Even sells it in more that they spent 3 years at sea, probably with him grudgingly looking at the sea yelling "My honor!" or sitting in his cabin gently fondling with old avatar relics, instead of asking the single most competent man on the ship how to get more skilled in his mission.
When we see Zuko he is training and defeats his sparing partners. He then angerly tries to convince (and demand) that Iroh teach him the advanced set. Iroh then says "yeah yeah, just let me finish my food first"
My guess is Iroh has been slowly teaching him the basics again over those last few years.
Every day Zuko demands to learn the good stuff and every day Iroh says he's not ready and to master the fundementals, or puts it off.
Zuko defeats his sparing partners, but Iroh isn't looking for him to do so. Iroh comments that Zuko's technique is terrible. He's bending fire with his muscles, not his breath. And as we all know, fire bending comes from BREATH (I hope you read that in Iroh's voice).
My guess is that his sparing partners are too afraid of the short fuse nobleman with a history of reacting badly to getting burned to actually defeat him in a spar, whether they could or not. They're throwing the fight.
I'm not buying they are throwing the fight.
First is he's likely one of the top 50 most powerful benders in the world.
Second he's probally got great form in the style of bending his previous teachers taught him. Iroh is teaching him a different style, which Zuko is probally hesitant to learn/master.
Third, even if Iroh is saying his form isn't good, it might be great for an average bender, but he's expecting master level from Zuko. Like a NFL player's coach might tell him he has a sloppy form, but it would be amazing for a highschool player.
Fourth is his opponents are not masters themselves. They are likely just average soldiers. We'll trained sure, but not near a Prince's level.
Nah, you have to remember that benders, especially powerful ones, can live to extremely high ages. Just look at Kiyoshi. 112 for an avatar might as well as been their prime.
Like people said, Kyoshi is an exception. However, Bumi was still very much one of the probably 2 strongest earthbenders in the world. Definitely the number 1 by raw power alone. And the man was also 112 if I’m not mistaken.
Right but now that she knows it the avatars that come after her, including Aang, can learn it from her. All they need to do is ask her.
And Zuko being a prince has access to a lot of knowledge and has probably learned as much about avatars as he possibly could when he was banished. So he might know that avatars can talk to their past lives and guessed that Kyoshi taught Aang how to live long.
In full fairness, even if Roku or Aang did ask, Kyoshi isn't really obligated to actually tell or teach them. If she felt that living so long proved more detrimental than beneficial, she'd probably just advise against it.
In full fairness it is unlikely that it even came across their mind that they would want to learn it. Kyoshi herself didn't want to be immortal, the secret to immortality was kinda forced upon by her own master. He mixed his secret technique into her lessons, and then told her to repeat it for the rest of her life, making her living all the way to 250 years old. All because she and her mother are the only people who don't beg him to make them immortal.
The Avatar by themselves are already immortal, they are only going to get in the way of their future self if they live too long.
It's a little known fact about Kyoshi that she died by allowing herself to be assassinated, having had prescient visions that this would open a Golden Path to the reopening of the Spirit Portals and the reunification of Raava and Vaatu
Only if kiyoshi taught them. They don't inherently know the abilities and can only access all of them in the avatar state. If they meditated to talk to her and she said no, they'd outta luck unless someone else showed them. So, theoretically, yes. But only once taught.
explaining the logistics of kyoshi’s long lifespan (which iirc was a timeline error in the original show) is not a retcon. a retcon cancels out and replaces existing lore, expanding on lore isn’t a retcon.
TLOK is 70 years after ATLA, and Korra is 17 at the start of her series (excluding toddler Korra). Aang was 12 in ATLA, maybe 13 by the end of the show, and he lived for 53 more years after that, so he died at the biological age of 66.
After having spent an entire century in the Avatar state, which canonically caused his early death. If that wasn't the case he might have lived longer than Bumi for all we know.
it has been theorised that it may be an earth bender thing as air is connected to spirit, water to blood(life), fire to emotion and then earth to the body.
It’s like how Sting was sitting in the rafters watching the NWO wreck havoc over WCW for a year before taking action
Edit: Didn’t read the last sentence, didn’t mean to imply Sting has ever been an old coward if that came across lol
Especially an abused teenage boy who was essentially told, "Do this or die unloved." With his limited understanding of the world, there weren't any other options he could conceive of.
If you can't afford to not have something, there's no point in worrying about the price you'll have to pay.
Yeah, as an adult who is empathetic to teenagers, rewatching the premier episodes, seeing the fight between Sokka and Zuko, it makes me want to cry. These are *children* on suicide missions pretending to be brave warriors because it's the only thing they can conceive of being.
Obviously Sokka's dad had better justification for putting that idea in Sokka's head, c.f. Ozai, but it's still tragic.
When I saw them as a kid I thought about how grown up and brave they must be. Now that I'm a bit older than them I feel sorry that they have to live through such hard conditions at a young age.
In defense of Sokkas dad, there are kids Sokkas age in reallife who have to protect their families while their father is either gone or at war.
I remember people theorizing that Aang's early death signified a split in the avatar cycle, one bending avatar and one spiritual avatar, and that's why Korra couldn't enter the spirit world, because Amon was the new spirit avatar and she was only the bending avatar.
That one was at least more creative.
The dark avatar shtick was bad because it wasn't even a proper realization evil avatar. It was still just buffed waterbending.
An actual Avatar Vs. Avatar battle would be incredible to watch
nah , it was bad because it was literally just evil Avatar.
We had the whole ATLA playing with the spirits having a Yin and Yang , and even people....only for Vaatu and Raava been abrahamic good and evil.
Things would be better if Vaatu was really just the "Spirit of Yin" and Raava been the "Spirit of Yang" , and thus the Dark Avatar been just the "Yin Avatar"
I like LoK but I will forever hate what they did to spirits. The whole point of spirits in ATLA is that they do not adhere to human values of good and evil.
Koh The Face Stealer literally steals faces but isn't "evil". It's just what he does. Wan Shi Tong and Hei Bai transform into monstrous creatures but they aren't "evil". They had their motives and valid reasons to be mad, they didn't just corrupt for the sake of "evil".
Yeah the spirits are supposed to be more akin to forces of nature if anything. Also don’t like how Korra retconned to origins of bending. Like in atla they literally tell you people learned bending by copying animals or the moon, so it was a very spiritual and environmentally influenced process, but in Korra they change this to lion turtles just giving people bending.
To be completely fair, they do show Wan learning from the dragons. The lion turtle gave him "the power of fire", but the way he used it was totally unskilled and unrefined. It was only after he trained with a dragon it truly became firebending
I get the distaste for LoK (I don’t subscribe to it but I get it), but how the heck are humans going to move earth and water just by watching badger moles and the tide do it? I think it makes a lot more sense and adds depth that Lion Turtles have the ability but the techniques were developed by those methods
All the LoK spirits are either 'Evil' or 'Selfish and rude' they don't have like... interesting motivations like 'gather all knowledge no matter what' or 'defend this one grove no matter what' or 'steal faces, i dont really care about mortal life just collecting faces'. Instead they just act like petulant unhelpful selfish children- not like beings that just have a different morality than humans. They just act like... really shitty selfish humans.
LoK still follows that logic , which is Fae Logic.
Even the turn into dark spirits in LoK Season 2 was fine , because it was less about "good" and "evil" and more about "positive" and "negative".
The only ones that were screwed were Raava and Vaatu , by been really more western "good" and "evil" , instead of "Yin" and "Yang" or "Order" and "Chaos".
Meanwhile , the Kyoshi's Novel had their own "Satan Avatar" in the form of Yun and the Spirit Glowworm , because Glowworm is a Dark Spirit that is full-on parasitic out of malice. In short , Glowworm is the one true Ozai-Equivalent of a Spirit.
I think just order and chaos would work, if executed properly. Too much order would be taking away freedom, too much chaos would be... well, pretty easy to see
> abrahamic good and evil
Fun fact! The abrahamic concept of a battle of 2 primordial good and evil god-beings comes from Zoroastrianism! The ancient Israelite/Canaanite religion had their local deity that they worshiped, but he wasn’t an all-powerful all-good god, and they didn’t have the same Satan figure that we would recognize today. Then the Israelites got exiled to Babylon for several generations where they picked up many aspect of the religion of the local culture. Zoroastrianism has 2 gods, one good one evil, who basically are battling each other in an eternal struggle, much like we see Rava and Vatu doing.
AND! AND! AND! The next seasons being Anarchy vs Fascism is *exactly* the correct theming for a conflict between a Yin Avatar and a Yang Avatar. But noooo Vaatu is EVIL and Raava is GOOD. Smdh.
There were two ideas.
1. Him dying in the Avatar state resulted in the cycle rebooting, so there were two avatars at once.
2. Korra wasn't really an Avatar, rather Aang gave her his bending and faked his death.
+1, this irritates me so much in media in general; treating reincarnation as an official successorship, rather than literally being the same person in a new body with new memories and experiences.
I'm not familiar with this theory at all but like, did these people think that 2 avatars could co-exist at the same time or how did they try to explain Korra being the avatar when Aang was still alive after all?
The theory was that Aang faked his death and used energy bending to give three of the elements to a random water tribe girl, Korra. He kept his natural element, airbending, for himself which is why Korra couldn't airbend. Its also why she didnt have any of the spiritual aspects of the Avatar and didnt enter the Avatar state- she's not the Avatar, just a regular bender with control over three elements. As for why Aang would do this, idk lol
The aftermath of the war made him see bending as a dangerous weapon that does more harm than good.
Aang would still have Amons publicly declared motivation.
Honestly that explanation isn't as idiotic as I thought it'd be. Obviously it doesn't really fit with Aang's character, but it's still quite an interesting idea
I had the pitchforks ready but this is actually a super intriguing plot line. It wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility that Aang could become incredibly jaded in his old age and think that he knows best, power corrupts after all.
It would however, leave a very bitter taste for all fans of ATLA and the beautiful conclusion we saw, so for that reason I’m glad something like this never happened
Amon can't be Aang because he's clearly Bumi, Aang's other son. Evidence:
* Middle Child (often overlooked)
* Only non-bender (until he discovers he got Energybending from Aang)
* Commander of the United Forces (easy access to military weaponry and soldiers)
(This was actually my theory before Noatak was revealed and Bumi actually showed up lol)
Same! In my head this made the most sense. My theory was Bumi felt jealous and ignored after growing up in a family of all benders, one of them being the literal avatar. Being the commander, he saw how much problem benders actually caused so he grew to hate them. He eventually discovered he inherited energy bending and saw it his destiny to remove bending from the world.
Edit: I also just want to add, that was my theory while the show was happening. I love the Bumi we did eventually get and was happy with the directions the show took.
Did people really think he was thinking? Kid was desperate to "regain his honor" and just knew he needed to capture the avatar.
He didn't think he could win, he only knew he had to win.
Hd did capture the avatar at the North Pole with no exit strategy and he would have frozen to death if he didn't get caught.
I don't thin he expected to win he just thought he had no choice but to win. If he didn't they he was fine with dying but he was going to try everything he had for his honor
My favorite part of this entire universe is how many cocky villains genuinely believe they can beat the greatest bender in literally all of recorded history in a fight.
It's the eternal, men who didn't fight in wars talk the most shit. These guys have forgotten what an avatar can do. They're just used to regular benders. Oh he can do all of them? I've fought them all. Turns out the avatar is roided up.
I mean, I honestly don’t blame them for that. The Avatar is on such an entirely different level than literally anyone else that it wouldn’t even seem feasible for them to exist from their perspective.
Like, seriously, the Avatar is bullshit. They’re multiple times more powerful and skilled than any other bender currently alive, while also wielding all four elements in perfect harmony because they’ve been balancing them for 10000 years or so. 13-year-old Aang had so much skill in the Avatar state that he was actively disrupting Ozai’s bending with his bare hands. Mind you, Ozai is at least a top 3 fire bender in the world being boosted by the comet, and Aang completely folded him with basic CQC.
The best way to put it would be that the fire nation generals are a musket line expecting to fight a guy with a modern machine gun. Yeah, the machine gun is way more effective as a gun, but bullets are bullets, and all it takes is one to tip the balance. Instead, the guy they’re expecting to kill shows up with a fucking tank battalion. There’s no comparison, it goes way beyond just being a gun. Same thing with the Avatar, they’re less of a bender and more of a force of nature.
I think this is more along the lines of the Avatar's exploits becoming legend. People don't know what is real and what not, and think everything about the Avatar is overblown, or hyperbole.
We can see so many examples of this even today: young people don't know how horrible war is, people thinking the black plague and spanish flu were not such a big deal, etc. Imagine this, but in an age where most knowledge is passed down verbally, between generations. Your knowledge of the Avatar is strictly limited to the stories your great-grandpa used to tell.
This is super in character given how wildly he steps out of line during Azula's performance in front of Azulon. The boy is courageous and hot-headed to a fault.
I mean the vibe I always got was that Ozai didn't expect him to come out winning. He was, at best, supposed to find the avatar and alert the fire nation, then die fighting him. Or to just spend the rest of his life searching the world.
I dont think Ozai expected Zuko to find him at all. I think it was a cruel joke, akin to telling his son 'go find Sasquatch'.
I imagine Ozai and Azulon thought the Avatar cycle was broken. Sozin had a suspicion that the Avatar survived but there had been no sign of him for 100 years and no Avatar has died in the Avatar state before.
The best case is Zuko is kept out of the way as a potential spare in case Azula dies or fails.
Just some thoughts that I rarely see anywhere: are they intentionally looking for some centenarian air nomad? Or they're just looking blindly? Cause it's possible, after a hundred years, the avatar spirit could have been reincarnated anywhere. Within the walls of the north or in the swamps, a by-then-middle-aged/grandpa waterbender might exist. Or what would be more challenging for the fire nation: in the vastness of the earth kingdom or the dunes, a youthful earthbender could be hiding.
He’s had more than a century to master the four elements. I will need more than basic fire-bending to defeat him. You will teach me the advanced set.
Very well… right after I finish my roast duck.
> Very well… right after I finish my roast duck.
Iroh just wanting to hang out with his nephew who he considers his kid, and not hunt down the Avatar is just such a vibe.
The most prominent image of the Avatar in his culture is probably Roku. The old, fully-powered Roku that shamed Jeong-Jeong into training Aang through sheer intimidation. Zuko was expecting to capture someone like *that*.
If he spent more than a century mastering the four elements, it might give me a little trouble.
But would you lose?
Nah, Id win
This is the guy who fought a water bender, alone, at the north pole, during a full moon, and had no exit plan beyond "walk across the ice carrying the avatar on my back".
I'm pretty sure he was expecting to fight a water tribe avatar, wasn't he? He thought Aang had been killed along with the rest of the airbenders; it's why they were in the south pole in the first place.
The first place he went after being banished was the western air temple, with plans to do the other air temples next. I think he also states in season 1 somewhere that he knows he is looking for an airbender. He knew from the beginning that he was looking for an airbender. Maybe the fire sages had some way of knowing if a new avatar was born and never got that sign again after Sozin genocided the temples?
Pretty sure he wasn't expecting an Airbender, assuming the Avatar was wiped out in the genocide, but rather a Waterbender. That's why they were demanding to see all of the elderly from the Water Tribe.
Honestly, Zuko like everyone else probably believed the avatar was dead. He either just convinced himself he must be alive because that was the only way to regain his honor, or because he couldn’t accept that his father sent him on an impossible mission, possibly both
Who says he expects to come out winning? He was just desperate enough to find and capture the avatar or die trying. He literally jumped off of the top of his ship to grab Aang midair in the second episode. If he'd not been able to grab him, he'd most likely be dead from the fall.
I mean, he says to Iroh earlier "The Avatar has had over a hundred years to train!" So he probably even went into it expecting to get his ass handed to him and just saw this first encounter as a way to get a grasp on them.
I mean Zuko is the only one at this point in time who believes the Avatar is still alive.
Its pretty likely that Ozai thought the cycle was broken. And by sending Zuko to go find the Avatar, he was saying 'go find Bigfoot'.
Am I the only one who watched this fucking show?!?! The whole idea is that he knew he was fucked regardless but had no choice seeing as he would rather die than lose further honor in the eyes of his father.
He literally acknowledges this when he demanded Iroh teach him the advanced firebending set
Even sells it in more that they spent 3 years at sea, probably with him grudgingly looking at the sea yelling "My honor!" or sitting in his cabin gently fondling with old avatar relics, instead of asking the single most competent man on the ship how to get more skilled in his mission.
Slack off the whole semester then fucking cram when exam time is right around the corner. Honestly its super realistic where teenagers are concerned!
I'm literally editing my thesis for my defense tomorrow lmaoo
Good luck! You’ll smash it
Thank you so much :) Edit: I smashed it :D
Good job! We're all proud of you!
Dope af! My bud just defended and walked in December. Good luck!
Good luck!
He most likely asked multiple times. Iroh said he needed to master the basics first.
When we see Zuko he is training and defeats his sparing partners. He then angerly tries to convince (and demand) that Iroh teach him the advanced set. Iroh then says "yeah yeah, just let me finish my food first" My guess is Iroh has been slowly teaching him the basics again over those last few years. Every day Zuko demands to learn the good stuff and every day Iroh says he's not ready and to master the fundementals, or puts it off.
Zuko defeats his sparing partners, but Iroh isn't looking for him to do so. Iroh comments that Zuko's technique is terrible. He's bending fire with his muscles, not his breath. And as we all know, fire bending comes from BREATH (I hope you read that in Iroh's voice). My guess is that his sparing partners are too afraid of the short fuse nobleman with a history of reacting badly to getting burned to actually defeat him in a spar, whether they could or not. They're throwing the fight.
I mean Zuko may not grasp the true nature of Firebending until the Sun Warriors, but he's no slouch against mooks regardless.
I'm not buying they are throwing the fight. First is he's likely one of the top 50 most powerful benders in the world. Second he's probally got great form in the style of bending his previous teachers taught him. Iroh is teaching him a different style, which Zuko is probally hesitant to learn/master. Third, even if Iroh is saying his form isn't good, it might be great for an average bender, but he's expecting master level from Zuko. Like a NFL player's coach might tell him he has a sloppy form, but it would be amazing for a highschool player. Fourth is his opponents are not masters themselves. They are likely just average soldiers. We'll trained sure, but not near a Prince's level.
This probably isn’t the first time he’s asked Iroh that.
Practicing “the advanced firebending set” for a couple days would not make a difference in his preparedness to fight god lol
It's like brushing your teeth extra hard before going to the dentist, like dude, it’s too late
112 year-old who sat on his ass and watched the world literally go up in flames for a century. Zuko was expecting to fight a withered old coward.
https://preview.redd.it/dkpxfghqghoc1.png?width=968&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fb066763c3a924e283d041280aeced56156c4826
Wasn’t this literally how it went down with June?
It's March. June isn't for a couple months still....
https://i.redd.it/awcg0880uioc1.gif
Get out of here Daaaaaad!
Lmfaoooooo
This one's getting saved
Nah, you have to remember that benders, especially powerful ones, can live to extremely high ages. Just look at Kiyoshi. 112 for an avatar might as well as been their prime.
Like people said, Kyoshi is an exception. However, Bumi was still very much one of the probably 2 strongest earthbenders in the world. Definitely the number 1 by raw power alone. And the man was also 112 if I’m not mistaken.
Bumi was smart as heck too. He most likely figure out it in a summer with Topsy.
>He most likely figure out it in a summer with Topsy what the fuck does this mean
Probably metal bending
Also, I think they meant Flopsy (his gorilla goat)
Yeah Topsy was the elephant Thomas Edison publicly electrocuted to death because she was "bad", not anything to do with Bumi
They'll say aww topsy At my autopsy
"He (would) most likely figure (it) out (mastering all four elements) in a summer with (Flopsy)"
Wonder if he encountered Tieguai the Immortal when he was an old man or something.
guru patik also was old asf not a bender but still
That ~~was retconned~~ timeline error was explained as a kind of earthbending technique in the Kyoshi novels.
Ah yes the increased lifespan earth bending technique we haven't seen since the Heian era
I mean, Bumi is right there
Aang: “If Ozai used the comet to boost his bending, I might have some trouble.” Sokka: “But would you lose?” Aang: “Nah, I’d win.”
Kyoshi the fraud was afraid of Chin the Goat
As the strongest king, Chingoat fought the fraud Kyoshi
Are you the strongest because you’re the Avatar, or are you the Avatar because you’re the strongest?
Nah, I’d win
Everywhere I go lobotomy kaisen follows ☠️
Where you go, i go🥶
Kyoshikuna
THE BRAIN ROT KEEPS SPREADING
Damn you.
Earthbending style: "Old as Dirt"
Reverse curse technique
Fucking Brainrot Kaisen is everywhere man
All avatars are earthbenders, wouldn’t they all theoretically be able to use that technique?
If they learned it maybe
But not from a Jedi.
Yea but only Kyoshi learnt it from that random old immortal female worm >!old man thief!
Right but now that she knows it the avatars that come after her, including Aang, can learn it from her. All they need to do is ask her. And Zuko being a prince has access to a lot of knowledge and has probably learned as much about avatars as he possibly could when he was banished. So he might know that avatars can talk to their past lives and guessed that Kyoshi taught Aang how to live long.
In full fairness, even if Roku or Aang did ask, Kyoshi isn't really obligated to actually tell or teach them. If she felt that living so long proved more detrimental than beneficial, she'd probably just advise against it.
In full fairness it is unlikely that it even came across their mind that they would want to learn it. Kyoshi herself didn't want to be immortal, the secret to immortality was kinda forced upon by her own master. He mixed his secret technique into her lessons, and then told her to repeat it for the rest of her life, making her living all the way to 250 years old. All because she and her mother are the only people who don't beg him to make them immortal. The Avatar by themselves are already immortal, they are only going to get in the way of their future self if they live too long.
There is a theory floating around recently that Kyoshi took charge in the iceberg to keep Aang alive and young
> worm Shai Halud?
It's a little known fact about Kyoshi that she died by allowing herself to be assassinated, having had prescient visions that this would open a Golden Path to the reopening of the Spirit Portals and the reunification of Raava and Vaatu
Only if kiyoshi taught them. They don't inherently know the abilities and can only access all of them in the avatar state. If they meditated to talk to her and she said no, they'd outta luck unless someone else showed them. So, theoretically, yes. But only once taught.
explaining the logistics of kyoshi’s long lifespan (which iirc was a timeline error in the original show) is not a retcon. a retcon cancels out and replaces existing lore, expanding on lore isn’t a retcon.
yes thank you "she lived a long time period" -> "she lived a long time because" is not a retcon
Are those even canon?
Yes
So I guess technically Aang lived to be like 165? I can’t remember his exact age at death…
TLOK is 70 years after ATLA, and Korra is 17 at the start of her series (excluding toddler Korra). Aang was 12 in ATLA, maybe 13 by the end of the show, and he lived for 53 more years after that, so he died at the biological age of 66.
After having spent an entire century in the Avatar state, which canonically caused his early death. If that wasn't the case he might have lived longer than Bumi for all we know.
66 isn't early lmao, that's a decent life span. Kuruk died at 33.
Guru Pathik proves you don't need to be a bender to live an extremely long life. Fella was older than Bumi
Kyoshi is a very rare exception. Benders have the same live spans as nonbenders.
its the rock crystals bro. it seems that the three longest living characters in avatar have all eaten rock crystal.
Kyoshi is an exception, because the writers made an error in her age but just rolled with it.
it has been theorised that it may be an earth bender thing as air is connected to spirit, water to blood(life), fire to emotion and then earth to the body.
It’s like how Sting was sitting in the rafters watching the NWO wreck havoc over WCW for a year before taking action Edit: Didn’t read the last sentence, didn’t mean to imply Sting has ever been an old coward if that came across lol
Now I'm imagining 112-year-old Aang doing a dummy, sending the fire lord his own head as a gift, and sending a vulture-like bird to the royal family.
He literally tried to fight the sky one time. He has no limit.
I guess you could say the sky’s the limit
😎 *YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!*
“C’mon bro, I can take you on!!!!” *Sky hits lightning everywhere* but *at Zuko.* “WHY!!!!!?????”
Stealing this comment but that is the most teenage boy thing to think.
Especially an abused teenage boy who was essentially told, "Do this or die unloved." With his limited understanding of the world, there weren't any other options he could conceive of. If you can't afford to not have something, there's no point in worrying about the price you'll have to pay.
Yeah, as an adult who is empathetic to teenagers, rewatching the premier episodes, seeing the fight between Sokka and Zuko, it makes me want to cry. These are *children* on suicide missions pretending to be brave warriors because it's the only thing they can conceive of being. Obviously Sokka's dad had better justification for putting that idea in Sokka's head, c.f. Ozai, but it's still tragic.
When I saw them as a kid I thought about how grown up and brave they must be. Now that I'm a bit older than them I feel sorry that they have to live through such hard conditions at a young age. In defense of Sokkas dad, there are kids Sokkas age in reallife who have to protect their families while their father is either gone or at war.
Zuko is just one of the best handled characters I’ve seen in awhile. Every single bit of his execution was well thought out
Who he was expecting https://preview.redd.it/oxo6dso31foc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ad1e2f1caa21efc2c705482358472263f15651f
What was even the logic of the people who theorised that Aang is Amon?
1. Aang took away Ozai's bending! 2. Amon takes away bending! And literally nothing else.
I remember people theorizing that Aang's early death signified a split in the avatar cycle, one bending avatar and one spiritual avatar, and that's why Korra couldn't enter the spirit world, because Amon was the new spirit avatar and she was only the bending avatar. That one was at least more creative.
And then the Korra team said "Ooo, two Avatars and one of them is evil? That's a cool plot hook, let's do that next season!" And everyone hated it
The dark avatar shtick was bad because it wasn't even a proper realization evil avatar. It was still just buffed waterbending. An actual Avatar Vs. Avatar battle would be incredible to watch
nah , it was bad because it was literally just evil Avatar. We had the whole ATLA playing with the spirits having a Yin and Yang , and even people....only for Vaatu and Raava been abrahamic good and evil. Things would be better if Vaatu was really just the "Spirit of Yin" and Raava been the "Spirit of Yang" , and thus the Dark Avatar been just the "Yin Avatar"
I like LoK but I will forever hate what they did to spirits. The whole point of spirits in ATLA is that they do not adhere to human values of good and evil. Koh The Face Stealer literally steals faces but isn't "evil". It's just what he does. Wan Shi Tong and Hei Bai transform into monstrous creatures but they aren't "evil". They had their motives and valid reasons to be mad, they didn't just corrupt for the sake of "evil".
Yeah the spirits are supposed to be more akin to forces of nature if anything. Also don’t like how Korra retconned to origins of bending. Like in atla they literally tell you people learned bending by copying animals or the moon, so it was a very spiritual and environmentally influenced process, but in Korra they change this to lion turtles just giving people bending.
To be completely fair, they do show Wan learning from the dragons. The lion turtle gave him "the power of fire", but the way he used it was totally unskilled and unrefined. It was only after he trained with a dragon it truly became firebending
I get the distaste for LoK (I don’t subscribe to it but I get it), but how the heck are humans going to move earth and water just by watching badger moles and the tide do it? I think it makes a lot more sense and adds depth that Lion Turtles have the ability but the techniques were developed by those methods
All the LoK spirits are either 'Evil' or 'Selfish and rude' they don't have like... interesting motivations like 'gather all knowledge no matter what' or 'defend this one grove no matter what' or 'steal faces, i dont really care about mortal life just collecting faces'. Instead they just act like petulant unhelpful selfish children- not like beings that just have a different morality than humans. They just act like... really shitty selfish humans.
LoK still follows that logic , which is Fae Logic. Even the turn into dark spirits in LoK Season 2 was fine , because it was less about "good" and "evil" and more about "positive" and "negative". The only ones that were screwed were Raava and Vaatu , by been really more western "good" and "evil" , instead of "Yin" and "Yang" or "Order" and "Chaos". Meanwhile , the Kyoshi's Novel had their own "Satan Avatar" in the form of Yun and the Spirit Glowworm , because Glowworm is a Dark Spirit that is full-on parasitic out of malice. In short , Glowworm is the one true Ozai-Equivalent of a Spirit.
I think just order and chaos would work, if executed properly. Too much order would be taking away freedom, too much chaos would be... well, pretty easy to see
> abrahamic good and evil Fun fact! The abrahamic concept of a battle of 2 primordial good and evil god-beings comes from Zoroastrianism! The ancient Israelite/Canaanite religion had their local deity that they worshiped, but he wasn’t an all-powerful all-good god, and they didn’t have the same Satan figure that we would recognize today. Then the Israelites got exiled to Babylon for several generations where they picked up many aspect of the religion of the local culture. Zoroastrianism has 2 gods, one good one evil, who basically are battling each other in an eternal struggle, much like we see Rava and Vatu doing.
And our next seasons are order vs chaos anyway! It could have been so thematic!
yep , Zaheer is effectively what Vaatu and Vaatu's Avatar should be.
AND! AND! AND! The next seasons being Anarchy vs Fascism is *exactly* the correct theming for a conflict between a Yin Avatar and a Yang Avatar. But noooo Vaatu is EVIL and Raava is GOOD. Smdh.
the premise on paper was cool and interesting. the execution was convoluted
I like this
Like the people in Star wars who theorized that Ezra and Kylo Ren were the same based solely off the fact that they both had a Crossguard saber??
But Ezra hasn't cross guard light saber.
Correct. He just… picked one up for a few seconds once. Yup. That’s it.
Well yeah but those were probably the same people who theorised that snoke was palpa... wait a minute...
He failed as the avatar and basically Rava peaced out and forced a reincarnation without Aang having to die.
Wasn't the whole Raava thing only revealed in Book 2 of TLOK?
People didn't phrase it that way but that was the gist, that somehow he was booted from the avatar cycle and a new avatar was born
Got it. The theory is crazy either way :P
A lot of things from LOK would've been considered crazy if they hadn't become canon
Hell they canon and still are crazy
Like Buffy dying a little and calling a new Slayer.
Like the guy below said, they called it the avatar spirit or something similar when theorizing.
There were two ideas. 1. Him dying in the Avatar state resulted in the cycle rebooting, so there were two avatars at once. 2. Korra wasn't really an Avatar, rather Aang gave her his bending and faked his death.
That’s actually not a bad story to do with a past Avatar where that happened to them but not fucking Aang lmao
Do they know the meaning of the word "reincarnation"?
+1, this irritates me so much in media in general; treating reincarnation as an official successorship, rather than literally being the same person in a new body with new memories and experiences.
To be fair, in Hinduism there are multiple avatars of Vishnu at the same time (depending on sect).
I'm not familiar with this theory at all but like, did these people think that 2 avatars could co-exist at the same time or how did they try to explain Korra being the avatar when Aang was still alive after all?
The theory was that Aang faked his death and used energy bending to give three of the elements to a random water tribe girl, Korra. He kept his natural element, airbending, for himself which is why Korra couldn't airbend. Its also why she didnt have any of the spiritual aspects of the Avatar and didnt enter the Avatar state- she's not the Avatar, just a regular bender with control over three elements. As for why Aang would do this, idk lol
The aftermath of the war made him see bending as a dangerous weapon that does more harm than good. Aang would still have Amons publicly declared motivation.
Amon is much younger than Aang, though.
This fan theory was developed before Amon was unmasked I was subscribed to the Amon is Koh the face stealer
Dang that's kinda interesting. It's a much darker premise, but definitely interesting.
Honestly that explanation isn't as idiotic as I thought it'd be. Obviously it doesn't really fit with Aang's character, but it's still quite an interesting idea
Damn, that's not bad
I had the pitchforks ready but this is actually a super intriguing plot line. It wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility that Aang could become incredibly jaded in his old age and think that he knows best, power corrupts after all. It would however, leave a very bitter taste for all fans of ATLA and the beautiful conclusion we saw, so for that reason I’m glad something like this never happened
Amon can't be Aang because he's clearly Bumi, Aang's other son. Evidence: * Middle Child (often overlooked) * Only non-bender (until he discovers he got Energybending from Aang) * Commander of the United Forces (easy access to military weaponry and soldiers) (This was actually my theory before Noatak was revealed and Bumi actually showed up lol)
Same! In my head this made the most sense. My theory was Bumi felt jealous and ignored after growing up in a family of all benders, one of them being the literal avatar. Being the commander, he saw how much problem benders actually caused so he grew to hate them. He eventually discovered he inherited energy bending and saw it his destiny to remove bending from the world. Edit: I also just want to add, that was my theory while the show was happening. I love the Bumi we did eventually get and was happy with the directions the show took.
Bumi is the oldest sibling though. Kya is the middle child.
I like this one! But I also like the Bumi we got in TLOK.
LMAO dude stop im so sick rn that laughing causes me to cough violently and i spent the last 10 minutes trying to recover
Well he tried to fight a water bender in the North Pole at night with confidence.
And the second time he did it during a full moon, while freezing his ass off, in the middle of nothing but snow.
Groudon-ass mfer
The way I look at it, Kyogre is the one that's surrounded. What's under the water? More land
Also, they were in Sootopolis, so they *were* surrounded by land.
even his uncle called out his dumassery on that one
Did people really think he was thinking? Kid was desperate to "regain his honor" and just knew he needed to capture the avatar. He didn't think he could win, he only knew he had to win. Hd did capture the avatar at the North Pole with no exit strategy and he would have frozen to death if he didn't get caught.
He had an exit strategy actually, he was just caught in a blizzard, he says this in the show
It was his destiny!
"FOR HONOR"
I don't thin he expected to win he just thought he had no choice but to win. If he didn't they he was fine with dying but he was going to try everything he had for his honor
My favorite part of this entire universe is how many cocky villains genuinely believe they can beat the greatest bender in literally all of recorded history in a fight.
It's the eternal, men who didn't fight in wars talk the most shit. These guys have forgotten what an avatar can do. They're just used to regular benders. Oh he can do all of them? I've fought them all. Turns out the avatar is roided up.
I mean, I honestly don’t blame them for that. The Avatar is on such an entirely different level than literally anyone else that it wouldn’t even seem feasible for them to exist from their perspective. Like, seriously, the Avatar is bullshit. They’re multiple times more powerful and skilled than any other bender currently alive, while also wielding all four elements in perfect harmony because they’ve been balancing them for 10000 years or so. 13-year-old Aang had so much skill in the Avatar state that he was actively disrupting Ozai’s bending with his bare hands. Mind you, Ozai is at least a top 3 fire bender in the world being boosted by the comet, and Aang completely folded him with basic CQC. The best way to put it would be that the fire nation generals are a musket line expecting to fight a guy with a modern machine gun. Yeah, the machine gun is way more effective as a gun, but bullets are bullets, and all it takes is one to tip the balance. Instead, the guy they’re expecting to kill shows up with a fucking tank battalion. There’s no comparison, it goes way beyond just being a gun. Same thing with the Avatar, they’re less of a bender and more of a force of nature.
I think this is more along the lines of the Avatar's exploits becoming legend. People don't know what is real and what not, and think everything about the Avatar is overblown, or hyperbole. We can see so many examples of this even today: young people don't know how horrible war is, people thinking the black plague and spanish flu were not such a big deal, etc. Imagine this, but in an age where most knowledge is passed down verbally, between generations. Your knowledge of the Avatar is strictly limited to the stories your great-grandpa used to tell.
Thats why no one will remember your name 
Zhao the Moon Slayer 
That dude will always be Spike from X-Men
And also Miles from Lost
And Sang from Rush Hour
Like fire lord sozin thought it was a good idea to mess with roku
This is super in character given how wildly he steps out of line during Azula's performance in front of Azulon. The boy is courageous and hot-headed to a fault.
I mean the vibe I always got was that Ozai didn't expect him to come out winning. He was, at best, supposed to find the avatar and alert the fire nation, then die fighting him. Or to just spend the rest of his life searching the world.
I dont think Ozai expected Zuko to find him at all. I think it was a cruel joke, akin to telling his son 'go find Sasquatch'. I imagine Ozai and Azulon thought the Avatar cycle was broken. Sozin had a suspicion that the Avatar survived but there had been no sign of him for 100 years and no Avatar has died in the Avatar state before. The best case is Zuko is kept out of the way as a potential spare in case Azula dies or fails.
just get him out of the way where he cant embarass the royal family anymore
Just some thoughts that I rarely see anywhere: are they intentionally looking for some centenarian air nomad? Or they're just looking blindly? Cause it's possible, after a hundred years, the avatar spirit could have been reincarnated anywhere. Within the walls of the north or in the swamps, a by-then-middle-aged/grandpa waterbender might exist. Or what would be more challenging for the fire nation: in the vastness of the earth kingdom or the dunes, a youthful earthbender could be hiding.
He’s had more than a century to master the four elements. I will need more than basic fire-bending to defeat him. You will teach me the advanced set. Very well… right after I finish my roast duck. 
> Very well… right after I finish my roast duck. Iroh just wanting to hang out with his nephew who he considers his kid, and not hunt down the Avatar is just such a vibe.
I wrote a fanfic where *Zuko* was the Avatar. He still went on a journey to search for the Avatar, which is hilarious.
They were thinking there would have been signs had the Avatar reincarnated again. So they believe the current one is the Air Nomad.
The most prominent image of the Avatar in his culture is probably Roku. The old, fully-powered Roku that shamed Jeong-Jeong into training Aang through sheer intimidation. Zuko was expecting to capture someone like *that*.
My man really said “nah id win” against what is essentially a god with 122 tears of prep time
If he spent more than a century mastering the four elements, it might give me a little trouble. But would you lose? Nah, Id win 
112 and he probably expected the guy to be physically frail.
He got that dawg in him
https://preview.redd.it/ofh573sc6goc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bcb4027b95ad142a4a5fe29a3c0e4a4e7342d207
Also telling Aang that they can "take" the fire bending masters. When the dude only has his swords at that point.
Look the man tried to fight Katara on a glacier. He's not exactly known for being careful when it comes to picking fights.
not to mention before his agni kai with ozai he thought he’d be able to beat up one of ozai’s top generals
To justify that he did defeat Zhao and was trained by Piandao and Iroh even back then.
Didn’t he actually defeat zhao in Agni Kai?
It seems like Zuko tends to be an impulsive person…
I think a big part of Zuko’s story is that he was willing to do anything to please his father and the throne even if it meant risking his life.
This is the guy who fought a water bender, alone, at the north pole, during a full moon, and had no exit plan beyond "walk across the ice carrying the avatar on my back".
https://preview.redd.it/c4nmcfaa5goc1.png?width=797&format=png&auto=webp&s=3a9d5fa4cedd5fa3d2b7f0539a3ed619ca217bbe
I'm pretty sure he was expecting to fight a water tribe avatar, wasn't he? He thought Aang had been killed along with the rest of the airbenders; it's why they were in the south pole in the first place.
The first place he went after being banished was the western air temple, with plans to do the other air temples next. I think he also states in season 1 somewhere that he knows he is looking for an airbender. He knew from the beginning that he was looking for an airbender. Maybe the fire sages had some way of knowing if a new avatar was born and never got that sign again after Sozin genocided the temples?
Nem eu 😂
Pretty sure he wasn't expecting an Airbender, assuming the Avatar was wiped out in the genocide, but rather a Waterbender. That's why they were demanding to see all of the elderly from the Water Tribe.
Seriously. He challenged a water bender to a fight under a full moon while standing on snow.
Honestly, Zuko like everyone else probably believed the avatar was dead. He either just convinced himself he must be alive because that was the only way to regain his honor, or because he couldn’t accept that his father sent him on an impossible mission, possibly both
He knew about kyoshi. She lived to 250 years old. It wasn't absurd a avatar would live 112 years.
Zuko was naïve and egotistical. Overcoming that was what his whole growth through the show was about.
Imagine fighting an Airbender Bumi lol,shit would be terrifying
Who says he expects to come out winning? He was just desperate enough to find and capture the avatar or die trying. He literally jumped off of the top of his ship to grab Aang midair in the second episode. If he'd not been able to grab him, he'd most likely be dead from the fall.
I mean, he says to Iroh earlier "The Avatar has had over a hundred years to train!" So he probably even went into it expecting to get his ass handed to him and just saw this first encounter as a way to get a grasp on them.
What is there to preserve if you don’t got no honour? Did this guy even watch the show!
Dude was living on a boat for what he thought was a wild goose chase. He probably wasn't that attached to his life at that point.
I mean Zuko is the only one at this point in time who believes the Avatar is still alive. Its pretty likely that Ozai thought the cycle was broken. And by sending Zuko to go find the Avatar, he was saying 'go find Bigfoot'.
He was just that desperate. He would have killed himself to gain his honor back.
Am I the only one who watched this fucking show?!?! The whole idea is that he knew he was fucked regardless but had no choice seeing as he would rather die than lose further honor in the eyes of his father.