Watched "The Southern Raiders". It's time for some thoughts in a long post!
This one's intrinsically linked to "The Puppetmaster", and it serves as a bleak-but-not-all-is-lost coda to that episode. For a small while, Hama's victory was almost complete. She taught Katara to use bloodbending (fuck, even the name sends shivers down my spine) as a tool of vengeance. It's waterbending as pure destruction, the polar opposite of Katara's healing powers.
And so Katara, the reluctant student, the one who broke down in tears after using it because she knew she had crossed some sort of moral event horizon, stands again on the brink. And this time it's not about saving her friends at the last possible second - it's pure rage distilled. She was torturing a man for a crime he didn't commit. She wasn't becoming Jet, like Sokka said - she was becoming Hama.
But she stopped. She was going too far, and she realized it. She saved herself, even though she did not know at that instant.
This is the third episode in a row that focuses on Zuko + a single member of Team Avatar/The Gaang. "The Firebending Masters" was majestic and mystical. "The Boiling Rock" was everything "Imprisoned" wishes it was, with impressive action sequences, emotional punches and a bittersweet ending about winning and losing friendship. "The Southern Raiders" is, all things considered, pretty damn bleak. It features the most tense pairing of them all, but it's fitting...
Because, in a way, Zuko had already walked through the path Katara seemed to head into. For the better part of his life, he WAS anger personified, bubbling under the surface but very quick to be released. Lashing out at the unfair treatment he received from his father, he made the Avatar the recipient of all that anger and the personification of all his woes. Killing him would right all the wrongs and it would finally give him that which he craved.
But it didn't, and now he realizes that. He's still coming to grips with it, he still hasn't fully internalized that. He knows it's not right, but he can't change such a big part of him overnight.
I find it interesting that both Katara and Sokka are (somewhat) defined by the absences of their parents. Sokka felt he had to measure up to the image of his warrior father, he had to "become a man" and be a leader and all that stuff, because his father went away to fight a war. He had to grow up to become his own father in a way.
Katara had to fill that void by also becoming her own mother (and mother to everybody else)... but the void wasn't actually filled, because her mother was truly gone and she wasn't going to come back. Thus she lashed out in anger at Zuko, the personification of those who took her mother away, the Fire Nation embodied, indirectly responsible for her loss.
So when he tells her that he knows who was directly responsible for that, she knows she has a new target. And that finishing that will right all the wrongs.
But it doesn't. Killing that man, that pathetic, blubbering, pitiful shell of a man isn't going to bring back her mother. It won't magically repair all those years of childhood that she lost after being forced to grow up. It will only make her a killer, justified or not. And she cannot take that step, no matter how much she wishes she could.
So by the end, her decision doesn't make her happy. Killing that guy wouldn't have made her happy either. She cannot find happiness in that anymore, but she can finally start to move on. As I already said, it's fitting that this was about Katara and Zuko - both of them lost their mothers, who made a noble, selfless act of sacrifice to save their children. Katara has achieved some sort of closure, and -by helping her achieve that- Zuko also achieves closure to the personal enmity between them that spawned from his actions in "The Crossroads of Destiny". He has repented, he finally won back the trust he betrayed back then. Full circle.
But, of course, nothing is ever easy. If violence isn't the answer, what is Aang going to do when he faces Ozai? When the moment arrives, he will stand on the brink and he will have to make a choice.
This one's intrinsically linked to "The Puppetmaster", and it serves as a bleak-but-not-all-is-lost coda to that episode. For a small while, Hama's victory was almost complete. She taught Katara to use bloodbending (fuck, even the name sends shivers down my spine) as a tool of vengeance. It's waterbending as pure destruction, the polar opposite of Katara's healing powers.
And so Katara, the reluctant student, the one who broke down in tears after using it because she knew she had crossed some sort of moral event horizon, stands again on the brink. And this time it's not about saving her friends at the last possible second - it's pure rage distilled. She was torturing a man for a crime he didn't commit. She wasn't becoming Jet, like Sokka said - she was becoming Hama.
But she stopped. She was going too far, and she realized it. She saved herself, even though she did not know at that instant.
This is the third episode in a row that focuses on Zuko + a single member of Team Avatar/The Gaang. "The Firebending Masters" was majestic and mystical. "The Boiling Rock" was everything "Imprisoned" wishes it was, with impressive action sequences, emotional punches and a bittersweet ending about winning and losing friendship. "The Southern Raiders" is, all things considered, pretty damn bleak. It features the most tense pairing of them all, but it's fitting...
Because, in a way, Zuko had already walked through the path Katara seemed to head into. For the better part of his life, he WAS anger personified, bubbling under the surface but very quick to be released. Lashing out at the unfair treatment he received from his father, he made the Avatar the recipient of all that anger and the personification of all his woes. Killing him would right all the wrongs and it would finally give him that which he craved.
But it didn't, and now he realizes that. He's still coming to grips with it, he still hasn't fully internalized that. He knows it's not right, but he can't change such a big part of him overnight.
I find it interesting that both Katara and Sokka are (somewhat) defined by the absences of their parents. Sokka felt he had to measure up to the image of his warrior father, he had to "become a man" and be a leader and all that stuff, because his father went away to fight a war. He had to grow up to become his own father in a way.
Katara had to fill that void by also becoming her own mother (and mother to everybody else)... but the void wasn't actually filled, because her mother was truly gone and she wasn't going to come back. Thus she lashed out in anger at Zuko, the personification of those who took her mother away, the Fire Nation embodied, indirectly responsible for her loss.
So when he tells her that he knows who was directly responsible for that, she knows she has a new target. And that finishing that will right all the wrongs.
But it doesn't. Killing that man, that pathetic, blubbering, pitiful shell of a man isn't going to bring back her mother. It won't magically repair all those years of childhood that she lost after being forced to grow up. It will only make her a killer, justified or not. And she cannot take that step, no matter how much she wishes she could.
So by the end, her decision doesn't make her happy. Killing that guy wouldn't have made her happy either. She cannot find happiness in that anymore, but she can finally start to move on. As I already said, it's fitting that this was about Katara and Zuko - both of them lost their mothers, who made a noble, selfless act of sacrifice to save their children. Katara has achieved some sort of closure, and -by helping her achieve that- Zuko also achieves closure to the personal enmity between them that spawned from his actions in "The Crossroads of Destiny". He has repented, he finally won back the trust he betrayed back then. Full circle.
But, of course, nothing is ever easy. If violence isn't the answer, what is Aang going to do when he faces Ozai? When the moment arrives, he will stand on the brink and he will have to make a choice.
