Avatar the Last Airbender 3.08 The Puppetmaster Television 

Five Thoughts on Avatar: The Last Airbender’s “The Puppetmaster”

By | July 24th, 2019
Posted in Television | % Comments

Welcome back for another weekly review of Avatar! This week, we go straight for the jugular with a waterbending horror episode.

1. Full-on Horror

This is the second horror-themed episode the show has done, and I think this one is much more successful than the previous attempt. In large part, that’s because the team goes all-in on the horror aspects here, from a structural perspective through to the tiny visual details.

It’s fitting that the episode starts with the kids sitting around a campfire at night and telling scary stories. As any horror writer can tell you, there’s something primal about the forest that incites fear in people. As the episode goes on, we see some typical horror tropes: people mysteriously going missing; the nice woman who seems to be hiding a dark secret; most scenes taking place at night. And by the end, Hama has a long monologue that itself is a scary story, but one that truly happened to her. Once again, it’s fitting that this confrontation takes place in the forest, this time under a full moon.

I appreciate how these tropes are used not just for the visuals, but because they make sense in the show’s world. The episode takes place at night during a full moon because, as previously established, that’s when waterbenders are their most powerful. The nice woman’s secret isn’t some one-off story created for the episode, it’s directly related to some of our main characters. This is some smart synergy between the writing and art departments.

2. The Last Waterbender

This episode unexpectedly gives us some insight on what exactly happened to Katara and Sokka’s village before they were born. As it turns out, Hama was the last Southern waterbender to be captured in her generation of Fire Nation raids. The raids are something we’d heard about, but had never seen before this episode, and they’re every bit as unsettling as we imagined. One by one, we see everyone Hama had stood with disappear until finally she’s surrounded by faceless Fire Nation war masks.

They are effective visuals, suitably creepy and dehumanizing, and this story provides great insight into the Southern Water Tribe culture that we didn’t even know we needed.

3. “There’s water in places you never think about.”

Hama is consistently built up as a waterbender throughout the episode. First we see her bending soup into the kids’ bowls, then we see her take the humidity out of the air before destroying a field of lilies for their water, and finally she reveals her ultimate secret: bloodbending!

The mechanics of bloodbending are fascinating, and they are rooted in the horror aesthetic of the episode. The bender must hold their hands in an unnatural vertical pose while extending their fingers out in similarly unnatural ways. The whole technique looks, fittingly, like a puppetmaster controlling their puppets.

4. “When you’re a waterbender in a strange land, you do what you must to survive.”

Katara’s reaction to the bloodbending makes sense for her, but so too does Hama’s stance. They both see it as imposing your will on an unsuspecting human, but Katara immediately sees it as an ethical abuse of power. Hama, however, has a more utilitarian perspective. She developed the technique to escape an unjust imprisonment, so she stands by her self-preservation as being an overall “good.”

On the other hand, dipping into this well of ethical ambiguity opened the door for Hama to become the extremist she is today. Similar to Jet back in season one, she developed an unhealthy perspective where she stopped seeing ordinary Fire Nation citizens as people and started seeing everyone as “the enemy.” Just as they dehumanized her people, she snapped back and dehumanized all fire benders. Her bitterness led to corruption, which became her downfall.

All that said, Katara’s reaction to using the technique against Hama makes sense. Her tearful break-down always seemed a little dramatic to me, but now that I’ve explored her perspective a bit more, I realize that it’s completely in-character. Now it’s up to Katara to stay balanced despite having the potential for this technique inside her.

5. The snapping trees!

I mentioned the forest a few times in the first point for its atmospheric qualities and use as a horror trope, but it also becomes a genius action set piece for the final battle. With the two master waterbenders fighting against each other, they pull water from the trees until they burst into splinters. This is easily my favorite visual trick in the episode, and when combined with their eerie snapping sound, they get across all the chaotic horror vibes we needed for that final fight.

That’s all from me for this week. Any thoughts on bloodbending? Did you enjoy the episode’s foray into horror? Do you relate to Katara’s ethical dilemma, or do you see things more like Hama? Let me know in the comments!


//TAGS | 2019 Summer TV Binge | Avatar: The Last Airbender

Nicholas Palmieri

Nick is a South Floridian writer of films, comics, and analyses of films and comics. Flight attendants tend to be misled by his youthful visage. You can try to decipher his out-of-context thoughts over on Twitter at @NPalmieriWrites.

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