Mark Watches ‘Avatar’: S03E06 – The Avatar and the Fire Lord

In the sixth episode of the third season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Zuko and Aang learn of the cause of the war started by Fire Lord Sozin and how their destinies are intertwined. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Avatar.

HHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG this episode was SO GOOD. Any of the blatant “parallel” stories that the writers choose to tell on Avatar have all been among the ones I enjoyed the most, and this is no exception at all. Not only do we finally learn the details of why the great war with the Fire Nation started in the first place, but we’re now approaching a critical moment in Zuko’s story: Will he choose to follow the destiny his father cursed him with, or will he use his legacy to restore balance to the world?

More than anything else in Avatar, this story has been about Aang and Zuko. I can recall a time when I believed that Zuko would be the only main antagonist to Aang. Now, we’re so far along in his story that I’m not sure what to call Zuko anymore. There’s no more complicated or challenging of a character than him, and this season has shown how his acceptance of someone else’s destiny is destroying him from the inside out. It seemed rather obvious from the get-go that Iroh was involved in sending his nephew on a spiritual journey of sorts, getting him to seek out the true history of his great grandfather. This brought me joy because I was coming to feel a bit depressed about the fact that Iroh and Zuko hadn’t spoken in so many episodes.

For Aang, it’s a chance for him to receive a crucial message about Avatar Roku’s “mistakes.” They’d been referenced before in “The Awakening” and we’d not heard a word about it since. What sort of mistakes could the Avatar make?

I haven’t decided yet if this episode serves as foreshadowing for the upcoming invasion or if it’s merely a cautionary tale for our two main characters. (It’s possible it’s both, I suppose.) Right from the start, a shock is delivered to both Aang and Zuko: They discover that Avatar Roku and Fire Lord Sozin grew up as best friends. Their story is not a particularly revolutionary subversion of adventure tropes, but Avatar hasn’t always aimed to do things differently. Instead, I’ve rather enjoyed how familiar archetypes and tropes are given to us, but they’re done extremely well. I got a distinct Star Wars feel to the history of Roku and Sozin, about friends/masters who grew close in strength, but were torn apart by power.

Yet for Aang and Zuko, it’s easy for these two young men to see themselves in this story. We’re given the discomfited and disheartening ceremony where Roku is told he is the next Avatar, and it must have been revealing for Aang to see that this great Avatar went through the exact same sense of disbelief and sadness upon learning who he was. For Zuko, he’s able to see a man born into royalty who struggles with his role in the fate of the world; for him, though, Sozin’s journey is nowhere near as redemptive as what Aang feels towards Roku.

It was exciting to see the first onscreen use of all four elements simultaneously by one character after a well-executed montage of sorts explaining how Roku came to become a fully-realized Avatar. It’s still unbelievable to me that Roku had twelve years to perfect all four elements, and Aang hasn’t even had twelve months to do the same. But, like Aang, Roku was able to build lasting friendships with the masters who trained him in the other elements (INCLUDING GYATSO!!!!), and I like what this suggests. Given what Toph asks at the end, I see this as partial foreshadowing: Aang is going to have lifelong friends in Toph and Katar.

But who does that leave as a fire bending master able to teach Aang?

With all of this talk of friendship, it was inevitable that there’d have to be some moment where Roku and Sozin would have to break apart. I found it unfortunately ironic that on a day where one friend is joined in union with another person, Sozin takes it upon himself to suggest destruction to that very man. Even though Sozin tries to frame it as if he has the very best of intentions for the world in trying to bring “prosperity” to the other nations, Roku is able to recognize imperialist nature of the suggestion. (Obviously, that word is used in terms of what imperialism means to us, but I think it’s actually a fine word to describe how the Fire Nation would eventually use their power to crush other cultures and attempt to assimilate them within their own by force.)

The seed is planted between the two friends, and the writers develop a metaphor about duty and friendship at the same time. Roku has a duty to keep the world in balance, but how is he supposed to keep that when the main antagonist is his best friend? Roku gives a stern warning to Sozin not to follow through with this idea, but was that the best that he could do? Maybe at that point, sure, since it was just an idea vocalized. I feel, though, that Roku is truly put to the test years later, when he discovers that Sozin has invaded an Earth Kingdom city. (Was that Ba Sing Se? Or another one?) Angered that his best friend has done something so unwise, he confronts the now-Fire Lord and orders that the expansion of the Fire Nation end immediately. It’s never outright stated in the episode, but I could sense a tone of heartbreak in Roku’s voice here. I can’t imagine the sense of betrayal one must feel when your best friend conquers a nation against your advice. I’m sure a lot of us have experienced betrayal of a friend, but this is almost on a spiritual level for Roku. So I get that when Sozin attacks Roku with a wall of fire, Roku only goes so far in retaliation. (I will admit how awe-inspiring it was to see Roku go into a completely controlled Avatar State. I can’t wait until Aang is able to do the same thing.) Sozin chooses to spare his friend’s life because of the past they shared, and it becomes clear now how, in one sense, Sozin was not living up to his duty as the Avatar. Shouldn’t he have stepped in to keep the balance of the world?

I must admit that I don’t know what sort of ethics the Avatar is supposed to operate under, and whether violence of assassination (what else should I call it???) is sanctioned if a person threatens to upset the balance. But surely, it was a mistake to not prevent Sozin from further expanding the Fire Nation, and we understand that now. (Um…what did Roku do for twenty-five years that did not involve going after Sozin??? That seems like a long time to just….hang out in your house???)

The irony of this all is played out at the end of the tale between these two powers. Aang had traveled to Roku Island to enter the Spirit World so Roku could share with him the history he’d never told Aang. Toph had claimed that there was an entire city covered in ash below the ground, and we learn that it is from the last meeting between Roku and Sozin. I thought that we would learn that Sozin had purposely started the volcano to get retribution for the destruction of the Fire Lord’s palace, but that would have been far too easy of a characterization. Instead, a completely natural volcano threatens to kill everyone on Roku Island and Roku does his best to use all four elements to stop it and save his people.

It’s when the volcano threatens to take Roku’s life that Sozin, who’d felt the tremors a hundred miles away, came to the aid of his old friend. Would we see reconciliation? Would Roku do something that inevitably inspires the Fire Lord to continue his quest for power?

Nope. As the two appear to actually control the volcano, Roku collapses from a blast of toxic gas. His hand outstretched, Roku begs his friend to spare his life now. But Sozin tells his old friend that he has plans for the future, and though it’s left unsaid, we now know the second half of that line: Those plans do not involve a living Avatar. Sozin betrayed his best friend and left him to die. Roku realized that he had let his friendship get in the way of what he wad bound to do, and this is how he passed his mistakes on to the next Avatar, who we see born just moments later.

The exact same story means two very different things for our current players in this global war. For Aang, not only is a testament to the power of friendship, but it shows that it’s wrong to believe that all Fire Nation citizens posses only the capacity for destruction and terror. In a way, season three has shown us this, that there’s no homogenized, easily-categorizable culture that these people belong to. More important, though, is that redemption is always a possibility; people deserve a chance to redeem themselves, or what good is all the struggle?

I can’t help but think that this is all about Zuko, and I’m more comfortable than ever in guessing that Zuko is going to face his final moral crossroads. He goes to confront his uncle, claiming to know it was him who sent him on this waste of a mission to discover how his great-grandfather died. The entire time, I of course believed that Roku was Aang’s spiritual metaphor, and Sozin was meant to represent Zuko’s journey.

That’s when Uncle Iroh finally speaks to his nephew, correcting him: Zuko looked at the wrong great-grandfather. His mother’s grandfather? AVATAR ROKU.

If it was ever clear that Aang and Zuko were eternally intertwined, here it is. Linked in the spirit world by a common bond, it’s now up to Zuko to figure out what he needs to do. Iroh speaks to him and uses a very specific phrase: restoring balance. It’s not lost on me that this is a very Avatar-specific terminology to appear in this conversation. It’s

an explanation for Zuko’s spiritual turmoil and Iroh’s always known this. Zuko is at war with the Fire Lord in his mind and the Avatar in his heart.

Please, Zuko, PLEASE CHOOSE YOUR HEART.

THOUGHTS

• OH MY GOD Aang’s pooping stance SOMEONE SHOULD INSTALL BATHROOMS IN THE SPIRIT WORLD.
• Seriously, how did Aang never think of air surfing?
• Gyatso looked SO MUCH like Aang when he was a kid.
• Bitter work! I love tiny throwbacks to past episodes.