sharing the same overall story, are able to find their destinies in slightly different fashions.  Aang finds his through pure determination to keep his morals intact; Iroh finds his by transforming a tragic event (the death of his nephew in the war) into a motivation for positive change; Zuko finds his through making mistakes and initially choosing the wrong path.  So, when we think of the idea of finding one’s destiny in ATLA, we should realize Zuko isn’t the only character we can look to for wisdom.  Aang and Iroh also have amazing stories of forging their own destinies, and they deserve attention in this regard as well.

Okay, so back in Book 2, I made a post about the similarity between the top row of pictures, from “The Siege of the North Part 1,″ and the middle row of pictures from, “The Guru,” since they were reminiscent of the intro sequence for the show where Katara says “...and I believe Aang can save the world.”

Here in “Sozin’s Comet Part 2″ (bottom row of pictures), we can see...kind of the same shot.  I mean, it’s not extremely close to the previous two mentioned, but there’s still the image of Aang staring off into the sky on a small platform, so I do think it’s appreciably similar at the very least.  In the Book 2 post, I mentioned how in “Siege of the North” Aang looks hesitant but by “The Guru” he looks determined, representing how he’s come to terms with accepting his Avatar role.  Here in “Sozin’s Comet,” we see that fierce look of determination on his face once again with the comet’s glow visible above his head.  The scene from “The Guru” was just all in his mind when he was unlocking his chakra; here, though, he’s actually putting all that determination into direct action since this is right before he faces Ozai and actually saves the world.

Here in “Sozin’s Comet Part 2” (right picture), when Iroh wakes up realizing that Zuko’s there, we see him assume the same expression that he had in “The Headband” (left picture) when he was disappointed in Zuko losing his way.  This is because he doesn’t know yet whether Zuko has changed yet - for all he knows, Zuko could just be the same entitled insulting prince he was in “The Headband.”  But the lines of dialogue Zuko says here are in sharp contrast to those that he said in the beginning of Book 3:

From “The Headband”: “You brought this on yourself, you know. We could have returned together. You could have been a hero! [...] You're a crazy old man! You're crazy! And if you weren't in jail, you'd be sleeping in a gutter!”

From “Sozin’s Comet Part 2”: “I am so, so, sorry, Uncle. I am so sorry and ashamed of what I did. I don't know how I can ever make it up to you.”

In “The Headband,” it was very clear that Zuko’s pride was getting the best of him.  He started off by putting himself up on a pedestal thinking he was right and Iroh was wrong (”you brought this on yourself”) and proceeded to insult him.  But in “Sozin’s Comet,” Zuko starts off with a sincere apology, making it immediately clear that he’s become a very humble man and that prideful prince is no more.  This is what causes Iroh to forgive Zuko so quickly - the fact that he could already tell how humble Zuko had become just from the first sentence he utters, thus demonstrating Zuko’s finally becoming the great, wise man Iroh always hoped he would be.

Piandao: “We're all part of the same ancient secret society. A group that transcends the divisions of the four nations.” Zuko: “The Order of the White Lotus.”

JUST LOOK AT THE WAY ZUKO SMILES WHEN HE REALIZES WHAT SOCIETY THEY’RE A PART OF

We find out in “Sozin’s Comet Part 1″ that the event that made Zuko finally decide to turn against his father and join the Avatar was this war meeting, which he attended during the time that “Nightmares and Daydreams” took place (but we never actually saw happened in it until now). 

From the beginning, Zuko always seemed to have one defining characteristic: the desire to protect innocent people.  We saw this in the flashbacks from “The Storm,” where Zuko spoke out at a war meeting against sacrificing an entire battalion of Fire Nation soldiers (which was what led to his scar).  However, this desire was corrupted when his father banished him, and this resulted in Zuko having two sides: a good, pure side that wants to protect the innocent, and a bad, corrupted side that will do anything (including hurting the innocent) in order to capture the Avatar and regain his honor in his father’s eyes.  The struggle between these two sides became very clear in Book 2, and it takes Zuko until the middle of Book 3 to finally let out his good side and follow his own destiny.  This scene is the last place where we see Zuko’s bad side being dominant - in the meeting, he acts like the son his father always wanted, and he says absolutely nothing when his father states his plan to destroy the entire Earth Kingdom and all its innocent inhabitants, representing Zuko neglecting his good side (by not speaking out against this plan, he seems to condone the killing of innocent lives).  And look at which side of his face is showing at the end of the scene (bottom right picture) - his scarred half!

Top pictures, from “Bitter Work”: Iroh says, “I will teach you a firebending move that even Azula doesn't know, because I made it up myself,” which makes Zuko smile.

Bottom pictures, from “Sozin’s Comet Part 1″: Zuko says, “there's one technique you need to know before facing my father - how to redirect lightning,” which makes Aang smile.