#atla season 3

[pandoramoments]

"We're out of time." Sokka gasped, but he wasn't sure it was audible at all. With a broken leg and a lack of weapons, the young warrior felt certain that this was it.

How could this be the end? They had fought so hard, surely this was supposed to be the moment when they triumphed over the Fire Nation, over Ozai! They weren't supposed to lose! How could the world survive if they failed in this?

Sokka thought of Katara, of Aang, and Zuko, Suki, his dad... of Toph, whose hand was starting to slip from his.

"I don't think Boomerang's coming back, Toph." He admitted, voice louder this time. It felt harsh to tell her that, but she couldn't sense anything while she was hanging in midair. She deserved honesty. "It looks like this is the end."

Because he'd failed... he'd put everything he could into this, and it wasn't enough. He wasn't enough.

[styx-x]

[fanfic-lover-girl]

Zutara Thoughts

First, I want to thank the Zutara fandom for their participation in my poll! I knew the fandom was active and huge but I never realized how much. Definitely the best fandom I have ever been a part of :).

Anyway, I want to talk about an aspect of Zutara that I struggled with when I was younger and sometimes still do. I HATED how Katara treated Zuko when he joined the group. I hated how nasty her character became. I hated her. I could not stand her. Back then, I liked Katara of course. Maybe I liked Azula a tad more because I subconsciously saw Katara as just a lame love interest in the grand scheme of things. I find love interest characters usually not worth my time. And I was in an Azula angst phase. Zuko is my favourite character. Always was and always will be. Even though I appreciate her more now, Katara will never outshine Zuko. So I hated her.

And it affected the types of Zutara stories I read. I read the type of stories where Katara nearly murdered him. Tortured him. Starved him. Injured him. Basically where she was an outright menacing bitch to Zuko. The kinds of fics where Toph and Aang, and sometimes Sokka and Hakoda, had to play referee to prevent things from turning ugly.

Or I would read the fics where Katara's anger and hatred were resolved by the 'gaang learns about the scar' plot. Or the 'Zuko is Roku's grandkid' plot. Anything to cleanly resolve the tension. Because I did not care about Katara's anger. I just hated that she was treating my baby Zuko badly.

But both these types of stories do Katara a huge disservice. Sure, Katara teased Zuko and showed no appreciation when he helped her. But she would not let him fall to his death after the Zuko vs Azula fight at the air temple (read a fic where Katara did that, pretty sure it was discontinued). Sure, Katara has compassion for people. But people's sob stories should not automatically make their hurtful actions forgiven. It invalidates her suffering.

Part of me still thinks that she had no right to be angry on a rare occasion. Zuko never promised her anything in the catacombs. They were basically still enemies. They were down there for a while, but they could not be called anything resembling friends. So how could Zuko betray her? There was hardly a relationship to betray...

I think about how she would have left him to die in the tundra at the North Pole without a backwards glance if not for Aang. Without Aang stepping in, Zuko would be dead. Stiff, stone dead. And I doubt she would have shed a tear. I don't see Zuko holding that against her. And I honestly would have liked some kind of apology for her threatening to kill him. It's a miracle Zuko was able to function so well with that threat looming over him.

I struggle with that part sometimes because I love Zuko a lot. But I love Zutara and the beauty of the ship. How it compliments the story of ATLA and how it makes both Zuko and Katara better characters. The development of Zutara is part of what makes it special for me. All of the peaks and valleys. It's a shame it's not canon. But considering Bryke are completely blind to the treasure the ship holds, it's better off far away from those hack clowns.

[whocanbelieve]

Thinking about what happened to the original bloodbender from Avatar the Last Airbender. Her ending was so sad after all she'd gone through. Also she clearly outs Katara as a waterbender in front of like the whole village and there were no repercussions? Chill villagers.

[flowersadida]

I don't like how the show forgot about Sokka's feelings and made him just a comical character.

In Season 3, he has two conflicts: lack of confidence in himself as a member of the team due to his lack of characteristics and fear of embarrassing himself in front of his father.

These are very strange conflicts. Firstly, Sokka’s doubts are unfounded, he has been an excellent speaker since the first season, and his role in the team is irreplaceable, because he's a leader. Due to the lack of cause and effect, I don't believe in these problems, they seem far-fetched. Second, these conflicts ignore the character's truly interesting problems.

Remember how the first season ended for Sokka. This is the death of Yue, the loved one he was tasked with protecting. And he failed.

Remember how the second season ended. The fall of the EK, and it was Sokka who led the campaign to Ba Sing Se, promoted the invasion plan and negotiated. It was he who told the Earth King that the Kyoshi warriors could be trusted.

Remember how the invasion of the FN, of which Sokka was so proud, ended. This is a failure, as a result of which Sokka's father was captured.

Time after time, he fails to cope with the colossal responsibility placed on the shoulders of a fifteen-year-old boy. And it didn't affect him at all? We're not going to sort this out? Why?

The authors wasted time on embarrassment in front of the father and the public, which came out of nowhere. Sorry, but I really don't understand the reason for this conflict when Sokka is an excellent speaker and was able to convince the Earth King without preparing an inspiring speech in advance, and also clearly explain the principle of the hot air balloon to a large number of people.

But I see the basis for powerful depression and I’m offended that it is being ignored.

I think Sokka's experiences are a huge opportunity for character growth. Personally, I sense uncertainty in him, but not the kind presented in the series. Its source is unclear there, he's just shy. I feel a lack of confidence in the reliability of his strategies and plans, as well as the fear of losing loved ones in the next failure. And after he lost his father due to yet another failure, he might not know if he could handle rescuing him from prison. But he couldn't help but try.

Thus, the motivation to save his father from prison could have a new emotional connotation. After all, it would not be a matter of metaphorical “honor,” which Sokka never worried about, but a desire to correct at least one mistake that cost too much. Just like Zuko, who also atones for his sins and also never gives up no matter how many times he fails.

This would draw a much more meaningful and personal parallel between them than the mention of honor, I believe.

And imagine Sokka's overprotectiveness over Katara. Sokka has always protected his sister, but now it may take on a new scale: all out of fear of losing her, making a mistake and not keeping track of her... Oh, I would look at this, and also at how she and Katara decided it.

I think Suki would be the person to remind him that she and Katara can take care of themselves and that their strength can be trusted. And Sokka and Katara could eventually talk about it and strengthen their bond even more...

[doin-it-to-em-247]

thevampiredio

[piniatafullofblood]

my roman empire is how when zuko was first joining the gaang and he accidentally burned tophs feet after she came to try and reach out to him, that the rest of the gaang was just carrying toph around for the majority of the rest of the episode and they just. never mentioned it.

[inimoo]

the fact that zukos redemption arc started bc he went from being royalty to working customer service is everything to me

[daisymooonart]

another zuko. wet rat man.

[fanfic-chan]

WARNING: ATLA SEASON 3 SPOILERS BELOW!

OH MY GOD THE WAY ZUKO JUST PAUSES AND GOES 'That's rough buddy." WHEN SOKKA TELLS HIM ABOUT HOW HIS GIRLFRIEND TURNED INTO THE MOON IS JUST- HEEELPPPPP 🤣🤣🤣🤣😭😭😭

On a sidenote, it's sooo freaking funny to me just how socially awkward Zuko really is, but it's also kinda sad and painfully relatable for me as well fhfgbfgjvgj

I honestly did not expect to enjoy this show as much as I have been and Zuko's redemption arc is just increasing my love for it by the minute.

[knightofthenewrepublic]

[seasideoranges]

It shocked me to find out that people will completely skip season 1 in their ATLA rewatches. The season gets a little too much flak imo. Is it a little more childish than S2 and S3? Maybe! But so many important moments and setups are established in that season, and in terms of story and pacing, it’s one of the strongest seasons right next to S2 imo!

[eerna]

begging the Netflix ATLA crew to stop giving interviews, every day there is a new article inflaming the Internet and you can literally see the Sims relationship decline animation happening in real time

[flowersadida]

I'm thinking about how this Katara design is missing the water flag.

It's dangerous in the Fire Nation, and a practical person like Katara would hardly walk around here without a weapon.

I have a theory that she didn't want to stand out, but... to be honest, there is nothing strange for a traveler to carry a flask of water.

The question is that apparently the designers simply didn’t think about it or didn’t want to ruin such a cute outfit with something unnecessary from a beauty point of view.

I don't know, just noting a funny detail

[firelxdykatara]

I too ship Zutara and think they should have been canon. Although for me it's important to know how such a rewrite would go down. I tried to think, and I'm lost.

After Mai betrayed Azula for him, will he just go "sorry, not interested"? He isn't obligated to date her because of this, but her redemption hinges on Zuko and I don't see it being satisfying if he ends up rejecting her after this.

I thought the solution would be to rewrite her arc in boiling rock to make her have a moral realization, but then the problem with Maiko is practically solved. Their relationship wasn't salvaged by her redemption because last time they talked, Mai still didn't understand what's wrong with the Fire Nation and only changed because she loved Zuko. So how do you make it both satisfying & logical?

With Kataang the problem is the Chakras. The problem with the original (in my opinion) is that after he opened his chakra, letting go of his attachment to Katara, he's still attached (forcing a kiss on eip). Should TCoD get rewritten so that Azula shoots him before he opens it? Then why wouldn't he just open it later? Maybe the chakra would be locked so he feels as though he doesn't need to overcome his attachment just yet. In that situation, how would his chakra even unlock? The stone thing felt like nonsense, so how would I do it?

So yeah I have no idea how to approach this. How would you? (Thanks)

I've been rotating this ask in the back of my head like a rotisserie chicken for a few days--it's interesting because I don't generally stop to think like, how would I write them out of these relationships, I either ignore the relationships completely (which isn't hard, they were barely footnotes in the cartoon) or play a little bit with jealous exes or something. Thinking about like, In A Perfect World where Bryke wasn't in charge of ATLA post-canon (because if zutara had been canon, you can be sure they would've made us regret it) is interesting, and I do have thoughts on how I'd handle their relationships in a rewrite.

(this got long, so the rest is beneath the cut)

Assuming you mostly want to keep canon intact, I think maiko would be the easiest to work around, given how little relevance their relationship has in canon. The problem with maiko as an endgame ship is that it was not set up that way--if it had been, it would not have begun entirely off-screen and their whole relationship would not have been a study in misery and utter inability to connect emotionally. His relationship with Mai was there to showcase just how much he had changed and how little he fit into the life he had been so sure he wanted more than anything since his banishment. It worked very well to highlight Zuko's growth--how that contrasted to Mai's lack of it and why she could not understand him even at his most open and vulnerable--and did not work nearly so well when she was shoved back with him in the epilogue, after he'd quite literally forgotten her existence (he never mentions her again after Boiling Rock, not even to say a word of mourning, considering he'd have every reason to believe she was killed for defying his sister).

I don't think you can fix this by giving Mai some moral realization, because there simply is no room for it. As @araeph says in the essay I linked:

As a character, Mai is very useful to the story during Zuko’s return, because she represents everything that Zuko gains by sticking by his father. A girl who cares about him; the ability to indulge her; the authority he has over others at the palace; we see it all in his interactions with Mai. But this makes Mai a tether to a life he has long outgrown. Her function is not to advance Zuko’s character development, but to obstruct it, which also unfortunately means that Mai gaining a full understanding of Zuko’s trials would be disadvantageous to the story. If she knew everything about him and still wanted him to stay, it would give Zuko more cause than he should have to remain in the Fire Nation, but if she knew and encouraged him to leave and join the Avatar, it would rob Zuko of the triumph of making this decision on his own. In other words, there are good narrative reasons for keeping Mai in the dark; it just doesn’t make their relationship any stronger.

The seeds of a genuine redemption arc (one that includes some sort of moral realization and change to her moral framework) for Mai would have to have been planted far earlier than five episodes from the end of the series, but doing so would have of necessity detracted from Zuko's own character arc and the realizations that he makes despite his attachment to Mai (or more specifically to their relationship, which I feel like he was clinging to more out of a sense of abject loneliness he couldn't shake rather than genuine feelings and emotional connection).

So, in my mind, since we're tackling this with an eye towards getting rid of maiko with the fewest ripples to the overall story anyway, the easiest way to do this would be make one slight change to the end of the Boiling Rock two-parter--have Ty Lee (who had always been the least gung-ho of the trio about bowing to Azula's whims and had to be textually threatened into joining her in the first place) save Zuko's life, and then have Mai (who showed the most genuine affection for Ty Lee anyway) save Ty Lee. I love Zuko more than I fear you always fell flat for me as some epic declaration of love, anyway, since a) Zuko is not around to hear it, and b) unlike Ty Lee, she never showed much fear of Azula to begin with, so it wasn't a very high bar to clear. It was a cool line that was entirely unearned, and I don't think it would be missed, there would be some cute mailee crumbs this way, and a throwaway line of getting them released from the prison after the war ended could wrap up their presence in the story pretty nicely.

Now, kataang is a little trickier, if only because the last leg of Aang's character arc is almost completely derailed by his refusal to let go of his possessive attachment to Katara, to the point where he never naturally reopens his chakras, he has to have the Rock of Destiny hit him in just the right place, and the deus ex lionturtle there to give him a way out of having to make a hard moral choice. (I've maintained for years that if you work the final act of your main character's overall arc in such a way that it could have been solved by one good session with a chiropractor, something got fucked along the way.)

The thing about Aang's chakras is that, narratively, his whole thing with Guru Pathik and leaving his training early to save his friends was basically his version of Luke running away from his training with Yoda on Degobah because of his Force vision, only to find out that his friends were in the process of rescuing themselves and then losing his hand because he hadn't completed the most crucial part of his training. What's missing, therefore, from the last act of Aang's character arc, is the return.

See, in Star Wars, Luke pretty explicitly makes the wrong choice when he chooses to prioritize saving his friends over attaining enlightenment and fully mastering the Force. It was the only choice he could have made, but it was still the wrong one--because, like Aang, his friends did not actually need him to save them, he actually almost makes it harder for them to get away by requiring them to save him because, like Aang, he loses a battle in a very critical way. This was a lesson he desperately needed to learn, and it is clear he has learned it by the time he makes it back to Degobah and witnesses the end of Yoda's life, his own enlightenment having already been reached.

But Aang never goes back to the Guru.

And the text refuses to allow us to sit with the fact that he made the wrong choice in prioritizing his attachment to Katara over his ability to master the Avatar State. He is actually narratively vindicated about it, because the plot bends itself into a pretzel so that he doesn't have to spend any time during the last book trying to reopen his chakras and regain access to the Avatar State, handed both in the final battle with no excess effort on his part, and handed the girl into the bargain. (The girl who never even wanted him, so far as we can tell from all the lack of cues she gave him that she actually returned his feelings.)

And I think this could have been solved with a few scattered scenes. Let Katara actually have some agency in her own romantic relationship (or lack thereof), insofar as noticing Aang's advances and clueing the audience in to how she actually feels. Let Aang struggle with the fact that he can't reach the Avatar State, that his mastery of the elements is in limbo because he can't access his full power, rather than ignoring all of this until the end of the show. If we're trying to keep the shape of the last season roughly the same, let Katara confront Aang about the invasion kiss.

This would have been the perfect time to establish that Katara actually does feel some type of way about Aang prior to the epilogue, and it could have saved us from the exceedingly cringey EIP kiss that Aang never apologized for. How it comes across now, of course, is that Katara basically pretends it never even happened, to the point where she doesn't even know what Aang is talking about during EIP until he reminds her--the death knell for any shot their relationship had at looking requited, because I can tell you, as someone who's been a teenage girl, if someone I had conflicted but burgeoning romantic feelings for had kissed me, I would not have completely forgotten about it only a few weeks later--and we never get any indication as to what she actually felt about the kiss (which was not mutual, despite what Aang's dialogue in the EIP scene implies) except for the fact that she looked away and frowned afterwards. (A change mandated by Bryke, who wanted to leave her feelings completely ambiguous; the original storyboards had her smiling to herself.)

So, with an eye towards wrapping up Aang's puppy love crush and establishing Katara's distinct lack of romantic feelings for him, have her talk to him about the kiss. A good frame of reference for this would be Meng's conversation with Aang in "The Fortuneteller", where she finally realizes that he doesn't like her in the same way she likes him. Katara and Aang's conversation about the invasion kiss could be a callback to this, with Aang having some important realizations--that just because Katara doesn't share his feelings doesn't mean she loves him any less, and just because he can't have her the way he wanted doesn't mean he has to love her any less, that she doesn't belong to him but that's ok, because she's still his family and they'll always have each other's backs. Which could have functioned well in helping him take another step towards unblocking his chakras. Going back to the Guru directly may not have worked, since by this point in the story we're hurtling towards the final confrontation and Sozin's Comet, but let Aang reflect on what the Guru told him with new understanding granted him by his experiences throughout the first half of the season.

To keep the stakes high and up the suspense, obviously, he shouldn't have fully unlocked his chakras and the AS before the final fight, but the seeds could be planted--little moments like a talk with Katara about the invasion kiss, maybe a little more empathy and understanding from him about why Katara needs closure in TSR, etc--and then, during the final fight, rather than hand him all the answers on a silver platter, have him almost lose. He still can't go full Avatar, he's out of time, he still doesn't know exactly what to do about Ozai given his own pacifism and desire to preserve that part of his culture--he tries to fight but he's pretty quickly overpowered. Idk how I would've animated this, and maybe it wouldn't have looked as cool for the final fight, but the true climax of the finale was the Zuko and Azula agni kai anyway, so it hardly matters--I'm picturing him doing the rock-shield thing and going into a brief meditative state, where he finally achieves the enlightenment necessary to unlock the AS on his own, no rock of chiropracty necessary. And at this point, I'd give Ozai a Disney Death, since leaving him alive causes more problems than it solves and it's not necessary for Aang to kill him for him to die--they're fighting on a mountain ffs--but if you don't want to change that part then him figuring out energy bending as part of becoming a fully realized Avatar would at least feel more earned than the lionturtle just handing it to him. (And that could've been foreshadowed better by seeding the idea for it earlier in the season.)

After all of that, particularly if you up the emotions during the agni kai and have Zuko and Katara kiss there (or something less explicitly romantic but still tender, like a brief forehead touch), it'd feel pretty natural to have a just friends ending for Aang and Katara. Maybe a brief, slightly awkward but ultimately amiable conversation if Zuko and Katara had a ~thing at their final fight, and then the final shot of the series could be the gaang all together, maybe zutara holding hands or Katara resting her head on his shoulder or something, but since they already kissed there wouldn't feel like a need to end the whole show on romance, something which I've always felt missed the point of the series.

And then, y'know, after that, the world's your oyster! This is how I'd do it if I were trying to keep the bulk of the final season intact. Of course, breaking it all down to its component pieces and rebuilding from the ground up is also an option, but that'd probably be a longer post lol.

[emkini]

And finally, best boy

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