Welcome back for another weekly review of Avatar! This week, we meet the final member of the show’s main cast, Toph! How does the episode hold up? Here are my thoughts.
1. #Squad.
Almost halfway through the show, we finally meet the final member of Avatar’s principal cast: Toph. We knew Aang was getting an earthbending teacher at some point but who could have predicted it would be someone like this? As we’ll get into in the other points, she’s a character unlike any we’ve ever seen, from personality to abilities to movement style, and she completely changes the show’s dynamic. There are so many characters running around already, and I feel it’s a daring move to add someone so distinct so late in the show (although it’s her distinctness that makes her work). At the same time, Aang did need an earthbending teacher, and just as with Katara before her, it’s logical that Toph is about the same age as the rest of the squad.
The gender dynamic of our main crew (Aang, Katara, Sokka, and now Toph) is also finally balanced, which I feel was a conscious decision. From a more macro perspective, in season one, the only female main character was Katara, while Aang, Sokka, Zuko, Iroh, and Zhao were the main male characters. This season, we’ve lost Zhao and added Azula, Ty Lee, Mai, and now Toph. Early in development, Toph was planned to be a young boy, and I’m glad they ended up switching that to better balance things out.
2. “I see with earthbending. It’s kind of like seeing with my feet.”
Hands down, the audio-visual representation of Toph’s abilities is one of the coolest things in this show. The team takes such an abstract concept — the idea of being blind but “seeing” with this mystical martial-art thing — and makes it completely understandable. At pivotal moments in the episode’s final fight, everything turns gray so we can only see shapes, and white vibrations pulsate through the ground in slow motion out to Toph’s feet. As this happens, the audio slows down and creates a soundscape completely separate from the real world, giving us the feeling that this is taking place simultaneously to the main action, just on a different plane of perception.
Also make note of the way we get the information about Toph can do: We first see her fighting with no explanation, then see that awesome audio-visual experience described above, then later she gives us a description of her abilities via dialogue, and finally we get the final fight with more of what was described above. By easing us into the concept, the creators allowed us to take this complex idea and easily digest it.
Oh, and how about her movement style? Did you notice that it looks a little different from that of other earthbenders? While standard earthbending is based on the Hung Gar style of Kung Fu, Toph’s bending is based on the less common Southern Praying Mantis style of Kung Fu. The two have the same strong base stance, but Mantis is more about short-range power and sleight of hand, shocking the opponent by stealthily getting in position for an offensive move while performing a visible defensive move. The offense and defense happen simultaneously. It’s using the opponent’s power and expectations against them, using the tools at your disposal to your greatest advantage. You can see examples of all of this in the episode’s final fight. This choice works perfectly with Toph’s background of being underestimated, it works with her having developed her bending on her own based on her perception of the world, and it’s still similar enough to standard earthbending that the movements are clearly for the same element.
3. Wrestling!
One of the most important episodes for Avatar’s overall story seamlessly works an extended WWE parody into its plot. That is… absolutely ridiculous, and I love it. The parody is spot-on: the costumes, the names, the characters, and of course, The Boulder being directly modeled after The Rock in visuals, word choice, and cadence. People more familiar with wrestling than I am have written about how similar its appeal is to the appeal of superheroes, and it’s fun to see how this episode plays on that idea. Sokka is the ultimate fan, screaming for The Boulder and instantly booing Fire Nation Man. Katara mentions how the event will be just be “a bunch of guys chucking rocks at each other,” to which Sokka happily responds, “That’s what I paid for.”
Avatar always has something deeper on its mind, so it never quite devolves into the sort of vapid punchy-punch entertainment that wrestling or superhero content can be, but the team also understands its appeal and chooses to celebrate the brawls for what they are.
4. “My daughter is blind! She is blind and tiny and helpless and… fragile!”
Much of Toph’s introduction focuses on people underestimating her. The very first shot of her makes it clear that she’s blind, and the next shot reveals that she’s half the size of the ring girls, who themselves are tiny compared to the earthbending competitors. We were also, from a macro level, expecting someone large and muscular to become Aang’s earthbending teacher. First we expected Bumi to become the teacher, so it would follow that when he wasn’t available, we would find someone in a similar weight class.
From an in-story perspective, Toph’s parents have spent her entire life talking down to her because of her blindness. They never considered that she could be capable of anything, and they used their privilege to hide and overprotect her. The Aang gang didn’t expect her to be anything special either, due to her size and blindness. Toph smashes everyone’s expectations, both in the world of the show and for the audience, showing that a disability really can become a different ability if given the chance to flourish.
5. “Why don’t you come up here so I can snap that grin off your face?”
Toph’s personality is so completely different from any other character we’ve met. She’s bold, brash, and independent. She doesn’t care what other people think, and she does what she wants. If she has a problem with you, she’ll come right out and say it. She’s the embodiment of Earth’s stubbornness, for all its positives and negatives. And more than that, she’s a fully realized character right out of the gate.
The show will never be the same now that we have Toph, and it’s all for the better.
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What did you think of the episode? Are you fan of Toph? Do you have any insight on the show’s WWE parody? Let me know in the comments!
