Welcome back for another weekly review of Avatar: The Last Airbender!
Quick note before we begin: In between writing the last review and writing this one, I took a few weeks off to watch the entire rest of the show. So, with the whole series now fresh in my mind, this and future reviews are going to feel a bit different. Also, everything from story complexity to animation quality to character development to direction style changes so much that coming back to these episodes gave me a bit of a shock. We’ll get into some of that in the review.
So let’s get to it with our first visit to the spirit world!
1. The Slow Build
This might just be my shock at coming back after the later episodes, but this episode sure took a while to get going, huh? Don’t get me wrong, “Winter Solstice, Part 1: The Spirit World” tells a good story which lays a lot of groundwork for the future. The pace does eventually pick up and the pieces all fall into place by the end. But it’s not an episode for the impatient.
2. Iroh’s Past
Uncle Iroh’s arc is my favorite in the entire show. Beautiful and heartbreaking, we get the first inklings of his past in the form of references to his Ba Sing Se connection (which I believe is also the first mention of Ba Sing Se, a major location later in the show’s run). We also see how smart and physically skilled Iroh can be, despite the bumbling persona we’ve come to know by this point. Most of the information we receive is either very light, very subtle, or lacks the context for first-time viewers to fully understand its significance. But knowing what comes later? It’s all there.
“I’m still tired…”
Break my heart, Uncle Iroh.
3. The Duality in Hei Bai’s Design
Something I never realized before: Hei Bai’s design is influenced by the concepts of yin and yang! Okay, so that’s pretty obvious. But I always just saw it as a monstrous version of a panda (which, technically, it is that, too!).
Beyond the aesthetic of the design, though, the yin/yang concept works with the spirit’s nature. Hei Bai can be a happy, friendly panda spirit, but it can also be a terrifying, destructive monster. It has the potential for both, depending on what its environment and situation lead it to be. With that, the design makes perfect sense.
It’s also yet another way to introduce a concept which would later become central to the series: the concept of duality. All people have good and bad in them; everyone is capable of great success or great destruction. Our circumstances cause us to act, but our way of dealing with them — that choice between the “good” and the “bad” — determines who we are.
Aang’s choice here? Teach the spirit to have hope. With the spirit turning good again after the encounter, Aang’s choice foreshadows the direction for his character and his impact on the world going forward.
4. Is This Really The Spirit World?
Oddly, while this episode does introduce the spirit world concept, we don’t actually go into that other plane of existence. Instead, we have Aang’s detached spirit interacting with the spirit of Roku’s dragon, all invisibly happening within the “real” world. As with most things in Avatar, these beginnings are small. But this is one of the few times where I’m not sure if the creators had fully developed their concepts before using them. Was this meant to be an introduction to the concept of spirits, so we could later enter their world? Or was this the original concept of the spirit world, which ended up being expanded upon later?
5. Part 1 of 2?
The very first thought I had when starting this episode: “There’s no ‘Previously on Avatar’ recap!” I hadn’t realized how episodic these early episodes were compared to the levels of serialization later.
Further, I’m amazed this episode was even considered part 1 of 2. Every story thread got wrapped up in the episode, except for the fact that Aang and the crew now have to head to Crescent Island to speak with Roku. The show becomes so serialized later on that these sorts of small threads, and even much larger threads, continue between episodes without calling everything a multi-part episode. The “two-parter” designation is only used later on when the central plot gets broken up between two episodes: set-up and rising action in one episode, then climax and conclusion in the second.
Continued belowThis episode, by all means, stands alone, so the “part 1” designation ends up being an artifact of the show’s evolution, as well as a reminder of its humble beginnings.
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What did you think of the episode? Let me know in the comments!
