Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of Avatar: The Last Airbender. This week’s episode is named “Spirited Away,” and I have to be clear here, it has no relation to Miyazaki’s magnum opus – just kidding, you probably already knew that, let’s dive right in!
1. Seeds for a New Forest
The episode begins right in the action with the kids fleeing from firebenders, and when they manage to fly out, they talk about their adventures off-camera, implying that some time has passed between the last episode and this one. Suddenly, they discover a plain, burnt part of the forest, and Aang can’t deal with that.
When they land, Aang mourns the loss of a piece of nature, and Katara tries to comfort him, arguing that after loss, life begins anew. Then, they discover a town of people from the Earth Kingdom understandably scared of visitors, having lost some of their townsfolk, and Team Avatar try to help recover them; after all, saving one life (or in this case, seven) means saving the world.
2. Azula is Broken
Back in the Fire Nation, Azula is heavily bootlicking Fire Lord Ozai and Commander Zhao, trying to gain the favor of her father. Then Ozai puts her in her place by making it clear that it was Zuko who found the Avatar, and that resilience and dedication, the values that the exiled kid is showing, are the ones that makes a king, not self-serving flattery.
This kind of breaks Azula; I mean, she clearly was broken way before this happened, but this seems to be the exact moment when she stops controlling herself, to the point of almost killing her trainer, and worrying her friends Mai and Tay Lee. I feel that after this, we will begin to see the adventures of Azula outside of the Fire Nation, on her mission to stop Zuko and kill Aang.
3. Into the Spirit World
There are bridges between the natural and spiritual worlds, and Aang can flow through them, especially in places where the bridges are shorter. Aang feels that the lost people traveled to the spiritual world and tries to also enter it, and in the process, manages to also bring both Katara and Sokka.
This is where we meet Wan Shi Tong, the Owl spirit of knowledge, which is a little weird because in the original series he has a Library, so I guess we won’t see it here, yet another example of the creative team showing us “checkpoints” instead of meaningful story development.
Anyway, the point is that he warns Aang that the humans (Sokka and Katara) are risking their lives by being inside of the spirit world, and that some creatures will not just try to eat them, but worse, like feeding from the true selves of the kids.
4. Fighting your Demons
And that’s exactly what happened, when they separated, Katara “returns” to her home in the southern tribe and relives the moment when the Fire Nation attacked looking for a waterbender; we see her trying to save her mother with her powers, only to fail and see her be killed.
We also see Sokka, who returns to the tribe to meet again with his father and other people, they congratulate him for succeeding on his mission to become a man, only to hear the adults talk behind his back that he is not prepared to lead, to have people’s lives in his hands.
5. Gyatso Waited for Aang
On the other hand, after meeting Koh the face stealer, Aang reunites with his old master Gyatso, who seems to really be him. He reveals that instead of going to the afterlife, he stayed to wait for Aang and their eventual reunion.
Gyatso warns that Aang’s friends are in danger, and that he needs to gain the favor of Koh, but in order to do so, he needs to know what Avatar Roku stole from the spirit, so Aang goes back to the natural world and flies directly into the Fire Nation, where the episode ends on a cliffhanger.
This episode was good, we saw a lot of Avatar mythology, and we learned something about every kid, preparing us for the season finale, which we are reaching very soon. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 106, “Masks.”
