Something that always bothered me when I first saw the Southern Raiders was how the episode seemed to go out of its way to show how Zuko is this character who is very cold, vengeful and unforgiving, as opposed to Aang, who is just this perfect saint of forgiveness. So recently I found out that Elizabeth Ehasz, who wrote the Southern Raiders, had to rewrite the episode multiple times to demonstrate that Zuko was a very toxic influence on Katara. The original episode had them showing just a bit “too much chemistry”. It was like a lightbulb went off for me. Immediately it made perfect sense of everything I had thought was weird when I first saw the episode.
Aang has always been a very merciful and forgiving person. But he was never so…preachy and trite about it. We see this when he chooses to spare Zuko’s life many times. During the Siege of the North, the characters are left with a choice to either leave him to die, or to take him with them. Sokka has no problem leaving him. He is an enemy who has tried to do them harm, so Sokka’s suggestion is not unreasonable. Aang doesn’t want to do this, but he never judges Sokka, or lectures him about the value of life. He simply decides to follow his heart. But he never displayed a tendency to push his beliefs onto others in a judgmental way. His attitude to Katara in TSR made him seem quite insensitive, which is pretty out of character; especially towards the girl he claims to love.
The same can be said of his preaching about forgiveness. We know Aang is not above having his anger get the best of him at times. We also know that Aang puts Katara on a pedestal, and does not like to see her display any negativity. Yet, her anger and reluctance to forgive Jet do not cause Aang to lecture her about forgiveness. Sure, Jet is someone Katara liked at one point, but Aang never seemed to be so petty as to treat Jet any differently than anyone else, just out of jealousy. In fact, Aang’s possessiveness toward Katara seemed to come about only in Book 3 as well (maybe that’s a post for another time). Suffice to say, I found Aang to be uncharacteristically moralistic in TSR. The episode seemed to sacrifice the nuance of Aang’s character for the purpose of beating you over the head with a black-and-white morality message about Aang being “good” and Zuko being “bad”. I didn’t like this because Avatar is usually so good with handling mature subject matter with shades of grey and leaving the audience to come to their own conclusions.
Which brings me to Zuko. I also found his sudden propensity for vengeance to be surprising. This kid has a lot of flaws, but I did not remember Zuko to be especially vengeful. He was devoted to his “duty” as a Fire Nation soldier and Prince to capture the Avatar, someone who his country has falsely made out to be an evil tyrant who started the 100 year war, yes. I am not saying that Zuko would not feel contempt for Yon Rha, or believe that he didn’t “deserve” Katara’s wrath. But I found his glibness and vocal support of revenge to be unusual, especially toward someone who had just recently forgiven him. The episode also seemed to suggest that Zuko was pushing Katara for revenge as well, something Bryke imply in the commentary on the DVD. So what’s going on here? Is Zuko really so vengeful?
This is Zuko after his Uncle tells him that his sister is “crazy and needs to go down.” The last two times Zuko saw Azula, she tried to murder him in cold blood, and then tried to murder his Uncle right in front of him. Yet Zuko, apparently so used to abuse, does not see this as a reason to hate his sister. In his family, such behavior is “normal”. He has a look of anguish on his face. In spite of it all, Zuko loves his sister and the thought of taking her out causes him a lot of pain. One could argue that Azula is his family and his feelings toward her are not representative of his views on revenge in general. Ok, so let’s get to another non-family member, then.
Here we have Zuko in his Agni Kai with Zhao. Zuko has been disrespected by Zhao and wants to prove himself against him. Throughout the fight, Zhao displays dangerous levels of force against Zuko. Zuko comes very close to losing, and is clearly triggered at one point, remembering the last time he fought an Agni Kai and suffered unimaginably. Yet Zuko is victorious. In Fire Nation imperial culture, strength is valued above all else, and Zuko would be expected to demonstrate his victory by burning Zhao. Zuko has been insulted by Zhao, and as a Prince, this is a great dishonor. As a Prince, Zuko would be expected to uphold the values of his culture and family, and burning Zhao would be seen as a sign of strength; as a man, as a soldier, and as a royal. Yet Zuko is unable to bring himself to do this, despite the fact that it would single him out as being labelled weak. He is simply unable to bring himself to enact that level of violence on another person; the same violence that he has suffered. Zhao showed Zuko no such consideration. He is a man who was visibly happy when Zuko received his scar, after all. This is not a man that Zuko has any type of bond with.
But that’s not even all. Later in the series, Zhao hires pirates to assassinate Zuko, and he nearly succeeds. Zuko barely survives to confront Zhao. They fight and Zhao makes every attempt at finishing the job the pirates failed at, before Zhao is grabbed by the Ocean Spirit. As he is being dragged away to a guaranteed death, Zuko responds. Even after trying to murder him, Zuko is moved with pity and reaches out his hand in an attempt to save Zhao. Clearly the actions of a very vengeful person, wouldn’t you say? I’m sure Zuko just wanted to finish Zhao off himself. Yep.
Has anyone else tried to kill Zuko? Oh yeah, there was. When Jet discovered “Lee” and his Uncle were firebenders, he attacked in a very vicious way that could have easily killed him. When Jet is finally taken away by the Dai Li, we would expect Zuko to be very happy, right? Well, here is his reaction. He and his Unlce aren’t celebrating. They look rather solemn, they entire ordeal being sad and unfortunate. So we see that Zuko is not particularly vengeful when people harm him. I suppose some would argue that his attitude is more tied to his mother. Sure, Zuko being harmed is one thing, but his mother? Surely that’s why he’s so vengeful, right? He wanted to live out his revenge for his mother through Katara, right?
Well, Zuko does actually get to confront the person who took his mother away. Zuko learns everything. His own father was not only was responsible for his mother’s disappearance, he planned to have him killed as a little boy. A little boy who wanted nothing more than to get his father’s approval and love. His immediate reaction to hearing this news? Not rage or violence. He is overcome with emotion that his mother may be alive, and that her loss was a result of her love for him. Zuko’s father is helpless during the eclipse. Zuko probably could have taken him out in the little time left, if he wanted to. But he does not. He only redirects the lightning in self-defense after Ozai attempts to kill him.
So yeah, I find it insulting to Katara, Aang and Zuko’s characters how TSR played out due to Bryke insisting that Aang be the “angel” for Katara and Zuko be “the devil”. They obviously wanted this to be a Kataang episode, where Aang’s statements to Katara stopped her from “going astray”. It reduces Katara’s agency to come to terms with her pain with her own morality. It’s funny how Zuko’s supposed propensity for vengeance conveniently shows up only when he and Katara may have bonded, making him seem like a huge jerk and a totally horrible love interest, right Bryke? And it backfired and made Aang look like even less of a good match for Katara than before. Not to mention seriously lacking in empathy. I would have loved to see the original script for the episode that Elizabeth Ehasz wrote. Even so, I see shades of the original intent even in the final version, and applaud her fantastic writing, as usual.
so I’ve left this post elsetab for a while because I have Thoughts on the matter but always seem to feel that I am tired and not at a good brain time to word good it right. But I have reached a level of tired where I have stopped worrying about word gooding it.
I don’t actually know what Bryke intended to get across with this episode, but I can tell you the way that I’ve always interpreted it.
See, it’s not a matter of “forgive those who have done you wrong” vs “destroy those who have done you wrong”. What it comes down to, ultimately, is that Aang is viewing things from an entirely different perspective than Zuko and Katara.
Aang learns that the Air Nomads have been wiped out in a fairly impersonal way – he was away when it happened, he associates no names or faces with their deaths, and Monk Gyatsu apparently took out a decent number of them when he went out so there’s the off chance that the most personal death avenged itself before he got there. Also it was nearly a century ago so there’s a decent chance that all those directly involved are already dead at this point. So, relatively easy to be zen about.
Zuko? His own father – okay you know Zuko’s backstory. This shit is intensely personal and most certainly has a face. And when the time comes, Zuko faces his father. He overcomes a ton of shit to say he is powerful and worthy of respect and his dad’s a shithead for not seeing it. That he CAN kill the bastard but chooses not to. Then he is able to let go of his hatred enough that it doesn’t weigh on him. It’s like. Instead of hauling a set of emotional baggage everywhere he goes, he checks it somewhere. The baggage isn’t gone but it’s not a burden.
… I admit that it has been a while since I saw this ep so there’s the off chance it’s one of those things where my brain rewrote a scene to be more satisfying.
so anyway. We get to Katara. She saw her mother’s killer; she has a name and a face burned into her mind, the one who killed her mother. Again, hella personal, dude is still alive and kicking, hard to let go when, hell, you don’t know if the guy still plans to take out any waterbender he finds.
Zuko knows that sometimes you need to face your demons to dismiss them instead of staying in your office and mailing them a pink slip. So he helps Katara locate his desk to fire him in person.
I don’t know if that metaphor works my fingers are making clicky noises on the keys.
So Katara faces down the waste of a uniform who killed her mom and tells him that he sucks and failed at his job and she COULD TOTALLY KILL HIM and would totally be justified in killing him. But she chooses not to, and he only lives by her will.
That is what she needed for closure, to frighten the boogeyman of her dreams. He’s not the imposing figure lurking over her; he’s a cowering weakling. It wouldn’t have been possible for her to forgive him in the way Aang wanted.
dunno if this makes sense but they seriously thought this TONED DOWN the Zutara notes? pft, this is one of the shippiest episodes ever. What, did the original have them making out at the end?
The way Sokka and Aang look in legend of korra has always bothered me and I just realized it’s because they weren’t drawn with their wide noses :(
It’s been 5 months and I was thinkin about this again
like,, it’s not perfect but they look a little bit more like themselves when they don’t have white-people noses
bringing this back since atla is getting popular again and I’m already seeing lots of people drawing the characters with skinny little white people noses
also I went back and re-edited Aang’s stupid beard off and fixed his jawline among other things
i hate kuvira with every fiber of my being but i think it’s insidious as hell of bryke to make the one woman fighting for land to be given back to the earth kingdom a fascist.
they do this with people who fight against the status quo, like jet, hama, the red lotus, amon. even though i think the equalist movement is more analogous to people in power getting cranky at marginalized people being given equality, it wasn’t a mistake for their names to be “equalists”.
like they’re saying “hold up! we can’t have them making Complete points so let’s… (checks notes) have them hurt innocents and graphically suffocate a woman! we’re geniuses!” even though at the same time the unintentional message of atla s2 and korra s3 is how the police/dai li will uphold the upper echelons’ interests bc that’s who they serve (and at the same time that the police can’t be reformed).
