We’ve finally made it, friends: today, we face the eclipse that we’ve been building towards for the last twenty episodes! I’ll be covering both parts of “The Day of Black Sun” here, “Part 1: The Invasion” and “Part 2: The Eclipse.” Let’s see how things went.
1. The Callbacks!
“Part 1: The Invasion” can be split evenly into two halves: the set-up and the actual invasion. During the setup, we see previous one-off characters from throughout the entire series. There’s Haru (1.06), Teo and his mechanist father (1.17), the swampbenders (2.04), and The Boulder and Hippo (2.06). Then there’s the characters who have reappeared a few times, like Bato (1.15), Hakoda and the Southern Water Tribe’s military (2.19), and characters like Pipsqueak and The Duke from Jet’s crew (1.10).
Given all these callbacks, this episode is set up to truly feel like an event. We are meant to feel like this episode will mean something, like it is the culmination of the entire series so far. For something we’ve been building to for so long, it only makes sense to set things up this way.
2. The Long March
The second half of Part 1 is pure military action, depicting the invasion itself. In all honesty, I never felt as strongly about this part of the episode as I wanted to. In large part, that’s because the goal of these scenes is “get from point A to point B.” Obstacles pop up and there are explosions, but at the end of the day you’re just watching a bunch of machines slowly progress forward.
That said, the scenes are well written and directed, so they feel about as interesting as possible. Series creator Michael Dante DiMartino scripts Part 1, making sure to switch up the military vehicles we see: first the characters are on boats, then they go underwater in subs (that Sokka designed!), then new caterpillar-like metal vehicles trudge forward on land. He also adds in many small character moments, like when Katara uses her ice abilities to freeze turrets, or when she and Sokka react to their father getting caught in an explosion. Over on the directing side, Giancarlo Volpe makes sure to switch between shots in a satisfying way, keeping the “slow march forward” shots quick and informational while giving the character moments far more room to breathe.
Again, it’s not my favorite type of episode, but the creative team gave it their all to make it interesting.
3. Azula: The True Villain
As far as I’m concerned, the real action is in “Part 2: The Eclipse.” Once Aang has realized the entire royal palace is deserted, the team makes the only possible conclusion: Ozai knew about the invasion. And they knew because of Azula’s machinations back at the end of season 2.
So it makes sense that the only major character the team fights is Azula, standing in for her father to waste their precious 8 minutes while the eclipse is occurring. It’s a complete surprise, yet a logical one, that she’s retained some Dai Li agents from when she overthrew Ba Sing Se. First off, this gives the Azula scenes more to work with since her firebending can’t work during the eclipse, and second, the Dai Li agents have such a distinct their style of earthbending that lends some great dynamism to the scene. They lift columns at diagonal angles from the floor and walls to propel themselves forward and crush their opponents, a natural way to earthbend that looks decidedly unnatural.
All the while, the agile Azula runs around and provokes our characters with her greatest weapon: her silver tongue. She proves she can dupe Toph’s lie-detecting skill, provokes Toph with a malicious knock about her blindness, and even gets at Sokka with a brutal line about Suki’s imprisonment. And it works: immediately after getting to Sokka, the eclipse ends, and she firebends away. Azula proves here why she’s the most villainous character on the show (besides, perhaps, her father). And it’s a kind of villainy that I eat up.
4. Protagonist vs Fire Lord
Aang doesn’t end up fighting the Fire Lord. That part of the eclipse is a failure. But, somebody else uses this strategic advantage to fight the Fire Lord: his son, Zuko!
Continued belowThe fact that Zuko approached his father during the eclipse, when firebending wouldn’t work, could be seen as cowardly. But he’s still a teenager, and his father is incredibly powerful, and Ozai even admitted during that scene that he almost killed Zuko in the past to prove his loyalty to his own father. If Zuko were to approach Ozai outside of the eclipse, Ozai probably would have killed him. In fact, Ozai DOES try to kill Zuko. The last thing he does in this confrontation, once the eclipse ends, is shoot lightning at Zuko. Ozai didn’t expect Zuko to redirect it — he expected Zuko to drop dead. Zuko’s story ends up coming full circle, as he finally forges his own destiny with a skill learned from his spiritual guide, Iroh. He also finally gets that lightning he wanted when angstily screaming at the sky, back in the same episode he learned the redirecting trick (2.09).
On a related note, I think this conceptually proves something I’ve written about before, which is that Zuko is equally as much of a protagonist as Aang is. We didn’t get the confrontation we thought we would in this episode (Aang vs Ozai), but we still got to see a protagonist fight the Fire Lord.
Oh, and on another related note: Iroh busted out of prison during the eclipse!! There isn’t much to say about it, but I think it’s wonderful that 1) this finally happened, and 2) Zuko was the POV character when we found out, and 3) we didn’t see it happen on screen — all we see are the beaten guards and his broken cage.
5. Now what?
I think anyone watching could have predicted a less-than-successful outcome from the invasion. Even back when the episode first aired, in my little 13-year-old brain, I thought, “But there are still 10 episodes left… Something has to go wrong. Where else will the show go if they defeat Ozai now?”
Still, I don’t think we expected things to be quite so dire. Aang and his team didn’t accomplish anything during the time of their greatest strategic advantage. The majority of the invasion fleet, including Sokka and Katara’s father, stay behind, destined to become prisoners of war. Ozai still sits on his throne, and Azula is still by his side. The kids head off on Appa, now with a few stragglers, and Zuko heads off into the unknown after them, his uncle having mysteriously disappeared.
The episode ends with a very different sense of, “Where will the show go from here?”
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What did you think of the episode? Did you enjoy the invasion stuff more than I did? Thoughts on Zuko finally taking a stand against his father? Are you enjoying Azula’s increasing antagonism as much as I am? Let me know in the comments!
