Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of Avatar: The Last Airbender. This week’s episode is named “Masks,” and this might be the best one yet, so let’s dive right in!
1. Let’s Meet the Mythic Avatar Roku
Aang arrives at Roku’s temple and is confronted by the Fire Sages, who long ago stopped being interested in the succession of the avatars, and are now loyal to the Fire Lord Ozai. Only one remains faithful to the Avatar, and he is the one who helps the kid enter the chamber.
When Aang meets Roku, we have the revelation that he is a nice, joking old man much like Uncle Iroh, who lets Aang know that all avatars are different, although they maintain the same spark; while Kyoshi is interested in being a warrior, Roku prefers diplomacy, but he does warns Aang that when this doesn’t work, the consequences can be worse, and like Kiyoshi, he believes that the path of the Avatar is full of sacrifices, even of friendship, if necessary.
This is a breath of fresh air for Aang, after having sleepless nights due to Kyoshi’s war-friendly attitude, to learn there is another Avatar interested in an alternative: this focus on diplomacy lets him know that his pacifism might be a good path.
2. Aang Gets Captured
After he exits the chamber, he discovers every sage has been paralyzed by June’s shirshu, and he is captured by her. Now he is in Zuko’s hands, but not for long, because Commander Zhao has direct orders from Ozai (or is it Azula?) and takes the bounty with him.
Zhao is clearly ready to be showered in praise for capturing the avatar even though he didn’t do it. It is in these moments of bragging and vanity that the inept are shown to be at their worst, because while Zhao is trying to write the story of his glory, Aang humiliates him with a little bit of air bending, and the Blue Spirit humiliates him a lot more by breaking free the captive avatar.
3. The Blue Spirit
There’s a person with the mask of a blue demon or spirit, and we see his slow incursion into the Fire Nation’s stronghold while everybody is distracted by their upcoming celebration. He manages to easily enter into the chamber where Aang is captured and frees him, but escaping turns out to be a little bit more complicated than breaking-and-entering.
They are soon chased by the Fire Nation, who don’t want to kill the avatar, as that would mean that they would need to look for the newest reincarnation, and the Blue Spirit takes advantage of that by putting his swords to Aang’s neck. While they flee, an arrow hits the masked man and Aang discovers that it was Zuko all along. If he’s not capturing the Avatar, nobody’s going to do it.
4. The Burn Scar
Throughout the episode we see moments in Zuko’s past, starting with his eagerness to participate in his first war council. Discovering the deception of what they are willing to do, to sacrifice an entire team just to win a battle, he argues against the plan, which Ozai sees as an offense to himself, so he challenges his own son to Agne Kai.
Zuko comes close to defeating his father during the fight, but stops out of respect, which infuriates Ozai even more, there is no place for compassion in the Fire Nation, compassion to them means weakness, and he sees his own son as a burden.
That’s how Zuko got his punishment, he’s forbidden to return to the Fire Nation until he finds the Avatar, and if he’s so preoccupied by the fate of the 41st Division, he is taking them with him, meaning that Zuko’s sacrifice saved their lives.
5. Friends
Once Zuko awakens, Aang tells him about a kid from the Fire Nation that used to be his friend 100 years ago, and he wonders if the situation were different, would he and Zuko be friends? Of course, Zuko is made of anger and only manages to explode, as Aang flees.
At the end Aang returns to save Katara and Sokka, reuniting Team Avatar, and he even saves the villagers that were trapped in the spirit world. Aang returns to his friends, and Zuko returns to his ship, everything is as it was before, but now a seed is planted in the prince’s head: perhaps the path of Ozai is not the only path. A long time will pass until they are allies, but it all starts right in this episode.
And that’s it for this episode, as I said at the beginning, this was the best one so far, the backstory of Zuko helped so much to make you understand what made him, and where is he going. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 107, “The North.”
