Avatar: The Last Airbender: "Sozin's Comet"

(This is the 25th and final installment of my weekly recaps of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Nickelodeon animated series that ran from 2005 to 2008 to much critical acclaim. I’ve never seen it! These recaps are only available to paid subscribers.)

• “Chapter Eighteen: Sozin's Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King” (originally aired July 19, 2008)
• “Chapter Nineteen: Sozin's Comet, Part 2: The Old Masters” (originally aired July 19, 2008)
• “Chapter Twenty: Sozin's Comet, Part 3: Into the Inferno” (originally aired July 19, 2008)
• “Chapter Twenty-One: Sozin's Comet, Part 4: Avatar Aang” (originally aired July 19, 2008)

There's a construction I used to break out all the time back in my A.V. Club days: "This is a great finale to a different season than the one we just watched." A season or series finale is often an amazing way for viewers to find out what story the showrunners thought they were telling, even as viewers say to themselves, "Oh, I thought something else was going on all along."

The thing about a fantastic finale, even one that doesn't quite match up to everything that led up to it, is that it will stick in the memory more than a below average episode from the middle of the season. You'll always remember pyrotechnics and big ending beats before you remember, like, a weird character choice or a story decision that didn't make a ton of sense but ultimately didn't lead anywhere important.

I realize it sounds like I'm about to say "Sozin's Comet" is a great finale, just not to Avatar: The Last Airbender, and... not quite. This four-parter is a great finale, and it's a great finale to the story we've more or less just seen. What it is, instead, is a finale that completely misses how much the show it's capping off has grown beyond the conflicts it's resolving. It is, in a weird way, a much, much, much, much, (much) better version of the How I Met Your Mother finale, which felt obligated to play out an endgame it had dreamed up way back in season two, even though the show had moved far beyond that endgame making any sense at all.

Boo! Hiss! I can hear you calling for my head! But come now! Hear me out!

The biggest problem with Avatar as a series is its titular character. As protagonists go, Aang is more or less adequate, but his journey throughout the series is almost entirely external. He starts the series having to learn waterbending, earthbending, and firebending, and then he progresses through the series along that basic trajectory. Along the way, he makes friends who help him learn those skills. He also meets a few other compatriots who help him learn the mysteries of friendship or whatever.

The thing about that arc is that it would make for a perfectly enjoyable coming-of-age story. I can think of plenty of other stories with that basic narrative spine that I have enjoyed. But what happened to Avatar is that all of the characters around Aang took on an emotional heft that he himself lacked. Aang was still starring in a show about an immature hero coming of age; his friends increasingly starred in a show about a group of teenagers navigating the complicated emotional realities of growing up in a dystopia being born.

To some degree, this disparity is just baked into the ages of the kids. Aang is 12, and he's still just young enough to think the world will play by certain rules when it comes to him. The other characters are all older, and their adventures tend to underline that the rules of the world are malleable and too often bend themselves to the will of evil men, simply because those evil men are the most persistent at trying to hammer away at the rules.

When Katara and Aang get together at the end of the show, it feels jarring not just because the two haven't had a single conversation in the entire 90-plus-minute finale and not just because she's a fair bit older than him. No, it feels jarring because the two of them are effectively starring in two different TV shows with completely separate sets of emotional stakes.

But I'm not sure the "this show is about a kid and his teen friends" argument works, not completely. For instance, Stranger Things is a show that does a pretty good job of balancing kid emotional stakes against teen emotional stakes, and it does this by very, very carefully cross-pollinating those two worlds for maximum impact. Due to its travelogue nature, Avatar simply couldn't do this, but the real failure on the show's part was its unwillingness to really push Aang off his game in the midst of his predetermined arc.

The second half-hour of "Sozin's Comet" is taken up with Aang's pacifist nature causing him to want to find a way to defeat Ozai without killing him. In the audience, we likely suspect that he will figure this out, because there's a reason we're hearing a story about Aang and not some other Avatar. (He does figure out a different way.) But as I watched the scenes where Aang argued with past Avatars about how there had to be some other way, I found myself once again bumping up against an issue I confront every time the show asks me to take the emotional life of Aang seriously: I don't really buy his emotional life all that much.

By this I mean that I buy that Aang is a pacifist, because the show keeps telling me he is and because he does his best not to harm others. But his pacifism simply is. It hasn't changed or evolved or come to define his character in the way that building so much of the final around it would seem to suggest. When the show needs to remind us Aang is a pacifist, it does so, and then it sets that aside when it needs him to be a goofy kid again. And tonally, that clashes with the journeys of Katara or Zuko, both of whom have rather rich, complicated character arcs that lead them on full emotional journeys.

If this sounds like I didn't like the show or the finale, that's not true. I loved "Sozin's Comet," and I think Avatar overall is a terrific TV show. But every time I would start to fall under its spell, I would be thrown off-balance by one story decision or another, and then it took a while for the show's rhythms to grab me again. The closest the show came to working for me consistently was across the final half of season three, but the first half of season three was lumpy and a bit misshapen (albeit with some really great episodes in there). The show's status as one of the best of all time among many TV fans made me hope I would get on board that train as well, and I just didn't. I like it a lot. I didn't get all the way to loving it.

But it's also hard to watch "Sozin's Comet" and deny that this is a visually inventive, daringly conceived series with some top-notch action. The finale is so good that I kept realizing there were elements that just didn't quite get there for me. And that's what brings me back to the idea that the show itself had outgrown the finale meant to cap it off.

My suspicion is that Avatar would have been well-served by a slightly longer run, either with a full additional season (likely coming after season two, with the season three we have now more or less becoming season four) or with a 30-episode season three order that was then split into 15 and 15. When I point out the things that just didn't mesh for me in "Sozin's Comet," I think you'll see what I mean. Let's look at them, in order of how much they bugged me, from most to least.

Katara and Aang get together

Gross.

Azula's ending

Look, I didn't expect the Fire Nation to literally become the Targaryens, okay? And yet here we are.

There is this unfortunate trope in genre storytelling where the guys who tell these stories too often lean on the idea of a woman who gains power and becomes mad with it, but the men who perpetuate that trope too rarely think about just why women might be justified in losing it after gaining power.

So it goes with Azula, who is about to become Fire Lord and then just... kind of... loses it. You can see the little hallmarks of where the show was supposed to be building to her final break, so it's not like it's completely without foreshadowing. But an Azula who just loses her mind is pretty uninteresting compared to, say, an Azula who is seeing everything slipping away from her and decides to strike out at her brother, the person who's always stood in her way.

All I'm saying is that if the show wanted to do a "crazy Azula" turn in the finale, then it needed to do the due diligence of giving her at least a couple of episodes to underline who she was as a person beyond "Zuko's bitchy sister." I love Azula. She might be my favorite character on the whole show. I wish the finale had done better by her.

Katara and Zuko don't get together

Don't get me wrong: I do not actually care if these characters get together. But it is baffling that the show features both of them saving the other's life, then tenderly caring for each other without making that a romantic payoff. It feels, for all the world, like it was meant to be one, then reconfigured at the last possible moment.

Zuko getting back with Mai is honestly really sweet, and I like it a lot. If Katara didn't get together with Aang and if the show just played off the Katara/Zuko moments as a lifelong friendship being solidified, I'd get it. But the show so clearly is feinting at something more here, and it's just baffling that it didn't bother to even pretend to follow through.

Fire Lord Ozai is just kind of a pain

I do not know why Azula wasn't this show's final Big Bad. We know so little about Ozai, other than that he's a bad dad and a tremendously powerful firebender. And, yes, the action sequence when he and Aang fight is truly epic and breathtaking in its scope. The show spent a ton of money on this finale, and it shows. But it's hard to get too invested when Aang is just kind of beating up a guy whose whole deal is "I guess we need an Emperor Palpatine? Maybe we could get Mark Hamill to voice him?"

(My quick and dirty pitch for how I might have approached this: Build Ozai up as the worst of the worst, then have Aang accidentally kill him in "Day of Black Sun." Aang, stricken, worries he's abandoned his personal code. Azula, furious, becomes the new Fire Lord and vows to bring down her brother and the Avatar. The season plays out roughly the same, but then in the finale, Aang dies in a fight with Azula. He fucks off to the spirit realm, while Zuko faces off with his sister. Just as Azula is about to kill Zuko, Katara stops her, similarly to what happens in the episode. And then, when she's about to kill Azula, Aang returns to life and reveals he can do energybending now. He strips Azula of her powers, and we set up Azula Goes to School, a spinoff written and showrun by Emily VanDerWerff. Also, Zuko and Katara get together instead.)

(My pitch kinda replicates what happens in the season two finale, but I don't care. That's a better structure for a series finale.)

Bring Mai and Ty Lee back in for God's sake

It is really wild how the show introduced these two as if they were a big deal back in season two, then seemed to mostly lose interest in them. At the very least, Mai and Ty Lee facing off with Azula could have been a fun early action sequence in the first half of the finale, which drags a bit with "Aang needs to consult the Avatars" nonsense when it could be better building to the big Azula turn. I don't need Mai and Ty Lee to make this finale even better, but having them there probably would have shored up the single worst storytelling decision of the whole thing, simply because we already know them most via proximity to Azula.

Wait, I loved this finale. Let me convince you of that.

Okay, okay, okay. Enough complaining. Enough whining. Enough griping. There's some truly amazing stuff in this finale, so I'm going to outline 21 things that either made me grin or made me enthralled by this show's ability to do big, impossible things.

1. It just looks so cool. I don't even know a better way to articulate this. The finale clearly got a large budget, and it used every dollar effectively. The red-hued color palette of comet day is particularly effective.
2. Aang's deus ex machina is actually really effective. Yeah, it feels a bit like God descended to say, "Okay, let's do this instead," but it works in this show, because you kind of buy that Aang has just ascended to godhood when he abruptly strips Ozai of his powers.
3. Old people all know each other and are just naturally good at doing amazing things. The series bringing back mentor characters for the core cast members is a nice way to nod to the show's larger world, and the stuff in Ba Sing Se is consistently exciting.
4. The finale doesn't really forget anything (except maybe Bosco). Basically all of the major characters get a moment to shine, and the show follows up on things like the state of Ba Sing Se fairly effortlessly.
5. June is back! I'm really glad the show brought back a character I liked just because she looked so cool to continue looking cool. I almost didn't mind that the characters could just warp all over reality, because I assumed June was helping them.
6. The lion turtle is great. I watched this and The White Lotus finale within a few hours of each other, and they both featured moments of epiphany based around a sea turtle, so think about that.
7. Beach party!! The segment on the beach that opens the first episode is kind of unnecessary from a plotting standpoint, but it's really nifty in terms of cementing the characters' bonds.
8. Sokka and Suki have a really sweet love story. The show doesn't belabor that they're a couple, but even in the midst of the war for all reality, they're so clearly just constantly sneaking off to make out. I love this for them. (I also like when Suki is taken with Sokka's obviously awful sand replica of her. The heart wants what it wants!)
9. The Zuko/Azula/Katara showdown. This might be the best action sequence in the series, which is saying something. Watching Katara finally be the one to dispatch Azula is supremely satisfying, and having Zuko sacrifice himself to save Katara is wrenching.
10. Ozai is pretty rad from a design perspective. The whole bit where he just hangs out at the front of an airship, looking imposing, it just really works for me. Also, he calls himself "The Phoenix King." Swipe right, am I right, people attracted to autocrats?? (Also: I loved the flashback to the big meeting that caused Zuko to lose his faith, which we never got to see. I assumed we never would!)
11. All of the old avatars basically think Aang has to betray his moral code. This episode does a great job of hinting at the idea that Aang might have to kill somebody, which makes it so much more satisfying when he doesn't. (I also like how they all basically introduce themselves as though they're OK Cupid profiles.)
12. The airship action sequences, particularly when Suki saves Sokka and Toph. The show doesn't always get to do big, pulpy sequences, so it goes all out in this episode. It works.
13. The score. Rather than the kinda stilted music the rest of the series uses, these episodes have a full, sweeping sound. It's frequently tremendous.
14. Zuko and Iroh's reunion. Losing the acting talents of Mako definitely hurt the character of Iroh, since the show contrived ways to have him speak as little as possible in the final season. But that choice made by necessity led to perhaps the most touching moment in the whole dang finale. I was misty, friends! Misty!
15. The epilogue (minus the very last bit). Catching up with all of the characters a while after the events of the finale is a very smart call, and the tiny little snippets we get of everybody's lives after their participation in a war for all reality are perfectly chosen.
16. Appa! I don't really have a particular moment to shout out here, but Appa is my big beasty boy, and I'm really glad that he got to do some cool stuff in the finale. (Cannot believe I can't buy a stuffed Appa.)
17. Zuko and Aang's final moment before Zuko's coronation nods to "The Avatar and the Fire Lord" without making a big deal of it. Narrative symmetry!
18. I actually liked that Hakoda was mostly there to tell his kids they did a good job. Thanks, Dad!
19. The destruction scenes are truly apocalyptic in nature and scope. Watching enormous walls of flame burn the Earth Kingdom has a kind of scale that American animated television rarely approaches.
20. Nobody actually ate Momo, even though many had opportunity to do so. Grudgingly, I've come to like the little guy.
21. The shot where Aang does an energybending is truly impressive stuff. Just from a visual design perspective, I'm so happy that Aang invented prog rock album covers.

One last power ranking for the road

We're basically done here, but here are my 10 top friends from Avatar: The Last Airbender. They are all my friends, and I will be friends with them every day.

First of all: I did not rank Appa. It is not fair to rank Appa against the humans. He will win every time. This also goes for Bosco and that one eel I got really excited about that one time.

1. Katara: I'm honestly as surprised as anyone by this, but the evolution of Katara in the final season really cemented her as a character I love, even if she has questionable taste in OTPs.
2. Zuko: The best character arc in the series, hands down.
3. Azula: Points off for a deeply unsatisfying resolution, but of the characters in this show that I would like to play in a tabletop RPG campaign, she's at the top. (If anybody wants to spin up an Avatar: Legends game with me playing an Azula trying to make amends for her evil ways, I'm there.)
4. Sokka: I don't quite understand it either, but he just became a really fun, reliable character. He's like the ideal version of a Xander, you know?
5. Suki: By a hair. Her design is just really cool, and I like that she's always throwing herself into harm's way for her friends.
6. Toph: She could be a little one-note, but in her best moments, she was the burst of energy the core cast needed most.
7. Iroh: What a nice old man! I hope he gets to run his tea shop forever!
8. Ty Lee: I wish the show had done more with her. As an inveterate girly girl who wishes she could join the circus, Ty Lee should have been my girl. Instead, I mostly loved her potential!
9. Mai: The minor character best served by the third season. She's just a really dependable girl, and I think I'd watch a show where she and Zuko solve mysteries together.
10. Aang: I liked him! I swear! He's a fun protagonist and also one of the less interesting characters on his own show. Nothing wrong with that, though, when so many of the characters above him are so, so, so good.

And that's a wrap on Avatar: The Last Airbender. I didn't ever love this show as much as I wanted to, but I loved thinking about it a whole, whole lot, and every time I recount the events of the plot to friends, I realize how much I enjoy them on a raw "and then this happened" level. I suspect this will wear well in my memory.

But Emily? Are you going to watch The Legend of Korra? Sometime! I'm a little burnt out on this universe for the moment, but I promise I will someday. Until then...

Next week: We're going to start running through Fleabag, a journey that will take us just six weeks of pleasurable fun! They'll be a little more traditional "episode by episode" recaps, so look forward to that.

And after that: Prrrrobably Cowboy Bebop, but I'm not completely settled on a show yet. Suggest your favorites in comments, keeping in mind that I won't do Korra until at least 2022.