Hello, friends, and welcome back to weekly reviews of Avatar! Picking up from last year, I’ll be covering season 2 for this year’s Multiversity Summer TV Binge. For those just joining us, writing those reviews of season one reaffirmed Avatar’s place as my favorite TV show. On top of that, the second season is my favorite, AND we’ll be getting a blu-ray in a few weeks, meaning we can finally watch the episodes in HD! (For those unaware, the quality of the DVDs for the first half of the show had some terrible interlacing and ghosting issues in addition to the SD quality, and that was the best version of the show in existence until a few months ago). All told, this year’s reviews are going to be a ride.
So let’s jump into “The Avatar State!”
1. Serialized ensemble storytelling.
With the new season, the show immediately jumps forward with a number of new elements: new character designs, new locations, and a new storytelling structure.
In the first season, it was rare for a subplot to not converge with the main plot by the climax and be subsequently resolved. Each episode was a complete nugget with only its characters, rarely the actual narratives, being continued into future episodes. Here, however, we are presented with two completely separate stories: one following Aang and his friends, and one following the Fire Nation characters, which itself is composed of two intersecting plots (one with Iroh/Zuko, the other with Azula).
The stories take place in the same world, and they reach simultaneous peaks and troughs as the scenes cut between each other. We ultimately get two complete stories that happened alongside one another. But they never explicitly, diegetically intersect. Clearly these are setting up larger confrontations to come, meaning the writers are already showing a willingness to play the long game with this season’s character work and plot development.
2. “Do the tides command this ship?”
Azula gets her first proper scenes here, and they completely steal the episode. While we don’t learn too much about her aside from her relationship to her family, we get an immediately fully realized view of her characterization. Everything about her screams cunning and manipulative, from the obvious, like the measured, stabbing interrogations that are her dialogue, to the less obvious, like the clear mixture of round and pointed edges in her design. Her firebending forms are also slightly different from Zuko’s due to her preference for lightning, meaning her physical movements are much more direct and exacting with all the same power of normal firebending.
Grey DeLisle’s (now Grey Griffin) performance may be my favorite voice acting performance of all time, going a long way towards making Azula’s terrifying speeches into something both human and monstrous, a kettle constantly on the verge of hissing. And oh my god, that music. Azula’s theme evokes feelings of diabolical mystery, careful calculation, and all-encompassing feminine power.
Azula, you already have my heart.
3. “I’m already one hundred years late.”
With the events of “The Siege of the North” fresh in his mind, Aang’s sense of power and responsibility gets a new perspective. His goal, to take down the Fire Lord before Sozin’s Comet arrives, gains a new sense of urgency now that he’s seen the Fire Nation’s military capabilities. He’s still young, he’s still going to maintain his optimistic outlook, he’s still going to have fun when he can. But he also understands his role in the world now, and with that comes a new sense of focus which will carry us from episode to episode much smoother than in the more episodic season one.
4. Thanks, Dad.
Don’t you love it when Roku, Aang’s past reincarnation and essentially his spirit-daddy, pops in to give us some important piece of exposition? I can excuse the ridiculousness of it, though, because the show has set him up as a spiritual guide for Aang. With his information taking that form, with it rarely being immediately relevant, and with Roku only showing up in situations where it makes sense — here, when Aang enters the Avatar state and unlocks his ancestors’ power, and in the past, when he entered the spirit world — we can accept the information without questioning its delivery. It’s an interesting storytelling device that works well only because of the way it’s been set up and utilized thus far.
Oh, and it’s good to know the entire line of Avatars will die if Aang is killed while in the Avatar state. A Chekhov’s Avatar Power, if you will.
Thanks, Dad.
5. Dejected prince, dejected again.
As if his father’s abuse that we learned about in season one wasn’t enough, Zuko feels the joy of being welcomed back home only to be crushed to find out he was wanted back solely as a prisoner. Like moth to flame, he always falls for the false love of his father only to be dejected again and again.
In a subtle moment midway through the episode, Iroh looks sad after Zuko yells at him for being a “lazy, mistrustful, shallow old man who’s always been jealous of his brother.” On the surface, it seems that he’s hurt by Zuko’s words. But Iroh is too at peace with himself to be upset by that. The real reason he’s upset, I think, is because of Zuko’s lack of perspective and dejection of him. And that’s the perfect encapsulation of their tragic relationship, throughout the series and especially throughout this season: Iroh loves Zuko as a son, but Zuko can’t get out of the shadow of his own abusive father enough to accept Iroh’s love. Dejection all around.
This, combined with where the episode leaves them, alone and on the run, gives us a great starting place to finally try and mend that relationship.
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What did you think of the episode? Happy with the new story structure? Do you love Azula? Hate her? Love to hate her? Thoughts on Roku or Iroh and Zuko? Let me know in the comments!
