Avatar The Last Airbender 1.03 The Southern Air Temple Television 

Five Thoughts on Avatar: The Last Airbender‘s “The Southern Air Temple”

By | May 25th, 2017
Posted in Television | % Comments

Welcome back for another weekly review of Avatar! This week, we take a trip to the Southern Air Temple. How does the episode hold up? Here are my thoughts.

1. Aang’s Past Lives.
Here we see the first indication of what a long line Aang comes from and how the reincarnation cycle works. I appreciate how the show’s mythology gradually unfolds, especially when it’s through such memorable scenes as when the statue eyes light up one after the other, spiraling up and around the temple.

We also get the first indications of how much the world has changed since Aang left it. In the last episode, the horrors of war were mostly subtext. In examining the now barren temple and finding Gyatso’s skeleton, though, he was forced to come to terms with what happened. Speaking of Gyatso…

2. That Flashback. Those Pies.
In such a simple scene, we get a nice view of the types of people Aang used to spend his time with and the culture they belonged to. Gyatso’s soft demeanor and wisdom become so much more real when we see him and Aang share a prank afterwards. Gyatso is everything Aang wants to grow up to be. And the fact that Aang realizes that he’s the last vestige of his old culture makes that flashback all the more relevant.

3. Sokka’s Discrimination Against Firebenders.
This surprised me. Multiple times throughout the episode, Sokka derogatorily uses the term “firebenders” as if they’re something to hate without question. A lot of the time, he says it as a reaction to any danger: “Watch out, it’s probably a firebender.”

Okay, I know, they did start a war, kill his mother, and commit mass genocide. But Sokka even says to Aang something along the lines of, “You were a firebender in a past life? No wonder I was so suspicious of you.” Sokka is still at a point where he’s very close-minded, and has thus labeled all firebenders as the enemy. It’ll be interesting to track his evolution into eventually accepting that he shouldn’t have judged an entire nation of people for the wrongdoings of their government, as I think that’s a relevant sociopolitical topic in today’s world.

4. Zhou!
In Zuko’s half of the episode, we get the introduction of Commander Zhou. I always forget about how much Zhou factored into this first season. He works as a magnificent foil for Zuko, someone for him to rail against. Suave, experienced, and dignified, he’s everything Zuko wishes he was. If Zhou wasn’t so snide, they might have even had a nice mentor/mentee relationship.

(Side note: It’s really interesting how Zuko’s story progresses completely separately from the trio of Aang/Sokka/Katara in this season. There are a few episodes throughout the season where they cross paths, but for the most part the show works as an anthology which covers both groups of characters.)

5. Agni Kai Animation!
If I had any doubts about the animation in the last episode, they were completely abandoned by the time we got to the Agni Kai. Good lord, that was a beautiful scene, as well directed as it was animated and scored. And I know that this is only the beginning of the show’s visual evolution.

What did you think of the episode? Let me know in the comments!


//TAGS | 2017 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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