In the first episode of the second season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Team Avatar heads to an Earth Kingdom outpost in order to get an escort to Omashu so that Aang can train under King Bumi. However, they find the local king has other ideas for the Avatar. Meanwhile, Zuko’s sister enters the picture and what the fuck. If you’re intrigued, then it’s time for Mark to watch Avatar.

[Author’s Note #1: So, this needs to be said and I need to be proactive about it in order to continue to make this community a healthy, safe space for people to discuss these reviews and any of the issues that inevitably arise from them. This is why this review is later than usual.

As I am sure many of you notice, I had downvoting turned off on both Mark Reads and here on Mark Watches. It has been increasingly used as a tool to silence and cyberbully people who call out the show, writers, unfortunate implications, or, in the case of a comment on my most recent Doctor Who review, someone who was ~TOO MEAN~ when trying to defend their very experience and life with cissexism.

So I would like this to be the first and final warning for every person who has ever posted on this site and who ever will post on the site: At no point are you, as a commenter on this site, to ever participate in a conversation with another person and silence them, tell them that they should be nicer about their experience with a specific oppression (which is an example of a tone argument), or to assume that a “rational conversation” means you get to stomp all over another person’s lived experience.

I have seen too many sites take a much more relaxed policy on this, and I will not do it. This is EVERYONE’S last warning. If myself or another mod sees you participate in privilege-denying bullshit or actively bullying or erasing someone’s experience like what was done on that review yesterday, your commenting privileging will be revoked until the end of the universe.

I will be updating the site’s rule’s to clarify this, so that you cannot say you weren’t warned or wiggle your way out of some loophole. This policy, which starts right now, is NOT up for discussion. If you think that you need to give me your (arguably) privileged opinion on why you need to do shit like this, I will remove the comment. The end. Keep it up and you can go elsewhere to be a dick.

If I have to make the majority uncomfortable in order for the minority to feel okay posting around here, I will. The end.

And now, on to ANOTHER note and the opening of season two of Avatar!

[Author’s Note #2: I’m going to start this off with my predictions for season two, and, for the record, this was written immediately after I penned my review for “The Siege of the North, Part II,” so as not to sully the experience. After the predictions, I’ll jump right into the review of “The Avatar State.”]

Mark’s Fabulous and Mostly Inaccurate Predictions For Season Two of Avatar

(a.k.a., The Avatar Fandom Revels In Mark’s Sweet, Sweet Innocence)

1. All right, let’s start out with the easy stuff. In season two, Katara is going to be confused about her feelings for both Aang and a second person we have not met yet.
2. Jet will reappear in season two.
3. Aang will be trained by an earth bending master we have NOT met yet.
4. Sokka will be reluctant to feel romance to someone else after the loss of Princess Yue.
5. We will see a story about Appa? Look, I don’t know what they could tell BUT LET A BOY DREAM.
6. HELL, LET US HAVE AN EPISODE DEVOTED TO MOMO, TOO.
7. If we’re talking about flashbacks, I think we’ll get one about Sokka’s/Katara’s family.
8. This is becoming less of a prediction list and more of a wish list, because now I want to see Uncle Iroh in a flashback as well.
9. We will meet Aang’s earth bending master BEFORE the halfway mark of the season. (I think that’s episode ten? Unless there are more episodes this season.)
10. We will see much, much more of Zuko’s unnamed sister.
11. All right, let’s get to the REAL SHIT. I predict that Aang will go into the Avatar state before the halfway mark of the season.
12. Aang will master both water bending and earth bending by the time we get to the end of season two.
13. We will find out something more about what Ba Sing Se is. I don’t want to say too much because that might be something for season three, but it is an Earth Kingdom town, so why not in Book Two? I SAY YES.
14. Zuko’s sister will be the only main character to die in season two.
15. Fire Lord Ozai will speak to Aang himself.
16. I predict that Team Avatar will gain FIVE more people on their side. They won’t necessarily travel with them the whole time, but I think it’s time for the Team to get more members!
17. And my big prediction for season two: Uncle Iroh and Prince Zuko will be two of those new “team” members. LOOK I KNOW I MAKE JOKES ABOUT PUPPY DOGS AND CUPCAKES but I really want them all to be on the same side ok gosh stop judging me.

I feel like that’s a great start, RIGHT? Oh god, I PROBABLY GOT THIS ALL WRONG. oh well. NO HINTS ABOUT MY PREDICTIONS. Just pretend they didn’t happen or something, because every time, someone inevitably is like OH GOSH MARK, THIS PARTICULAR PREDICTION IS SO GOOD! No. Shut up.

Shall we?

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So, if this is how Avatar is going to open the second season, I’ll be a broken record for the millionth time to state: my unpreparedness is at epic levels of absurdity. As we move into Book Two, Earth, and I spend twenty-four minutes swooning over Daniel Dae Kim’s guest voice appearance, I’m so unendingly pleased with the set-up for the second season.

Part of what’s so great is not only does it pick up where we left off, seemingly days after the Siege of the Northern Water Tribe, but it also does not ignore some of the more frightening implications of a young boy’s tremendous (and terrifying) power. Truthfully, I’m still in awe about what Aang was able to do when Zhao murdered the Moon spirit. Yes, we’ve seen the frightening things that Aang is able to do in the Avatar State, but the season one finale put it all in perspective: the dude can literally destroy an entire armada.

This haunts Aang, who begins to have disorienting, disturbing, and unsettling dreams about his powers being used to harm both those he loves and himself. As General Fong will later say, it is mostly certainly an “awesome” responsibility and I find it incredibly healthy that Aang is already considering the effects of having such a power. I think that, especially so early in his life, it’s pretty amazing to see someone analyze the effect they may have on other people and try to do what’s right so that they don’t harm anyone.

But even with that first dream opening the entire season, I still could not believe how quickly this episode became monumental. Leaving the Northern Water Tribe with a couple parting gifts from Master Pakku (no, literally, just a couple. Poor Sokka!!!), they are escorted to a nearby Earth Kingdon base, from where they’ll be lead back to Omashu. WHERE KING BUMI WILL TEACH AANG EARTHBENDING. oh my god that is so fantastic I LOVE KING BUMI FOREVER.

Upon arriving at the Earth Kingdom base, General Fong (voiced by Daniel Dae Kim ….. swwwwwwoooooooonnnnnn forever) is more than just excited to house the Avatar and his friends; he makes sure the city throws them a celebratory welcome for war heroes, and Team Avatar realizes that news of their defeat of the Fire Nation has traveled rather quickly. That’s actually a fascinating thing to me, too, since I actually stopped and thought about how this was probably the first significant victory against the Fire Nation in a long, long time. I’m going to be quite interested to see how this news passes through the world and if this will cause that society to start being both more hopeful and expectant of Aang in general.

Though, I suppose part of that is answered right here in this first episode, as General Fong quickly makes it explicitly clear why he’s so excited that Team Avatar have waltzed right into his kingdom: He believes that Aang can destroy the Fire Lord himself as he is. No mastering the elements, no following his destiny. He believes that if he can just learn how to trigger Aang’s Avatar state, then he can help lead the war against the Fire Nation.

Despite that things are not so ambiguous towards the end, I truly adore how the writers present this incredibly challenging dichotomy to Aang (and to us as well). The idea that General Fong has is, of course, on the surface, completely absurd. We’ve known for twenty straight episodes that Aang is meant to master all four elements as the Avatar, and then, in “The Winter Solstice, Part II,” we even find out from the previous Avatar that this is what Aang needs to do before confronting Fire Lord Ozai. So….what the hell is this general thinking????

Well, we get to see that motivation as well, as he shows Aang the men who survive the battle agains the Fire Nation as they return to the base injured and their spirits broken. And General Fong makes a point to state that these are the men that survived. In a way, I feel that this is a call back to the guilt that Aang had to deal with in “The Storm.” This is also why I love serialized fiction, since the writers are able to make poetic parallels like this and they don’t have to necessarily spell it out. But I couldn’t help but think about Aang holed up in that cave, believing that he was destined to failure for willing disappearing from the world when they needed him most. It also feels like a direct response to Aang’s statement in “The Siege of the North, Part I” that he wasn’t going to disappear from the world this time, and now the world is saying, “Well, okay, then here is what you need to deal with.”

Even more admirably, the episode doesn’t ignore the micro effects of this proposal either, as Katara expresses how uncomfortable she is with this idea. I think they did a great job making sure that Katara made it clear she was talking about Aang consistently entering the Avatar state simply as a technique of war and NOT that he couldn’t ever do it, either. It’s not that Katara is opposed to violence, as she’s certainly used it herself. But as Aang’s friend, it absolutely must be difficult to watch your friend turn into the Avatar like this. She even references “The Southern Air Temple” to appeal to Aang’s reason. (Ok, that sentence is fucking bizarre to me, because clearly she did not reference an episode title as if she was aware of existing in a television show, but I’m leaving it because it makes me laugh. DILL WITH IT.)

At the same time, “The Avatar State” does a fine job of setting up what will surely be this season’s villain: Azula. (That is a pretty name!) OH, AZULA. How shall I deal with you? You are a gorgeous, fierce, no-shit-taking badass (which I love) who is unbearably cruel and manipulative (which I hate). Our first true introduction to her, not counting her last second appearance at the end of season one, is a pretty telling sequence to show us exactly what we’re dealing with. Azula is far more calculating than Admiral Zhao ever was, and in that sense, she is threatening to a much greater extent. Her anger and rage is controlled; Zhao’s was not, and that lack of control is what lead to his undoing. (Which….shit, now that I think about it, since it seems Zhao is actually gone forever, Nickelodeon aired a show in which a villain was pulled into the ocean and drowned be a spirit. Holy shit.) When she speaks to that captain about the tides, she makes herself known to all: She will do what she wants, she will get what she wants, and standing in her way in any form will probably get you disposed of.

I can now see that Fire Lord Ozai will most likely fill out the third season, despite that we will probably see more of him in season two, but I imagine that Azula is not going away any time soon. On top of that, she creates an interesting character dynamic because of the relationship with her brother, which “The Avatar State” starts to build on. What she does here, as I said before, is unsettling in the way it is manipulative and cruel. She specifically seeks out her brother, who she has not seen in years, and makes one of the poorest attempts to convince him to come with her I’ve ever seen. But that’s actually what is so sinister about the whole thing. We know and Iroh knows that something is not at all right with the ridiculous way she speaks to Zuko, faking sympathy in the same breath that she uses to make it clear that she despises Zuko and Iroh. The thing is, she knows that she can exploit Zuko’s loneliness in order to manipulate him to get himself and Iroh to come along with her.

That, to me, is goddamn evil. And I never really use that word to talk about some metaphorical or spiritual entity that strips the agency out of people; I mean this in the sense that her actions are so wrong to me that they eclipse just being “bad” and go straight to “horrifically evil.” (That does make me wonder…why didn’t Azula kill the captain when he accidentally revealed her true purpose? She already threatened him once with death, and that moment seemed pretty justified in her brain. But I guess that goes hand in hand with the idea that her anger is far more restrained than what Zhao might have done, so….nice call, writers. Either action would have worked, but I rather like this one out of the two.

And because I can find absolutely no single way to bring this up in a poetic, nuanced manner: HOW THE FUCK IS AZULA’S FIRE BENDING BLUE?!?!?!?!?! Is that lightning? Or some sort of mesh of elements? Holy god up above, WHAT THE HELL. That is so amazing! UGH THANK YOU, AVATAR WRITERS, FOR INTRODUCING YET ANOTHER CHARACTER FOR ME TO FEEL CONFLICTED ABOUT.

All of this comes together, though, as Aang’s battle with General Fong’s insistence at using his Avatar state as weapon gets the best of him. I don’t think Aang made a poor decision here, but he knows that after 100 years, the world truly needs him. Thankfully, though, the writers play up the true absurdity of the concept, since we all know that Aang’s Avatar state does not work in the way that Fong assumes it does. It’s humorous to me that Sokka and Katara help, but just barely. They both know this really isn’t going to work as it’s planned.

Because of this, I partially suspected that General Fong would have to get desperate in order to find a way to trigger the state, so I wasn’t all that surprised when he ordered his troops to attack Aang. Ultimately, it was nice that the writers sided with Katara, our eternal voice of reason, on this one: the Avatar state is a scary and dangerous thing for Aang to enter. But General Fong finally takes it too far when he exploits Aang’s earlier revelation that the Avatar state can only be triggered by imminent danger. He captures Katara and begins to slowly encase her into the earth.

And then we get some of the most heart-breakingly depressing images of this whole goddamn show:

SERIOUSLY. SERIOUSLY. I wanted to just burst into tears because look at Aang’s face.

Of course, I expected Fong to bury Katara further into the earth until he finally gave up, knowing this to be futile. EXCEPT NO. HE FUCKING BURIES HER ALIVE

Oh my god THIS SHOW. WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?

As if this isn’t enough, we also get one incredibly gigantic piece of the mythology as Aang enters the Spirit world. Avatar Roku appears to him, explaining both what that glow is that appears every time he enters the Avatar state, and then tells Aang he must learn to discipline the effect because if you are killed in the Avatar state, THE AVATAR WILL CEASE TO EXIST. good fucking god.  THIS SHOW IS SO GOOD, EVERYONE!!!!!!!

All of this — everything I’ve described about why I enjoyed “The Avatar State” — pales in comparison to the absolute final scene of the episode. Completely aware that their own nation has rejected them, Zuko and Iroh cut off their top-knots, a sign of their rejection. As beautiful, poetic, and wrenching as it is, I could only think of one thing:

PLEASE LET THIS MEAN THEY ARE JUST ANOTHER STEP CLOSER TO JOINING TEAM AVATAR.

A boy can dream. Let this boy dream.

THOUGHTS

• I’ve already noticed the change in colors, clothing, and music. It feels like a slight rebirth for the show and I truly adore it. It’s a great sign that we’ve entered a new chapter.
• “Who knew floating on a piece of driftwood for three weeks with no food or water and sea vultures waiting to pluck out your liver could make you so tense!”
• “There’s a right way to do this: practice, study, and discipline.” “Or just glow it up and stop that Fire Lord.” i love you forever, sokka.
• Aang “high” on that tea = glorious.
• I will say that the growing relationship between Iroh and Zuko made me both happy and sad in this episode. I JUST WANT THEM TO GET ALONG. 🙁
• I enjoyed that General Fong include Appa and Momo in his welcome of the “great” heroes. THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL.