Avatar: The Last Airbender came out between 2005 and 2008, and yet here we are in 2020,
still amazed by it, still talking about it, still watching it.
So what makes this show good enough that so many people are still talking about it 12
years after it finished airing?
What makes The Last Airbender timeless?
There are a lot of possible answers to this, and the truth is that it’s probably a combination
of a million different factors, but I do think there’s one thing that stands out as the
main reason that The Last Airbender is such a timeless show.
And that’s the fact that it is a character-driven show, or more simply, it’s the characters.
It’s how well-rounded and well-developed the characters are, how they experience change,
how their emotions and actions drive the plot, how we relate to them, and how we grow attached
to them as a result.
Because when you think back on The Last Airbender, what do you remember the most?
What moments stand out to you?
Obviously there are the big plot things, like Aang fighting Ozai, but a lot of the other
moments stand out because of the emotion they were able to imprint on the viewer.
People are very good at remembering a feeling, much better than they are at remembering specific
details, so the emotional impact of a scene or a show as a whole can stick with a person
long past when they’ve forgotten the intricate details of the show itself.
I think that’s why The Last Airbender has stuck around with so many of us for so long,
and why we were drawn back to it when it made its return to Netflix.
I think the most obvious example of this, which I’ve talked about before in my videos
about Iroh and Zuko, is the scene where Zuko apologizes to Iroh, and Iroh immediately hugs
him and accepts his apology.
This scene doesn’t have much to do with the central plot of defeating Ozai, and it
has nothing to do with bending.
It’s just one person admitting to another that he was wrong, and apologizing.
But because we’ve been following their story for so long and we’ve seen the growth that
Zuko has gone through and we’ve seen how hard Iroh has worked to help Zuko, we’re
incredibly emotionally attached to this moment.
Because a story can have the coolest plot in the world, the coolest worldbuilding, and
the best fight scenes, but none of that matters if you don’t care about the characters.
Avatar certainly does have those other things: its worldbuilding is phenomenal, the plot
is clear and exciting, and the fight scenes are always fresh and creative.
But that stuff doesn’t make up the emotional core of the show.
The emotional core is the characters, their relationships to each other, and their growth.
Different genres of stories can come in and out of popularity depending on what’s happening
in the world, but stories about people and their connections to other people are always
going to resonate with us.
Because no matter what changes in the world, we’re always just people interacting with
other people, and stories that can capture that in an authentic way will always be able
to tug at our heart strings.
For an example of this, lets look at the final fight between Zuko and Azula.
This is a really good fight scene for dozens of reasons, but I think the most important one is the tone.
Most big fight scenes like this have kind of an epic tone about them.
Smaller fight scenes with lower stakes can have a more lighthearted, fun tone, but big
fights try to drum up the scale and importance of the battle.
Think about the fight between Aang and Ozai.
The music has a pace to it that keeps you on the edge of your seat, the explosions are
loud, and the stakes are as high as they could ever be.
The show is driving you to root for Aang while being stressed out about how he’s going to win.
But with Zuko and Azula, the tone is completely different.
Things get quiet. The music is slow and somber.
You hear the roar of the flames but none of their breathing or yelling.
The stakes in this fight aren’t necessarily end-of-the-world type stakes, but they somehow
feel just as, if not more, important because we’ve learned so much about Zuko and Azula.
They’re both abused children from the same family, though one of them was able to go
down a path of redemption, while the other was driven even further and further into a destructive path.
The tone in this fight is sad, which is unusual for this type of fight.
But it has to be sad, because it’s two siblings forced to fight each other because of their abusive father.
Even if Zuko wins, he’ll still be sad that he had to beat his sister.
There’s no real possible happy ending to this.
And as it turns out, once the fight is over and Azula is chained to the grates, Zuko and Katara aren’t happy.
They aren’t jumping up and down and celebrating. They’re sad.
They find it hard to even look at Azula.
It’s a victory in that they won, but emotionally, they’re still torn up about having to defeat Azula.
So that fight becomes elevated beyond a typical big-end-of-the-series battle because of the emotions involved.
That fight will now stick in your mind better because of that somber mood that’s attached to it.
The viewer might not be able to relate to shooting large columns of flames out of their
hands, but they can relate to two siblings being forced to clash because of their terrible father.
No matter how far fetched any story is, if it can be related back to our humanity, we
will really feel for it.
And that is only possible if the characters are relatable and have flaws and have aspects
of themselves that we can see in ourselves.
So in the end, the thing that makes this fight scene so memorable isn’t the beautiful colors
or next-level firebending, it’s the emotions we feel seeing these characters collide after
an entire series of watching them grow and learning about their backstory.
A character-driven story like this is able to cement this fight scene in your mind in
a way that any other story just couldn’t.
The core of this fight isn’t firebending, it’s the characters.
There’s one other moment that I think illustrates this point really well, and it’s this scene
with Sokka and Toph, where Toph is hanging on by her fingertips and Sokka is lying on
the edge of the airship without his boomerang or his sword.
On the surface, this is just another close-call with death for a couple members of Team Avatar.
I mean, over the course of the series, these characters almost die a bunch of times.
That in and of itself isn’t noteworthy.
And yet, this scene is far more emotional, because, of course, it’s the characters.
As I’m sure you’re aware, Toph is not known as a very emotional character.
Her whole thing is being tough and sturdy and strong.
She’s not great at talking about or showing her emotions.
But, particularly over Book 3, we slowly see her start to open up a little.
When Sokka leaves to go train in sword fighting, Toph gets close to admitting that she missed
him, and then later when Katara and Toph get in a fight, she offers up a bit more about
her emotions when talking to Sokka about why she was mad at Katara.
Toph is a pretty consistent character who doesn’t change a whole lot from when we
first meet her to when the show ends, but she still does definitely go through some
development, especially when it comes to her relationship with Sokka.
Early on, in addition to not talking about her emotions, she also refuses to accept help from anyone.
It causes her to butt heads with Katara, because Katara wants her to be a part of the group
and help out, whereas Toph wants to be her own self-sufficient unit.
They reach a resolution in that episode, but Toph continues to be a pretty stubbornly independent
character throughout most of the show.
But fast forward to the finale, and Toph is now putting a whole lot of trust in someone else, Sokka.
Toph launches herself, Sokka, and Suki up onto an airship where Toph is barely able to see.
I get the sense that she’s able to see inside the ship relatively well through metalbending,
but she seems to be a bit more lost up on the top of the airship, maybe because of the
material that it’s made of up there, maybe it’s a more purified metal or something.
But Toph is willing to run around up here, unable to see anything outside the ship, and
even bend the rudder of the ship to make it crash into the others because she trusts
Sokka to be there for her.
When she starts to run the wrong way on the roof of the airship, he pulls her back.
When debris that she can’t see is falling around them, he dives over her and protects her.
Toph is maybe *the* strongest character on Team Avatar, but in situations where she can’t
see through her earthbending, she needs to be able to put her trust in someone else.
There are even moments earlier in the series when this happens, like when Sokka ducks her
head when she can’t see the oar coming at her, or when he carries her when her feet are burned.
The evolution of their relationship is so amazing because it’s both Toph learning
to accept help when she needs it and Sokka learning to care for someone else, since Katara
mostly took over that role in their family.
So all of this culminates in Toph hanging onto Sokka’s fingertips, thousands of feet above the ground.
They’ve exhausted all their other options.
Appa isn’t around to catch them. Sokka’s leg is broken.
Toph can’t see anything except for Sokka, and Sokka says he thinks this is the end.
That’s when Toph cries, and honestly when I cried too watching this for the first time.
All of that development between their characters leads up to this absolutely heartbreaking
moment where they really think they’re going to die.
You know it’s real because Toph doesn’t just cry over anything, and after successfully
learning to accept help from Sokka, it would be horrible if that’s how things ended for them.
Thankfully, it doesn’t, and Suki saves them. But wow.
What an emotional moment, and one of the moments that stuck with me for so long after I first watched it.
It’s that kind of moment that makes Avatar strike such a human cord with people.
Just like with the Zuko and Azula fight, when you boil down this scene, it isn’t so much
about the firebenders or the airships or the space sword; it’s about Toph and Sokka and
the culmination of all their growth together.
All of that other stuff makes for a really entertaining and captivating backdrop, but
at its core, this is a story about people, about how they change and grow and rely on each other.
And that’s what gives it a strong emotional impact and what makes it a good story regardless
of what decade you’re watching it in.
There are so many other moments like this in The Last Airbender.
When Katara pulls Aang out of the Avatar state, that’s entirely about human emotions and
about learning to control your anger.
When Katara carries Aang away and Iroh helps them escape, only to let himself be captured
and then be unable to look at Zuko, that’s not about bending, that’s about believing
in someone and then being disappointed when they let you down.
When Iroh sings about his son, Lu Ten, it adds so much more to what we know about his
relationship with Zuko.
All of these scenes and so many others make Avatar what it really is: a story about flawed
people doing their best.
And nothing is more relatable than that.
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