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Hey brother.
Guys, I cannot tell you how much fun I'm having
diving deeper and deeper into the world of Avatar.
And today I'm excited.
We are talking about one of my favorite characters, Ty Lee.
You know, the charming, bubbly, prep school valley girl
who joined the circus and keeps talking about auras
and is best friends with the enemy.
We all have that friend, right?
Actually, even if you somehow do,
Ty Lee is still one of a kind
because she's actually seven of a kind?
At one point in the show,
she reveals she actually has six identical sisters,
which I have to say, it was a real testament to her parents.
I mean, I personally have three kids,
two of which are indeed identical twins.
And I gotta tell ya.
It's hard.
I'm not sleeping much, gang.
Seven identical, though, is downright impressive
and almost unbelievable
because it has actually, literally, never happened
on earth before.
There are cases of septuplets in the world,
but never seven identical.
So way to beat the odds, Ty Lee and family.
I applaud you.
But what is crazy
is that being one of seven identical septuplets
is not even the most impressive thing about her lineage.
The most impressive thing
is that she is totally an Air Nomad.
What?
(upbeat music)
♪Hey, brother. ♪
(screen swooshes)
Guys, before we dive on in,
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Okay, Ben, so one of the things
that has never really made sense to me
about the history of the hundred year war in Avatar
is the complete and utter success
of the Fire Nation's attack against the Air Nomads.
I mean, the show is called The Last Airbender.
The whole premise is built around the fact
that the Fire Nation wipes out
every other single member of the Air Nation.
And yes, it does have to mean all of them
because unlike the other three nations,
every single Air Nomad could airbend.
But like, there are just so many hurdles
they would have to overcome in order to accomplish this.
As we talked about last week,
just getting up the mountains to where they lived
would be a challenge.
Plus then you'd have to contend with the monks themselves.
Never mind the fact that the Air Nation
isn't like one single piece of land.
They are spread out all over the world
in the north, south, east, and west air temples,
meaning you would need at least four 100% successful,
coordinated assault on the air temples,
if you're gonna get all of them.
Surely, there was like some Yoda out there
who crawled through the duct work in one of these temples
and made it to the Dagobah's system, right?
Into exile, I must go.
Why? Why?
But okay. Odds against them, whatever.
I can still get on board with it.
Well, not on board with actually attacking them.
Just on board with the idea that they were successful.
Doing it was quite awful.
But Sozin's Comet did give their whole army
like, plus a hundred to fire power.
I think last week I said plus 10 to firepower.
Sozin's Comet has appeared in the air
and that gives like, all the firebenders
like, plus 10 to fire power.
Might've been underselling it a bit though.
It's more like, plus a hundred to the firepower.
But no.
The thing I really take issue with concerning
the Fire Nation's success
is that the Air Nomads were nomadic.
A nomad is one who wanders,
one who doesn't have a permanent resting place,
one who is just out in the world.
My personal head canon
is that they all had sky bison hindquarter stickers
that say, "not all who wander are lost."
Anyway, my point is even if most of the Air Nomads
were at the temples, when the Fire Nation attacked,
certainly some weren't...
I mean, as kids, they are all given a sky bison
as an animal companion.
And if Aang who's only 12 is any example to go off of,
they pretty immediately start traveling just everywhere.
Can you imagine giving your 12 year old
a flying animal and being like, "Have fun."
My mom wasn't even comfortable letting me drive
the minivan when I was 16.
I mean, if I'm being honest, she's,
she's still not cool with it.
But seriously, as Aang is traveling to the North Pole,
we learned he's already visited Kyoshi Island, Omashu,
he has friends in the Fire Nation,
he knows what penguin sledding is.
- Will you go penguin sledding with me?
- Uh, sure.
- I mean it's not hard to understand what it is,
but you have to know that you could do it.
And it's like a Water Tribe only thing,
so he must've been there.
There's just no way the Fire Nation got all of them
because there's no way all of them were there.
And you'd think once they got the heads up
that they were being hunted by the Fire Nation Army,
they're definitely gonna make it a lot harder to find them.
Certainly, someone evaded them. Right?
Well, yes.
It turns out the answer to this very question
and problem was finally resolved
in one of the Avatar comics, "Relics".
"Relics" takes place during book one
and features Aang being captured by Admiral Zhao,
who fills a cave with Air Nomad relics
to lure him into a trap.
And once he has captured Aang,
he reveals that Fire Lord Sozin used caves exactly like this
to lure in and trap Air Nomads
who had survived the initial attack.
Basically, the Air Nomads would find these caves,
think they were the caves of other survivors
and go in, at which point, they would become trapped
and then executed.
It's like, really, really mean trick.
But effective
to the point where by the time he dies,
Sozin at least believes the only airbender
he didn't get was the Avatar.
- [Sozin] I wasted the remainder of my life
searching in vain.
- But personally I disagree and I think the proof is Ty Lee.
Okay, so per the name of the show,
when Aang wakes up out of the iceberg,
there can be no doubt that he is indeed
the only airbender left alive.
But that does not mean
that zero Air Nomads survived Sozin's purge.
Like, say for example,
if even one Air Nomad,
and the odds of that seem pretty high,
was in Ba Sing Se when the Fire Nation attacked.
Well, guess what? I have news for you.
Hundred years later, Ba Sing Se has resisted invasion.
Actually silly me.
I'm not even sure what I'm talking about.
There is no war in Ba Sing Se.
(screen swooshes)
- There's no war in Ba Sing Se.
- Point being, it would be a great place to hide
as long as you never leave,
which already seems to be the custom in Ba Sing Se
during the war anyway.
Let's say you are such an Air Nomad
and you're stuck in Ba Sing Se and you settle down
with some non-bending Earth Nation citizen,
and three to four generations later,
the airbending is no longer present,
but there would still be a descendant alive
from the Air Nation.
And I don't really wanna get into how like,
bending and genetics all work together and stuff
because that could probably be its own entire video.
But obviously, something like that
would had to have happened
because we know Aang is the only airbender left
during the time of the show.
And you might be sitting at home like, "uh, J, okay.
That might be a pretty good example for an Air Nomad
who was in Ba Sing Se, but Ty Lee is from the Fire Nation.
I mean, she went to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls.
Certainly, if any Air Nomads survived,
it wasn't in the Fire Nation, right?"
Don't you worry, we will get to that.
But first, let's address
why I even think this is a possibility
and examine how very similar Ty Lee
is to the Air Nomads.
And on top of that,
how she stands out so much against her Fire Nation cohorts.
First is her overall appearance,
which normally I wouldn't put too much stock into,
but there are some things here that just really stand out.
Take, her hair, for example.
Now I don't want to get too technical here,
but it's brown, which might not seem like a huge deal.
Except, every other person
in the Fire Nation has black hair.
It's not a huge difference
and it doesn't have to point to anything,
but it could point to her ancestors marrying
outside of the Fire Nation.
As could her eyes.
Almost everyone in the fire nation has copper yellow
or reddish eyes, but not Ty Lee.
Her eyes are gray.
The same as, wait for it, Aang's.
You know Aang, right? The last airbender?
Probably you've heard of him?
And speaking of Aang, the two of them happened to share
some extremely similar facial structure.
Like, take this picture of Ty Lee.
You just take off the eyelashes, take off the hair,
add the arrow and boom, it's Aang.
Actually, fun fact.
This is a picture of Aang to begin with.
But the point is, if you were fooled for even a second?
Phew, 'nuff said.
Although, actually, don't go anywhere.
I do have, I do have more to say.
It's not just her looks.
Like take, for example, the circumstances
under which we meet Ty Lee,
where she is a member of the circus.
Which like, not for nothing,
but the circus is a nomadic lifestyle.
And yes, I know choosing a nomadic lifestyle
isn't like genetic or anything,
but it does kinda feel like a little hint
from the writers, doesn't it?
Ty Lee is also significantly more spiritual
than any other member of the Fire Nation that we meet.
- But even with all of that attention,
your aura is this dingy, pasty, gray-
- Well, okay. To be fair, Iroh.
But he's gotten exception
to a lot of Fire Nation rules himself.
But what I'm trying to get at is that spirituality
of almost any kind is just not really part
of a daily life in the Fire Nation.
So like, then from whom is she even learning all of this
chakra or a chi blocking stuff from then?
'Cause I gotta tell you,
it doesn't seem like the kinda thing
they would be teaching at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls.
No, I think the answer is that it pretty much
has to be being taught to her from her family,
which of course they would know
because such information would be passed down
from her Air Nomad ancestors.
Unlike the present day Fire Nation,
the Air Nomads of the past were extremely spiritual,
like way more so than any of the other three nations.
But that still leaves us with the problem
of how could her ancestors have survived
living in the Fire Nation at all.
And I think the answer lies in where she went to school.
You know, the Royal Fire Academy for Girls.
Consider Ty Lee's two best friends, Mai and Azula.
Mai's father is the governor of a city.
And Azula is literally the heir to the throne
of the entire Fire Nation.
Like, whatever school these girls went to
is absolutely for the elite of the Fire Nation.
That suggests that Ty Lee's parents or her ancestors
probably shared a pretty similar status,
which might have helped them avoid suspicion
of harboring Air Nation refugees.
Like, if you're Sozin, probably the last group of people
you were expecting to harbor Air Nation refugees
are the high ranking officials in your army
who were hunting down those exact people.
So based on her appearance, her general light footed-ness
and her knowledge of things that other people
in the Fire Nation just seem to be unaware of,
my guess is that her ancestors
managed to not be at one of the air temples
when the Fire Nation attacked.
And were then offered refuge
by some high ranking military officer in the Fire Nation.
With whom, they then started a family with
and eventually produced Ty Lee
and her six sisters.
Fun fact about the sisters.
Ty Lee hates being part of a match set,
which is why she tries to like, differentiate herself.
But then she ends the show joining the Kyoshi warriors,
who all dress the same.
Anyway, but they can take the costumes off.
So she's like, sort of both. Isn't that cool?
But guys, what do you think?
Is Ty Lee indeed an Air Nomad?
Let me know your thoughts in the towel section down below.
Thanks so much as always for watching today's video.
Please remember to leave a like on it,
if you haven't already.
And subscribe,
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If you want to see why the Fire Nation
killed off all the dragons,
you can check out this video right here,
but Ben, until next time.
I will see you in another life, brother.