Welcome back for another weekly review of Avatar! This week, we travel with Zuko and learn some details about the terrible family he was born into. How does the episode hold up? Here are my thoughts.
1. Mommy issues.
Almost halfway through the show, we finally learn that Zuko’s past isn’t limited to daddy issues; he’s got some mommy issues, too. Unlike with his father, though, his issues with his mother stem from her all-consuming love for him.
I like how ambiguous the mother’s story is. From a practical standpoint, this was necessary to get the story past the Nickelodeon censors, since explicit assassination probably wouldn’t fly (especially at the time this was made). From an in-story standpoint, it’s all from Zuko’s perspective as a young child, so it makes sense that not everything would be completely clear. We’re also seeing these memories from the perspective of someone almost a decade older, so they’ve gotten a little hazy in that time, right down to the faded colors and slight glow of the flashback scenes. Given how ambiguous his mother’s situation is, it makes sense that these memories would haunt Zuko as he’s constantly trying to figure them out for himself.
While we did eventually get some definitive answers via the Dark Horse “The Search” comics, they weren’t necessary for the story of the show. All we need to know is that Zuko’s father made a mistake, Zuko’s grandfather threatened him as a result, and his mother’s actions to save him ended with a dead Fire Lord and the mother’s self-exile. That last part is particularly important: Zuko’s mother would do anything for him. As we’ll get into in the next point, she and Iroh are the only family members who act selflessly out of love.
2. Daddy issues.
Just because Zuko has some mommy issues doesn’t mean his daddy issues went away! This episode’s flashbacks delve into the depths of the family’s unhealthy patriarchal rule. It’s all fathers-son tragedy and power tripping: Iroh losing Lu Ten, Ozai aggressively ignoring Zuko, Azulon threatening Ozai through Zuko. Note how we never see Ozai’s full face, which props him up as this all-powerful, dehumanized force of nature against Zuko. In addition, Azulon is only ever shown up on a platform, behind a large wall of fire, making him literally untouchable.
The men of the family have a heavy emphasis on power and responsibility, however twisted. Much is made of the succession of the throne, which ends up being the driving force for a few characters’ motivations. Ozai would do anything to steal the throne from his brother, and Ozai speaks of Lu Ten’s death as if it were an unaffecting plot beat that logically makes way for his own desires. Azulon’s punishment, to kill Ozai’s first-born son, is spoken of in equally cold terms, as if Zuko were merely a pawn and not his grandson.
It’s also fascinating to see Iroh as the Fire Nation General as he invades Ba Sing Se, making a joke about burning the city to the ground and sending Zuko a dagger from the general who surrendered. He’s completely caught up in the perverted value system of the family — that is, until his son dies in battle and he falls apart. Even before that, though, you can see small hints that he’s not the cold-blooded killer his father and brother are. The joke he made was to make his niece and nephew laugh, and the dagger he sent was a gift sent out of love. From his earliest flashback appearance, there’s a clear through-line to who he would become in the present day.
3. Sister issues.
Through the flashbacks, Azula becomes a fascinating subversion of the family patriarchy. She’s Fire Lord Azulon’s only female granddaughter, yet clearly the grandchild most like him (right down to her name). Yet with the succession of the throne going through first-born sons, she’s doubly left out of the equation. Despite this, Azula’s not going to simply give in to the patriarchy, as evidenced by her setting the doll Iroh sent her on fire. And even if the patriarchy wins, it won’t stop her from being just as cold and manipulative as Ozai and Azulon, nor will it stop Ozai from supporting her as his favorite child.
All of Azula’s modern day tactics are on display in her childhood, and we can see that all of them were directly learned from her more powerful family members. She manipulates Zuko into uncomfortable situations to establish her power over him, just as her father did. She coldly talks about Lu Ten’s death and Azulon’s plan to murder Zuko, just as her father and grandfather did. She’s learned to be seduced by power and is on an everlasting quest to gain more, and it’s turned her into a monster.
4. Acquaintance issues.
In the present day, Zuko continues his humbling journey through the Earth kingdom, where we get a Western movie plot with a stranger on a horse (well, ostrich-horse) arriving in a small desert town and disrupting things. The episode ends up being much stronger than that stock Western plot, though, as it’s all about the connection Zuko makes with the family who houses him. This is the first time that he’s tried to give back and stand up for innocents, and it ends up blowing up in his face.
During the final “shoot-out,” Zuko reveals his identity, hoping that will give him a sense of power and respect. Immediately, a bystander shouts out that Zuko’s an outcast and has no power, and when the kid he had befriended rejects him, he realizes he can’t gain anybody’s respect either. This is Zuko at his lowest point. Nobody wants him. Nobody cares about him. The lessons he learned from his family don’t work, and he has no idea how to function outside of them.
5. Man, this kid’s got issues!!
One of my favorite parts of this episode is when Zuko explains to the young kid how the broadswords work: they’re two parts of the same whole. They work in tandem as one weapon. This is the perfect symbol for Zuko, since he’s the strongest example of the show’s theme of duality. He’s always caught between the love of his mother and uncle and the coldness of his father and sister, his desire to capture the Avatar and his desire to move beyond his past, his attempts to accept his family and his attempts to write them off, his intuition to give in to compassion and his learned behavior to hold on to a false sense of power.
More than any other episode, we can see that Zuko is at a crossroads. And as he rides off into the sunset, we’re left to consider: where can he go from here?
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What did you think of the episode? Did you find the flashback scenes illuminating? Where would you like Zuko to go from here? Let me know in the comments!
