Avatar: The Last Airbender ending: what is Ozai's plan?

Netflix's live action Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024), starring Gordon Cormier, Kiawentiio and Ian Ousley, managed what seemed impossible. It's a pretty decent, albeit flawed, adaptation of the greatest cartoon Nickelodeon has ever made. Below I go through the first season episode by episode, including the changes from the animated series, the Easter eggs and what the ending sets up for a potential second season.

Gordon Cormier plays Aang. He's a 12 year old in his first major leading role.

Sozin's Comet opens and closes Avatar: The Last Airbender season 1

The series starts the same way it ends, with an image of Sozin's Comet. This celestial object passes every 100 years and supercharges the Fire Nation's firebending. Fire Lord Sozin used the comet to launch a diversionary attack on the Earth Kingdom. That attack distracted the world from his true goal, the complete eradication of the Air Nomads.

The finale reveals that Fire Lord Ozai has taken inspiration from his ancestor. He is waiting for the comet's return so the Fire Nation will be powerful enough to unite the world under his totalitarian rule. Ozai even has Admiral Zhao attack the Northern Water Tribe as a distraction, the same way Sozin attacked the Earth Kingdom. The comet is the main apocalyptic threat in the original series, so making it the teaser for a potential season 2 was fitting.

After Sozin tricks an earthbender into warning the world of an incoming attack on the Earth Kingdom, Sozin burns him alive. Then comes a live action recreation of the cartoon's opening, with slightly altered narration. Avatar Kyoshi does her Avatar thing before joining a line of past Avatars on a staircase. Kyoshi greets her predecessor Kuruk of the Northern Water Tribe, and behind him stand the Air Nomad Yangchen and the firebender Szeto. Fans will also notice the show has dropped the cartoon's structure of books and chapters, where season one was Book One: Water, followed by Earth and then Fire.

Episode 1, Aang: Gyatso's reveal and a change I didn't like

The Air Nomads are preparing for the comet festival. The council tells Gyatso that he must inform Aang he's the Avatar and that Aang must leave the Southern Air Temple to begin his training. Gyatso tells him in front of the statue of Yangchen. When Aang rejects the weight of that responsibility, he asks whether Gyatso can just keep pretending to be his friend. Gyatso assures him their connection was real. That moment felt extremely reminiscent of the scene in Man of Steel when Clark asks if he can keep pretending to be Jonathan Kent's son.

Overwhelmed, Aang flies off on his flying bison Appa just as Sozin's army arrives to wipe out the Air Nomads, who had gathered from across the world for the comet. Caught in a sea storm, Aang instinctively taps into the Avatar State and freezes the two of them, which keeps them from drowning but leaves them in the ice for 100 years. Katara and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe then happen across Aang's frozen body just moments before his powers free him.

Personally, I wasn't a huge fan of this. It doesn't make sense why Aang would emerge at that exact moment. In the original, Katara accidentally waterbends Aang free while she's angry at Sokka for making a sexist comment. Because the showrunners deliberately wanted to dial down Katara's feminist nature, they changed how Aang got out.

Katara convinces her brother not to leave Aang to die, and her grandmother recites the exact words of the cartoon's intro to explain the war. But the beacon of light Aang released on waking drew Prince Zuko, who demands the Avatar. Aang nobly gives himself up, then uses airbending to steal the keys off his guard. I'm not sure why the guard didn't recognize the sound of jingling keys. Before escaping with help from Katara, Sokka and Appa, Aang sneaks into Zuko's room and steals his Avatar notebook, which proves helpful later. At the Southern Air Temple, Aang finds Gyatso's remains and enters a rageful Avatar State, then calms himself by remembering his teacher's words.

Episode 2, Warriors: Momo, the waterbending scroll and Kyoshi Island

At the temple ruins, the group finds a winged lemur that Aang names Momo. It's great to have Momo and Appa, but you can tell the production tried to use them as little as possible because they're expensive to animate. They do look good, though. Momo rummaging through the luggage leads Katara to a waterbending scroll her mother snuck into her bags. In the cartoon, Katara takes that scroll from a pirate ship about nine episodes in. The Netflix series bypasses that whole arc and makes the scroll a family heirloom.

On Kyoshi Island, the Kyoshi Warriors apprehend the group, and the island's leader gives Aang 48 hours before he has to leave. Aang shows off his air scooter and crashes into a statue, a moment taken straight from the animated series, which I thought was a really nice touch. Sokka forms a romantic bond with the warrior Suki. In the original, Sokka underestimates the Kyoshi Warriors because they're women and is quickly humbled. The live action show appears to have omitted that crucial piece of Sokka's development, which I thought was a really bad idea.

Katara encourages Aang to connect with past Avatars, and Kyoshi tells him to toughen up and make being the Avatar his only focus. She also gives him a vision of the Fire Nation's coming siege on the Northern Water Tribe. When Commander Zhao attacks the island, Kyoshi briefly takes over Aang's body to defend her people. After a thank you kiss from Suki for Sokka, the group heads north to stop the vision coming true. Meanwhile, Zuko forms an uneasy alliance with Zhao, who immediately breaks his trust by telling Ozai the Avatar has returned.

Episode 3, Omashu: Azula, the Cabbage Merchant and Jet

Rebels attempt to assassinate Ozai, only for him to reveal that one of them is Princess Azula. I'm not sure how these freedom fighters didn't know what Azula looked like, given how politically aware they seem.

After spotting a flying figure over Omashu, the group heads there. On the bridge, an earthbender launches someone's cargo into oblivion, another moment taken from the cartoon, where it happened to the Cabbage Merchant. James Sie, the Cabbage Merchant's voice actor, reprises the role, and the show keeps interrupting his iconic "my cabbages" line to tease hardcore fans. In that same line they meet Jet, whose business in the city is murder and revenge on the Fire Nation, though they don't learn that until much later. In the cartoon, the group meets Jet around episode 10 in an Earth Kingdom village that they stop him from flooding.

The flying figure turns out to be an inventive boy named Teo. An explosion leads Teo's father, the Mechanist, to shelter the group. He's played by Danny Pudi, who played Abed in Community. The cartoon only calls him the Mechanist, but here we learn his name is Sai. Sokka projects his issues with his father onto Sai while helping build his flying invention, and Katara later sees Sai dealing with the Fire Nation, not knowing he's being forced under threat of death. That invention returns in the finale, when Zhao uses Sai's hot air balloon to infiltrate the Northern Water Tribe's sacred grounds.

Katara and Sokka stop Jet from attacking King Bumi, while Zuko fights Aang in the marketplace. Earlier, Uncle Iroh picks up a Pai Sho piece themed after a White Lotus, an Easter egg hardcore fans will catch, since Iroh is later revealed to belong to the Order of the White Lotus. That order was a discreet group of peace loving warrior philosophers from all four nations who sometimes helped the Avatar, but whose main goal was protecting humanity. By the end of the episode, Zuko and Iroh are arrested by Bumi's earthbenders.

Episode 4, Into the Dark: the secret tunnel and King Bumi

Katara and Sokka travel through secret tunnels to sneak into Bumi's palace and run into nomads singing the iconic secret tunnel song. In the original, it's Aang and Katara's romantic connection that gets them through the cave of two lovers, not the sibling bond here. The shifting tunnels and badgermoles remain, but the destination doesn't: the cartoon's cave led outside Omashu, not into the palace.

Aang reunites with his childhood friend Bumi, now king, who's angry at him for abandoning the world and tells him friendship is overrated. In the end, Aang's connection to his friends helps him best Bumi and convinces the king to join the war against the Fire Nation.

Episode 5, Spirited Away: Koh the Face Stealer and the spirit world

The title is a clear reference to Studio Ghibli's 2001 animated classic, which also features a creepy spirit that steals others' attributes. Where Spirited Away has No Face, Avatar has Koh the Face Stealer. The opening, with the group chased by soldiers and jumping off a cliff, gave me strong Star Trek Into Darkness vibes, since that film opens with Kirk jumping off a cliff to escape tribespeople.

The group finds a forest the Fire Nation burned, weakening the barrier between worlds. Aang meditates at the forest spirit's shrine and accidentally brings Katara and Sokka into the spirit realm, which doesn't happen in the original at all. They meet the owl spirit Wan Shi Tong, who doesn't appear in the cartoon until the 10th episode of the second season, in his library in the Si Wong Desert. Here he's just in the forest, warning them to leave before Koh takes their souls.

Separated by the forest's angry panda spirit, Katara confronts her mother dying to protect her, while Sokka confronts his father not thinking he's good enough to go to war. "One of these siblings had it significantly harder than the other is all I'm saying." Sokka's vision includes a cameo from Bato, a close friend of their father Hakoda. In the original, Bato puts the group through the ice dodging trials and gives Sokka the mark of wisdom, shaped like a third eye, which has historically symbolized wisdom and intuition.

Aang comes face to face with Koh, who is angry over the actions of a past Avatar. Gyatso later reveals it was Avatar Roku, so Aang must travel to Roku's shrine on Crescent Island to save his friends' untethered souls. The episode ends with a letter from Ozai promoting Zhao to admiral, which Zuko doesn't like.

Episode 6, Masks: Roku, the Mother of Faces and the Blue Spirit

At the fire temple, priests attack Aang on sight, but, as in the cartoon, a priest named Shyu saves him because his loyalty lies with the Avatar. In the original cartoon, Roku can only be reached once a year at the winter solstice. In this series, Aang can talk to Roku whenever he's in the shrine. Roku explains that he beat Koh by stealing the pendant of the Mother of Faces, an ancient spirit who apparently is responsible for making every human face in existence, so it makes sense she's Koh's mother. She never appears in the original cartoon; she debuted in the graphic novel The Search Part Two, released back in 2013.

After Roku warns Aang about the dangers of friendship, Aang grabs the totem but is paralyzed by the bounty hunter June and her shirshu Nyla, whom Zuko and Iroh hired out of desperation. Zhao then snatches Aang from Zuko and holds him in a fortress, until a masked figure in a blue spirit mask frees him. The Yuyan archers knock the rescuer out, and Aang discovers it's Zuko. Forced to save him, Aang shares a moment of connection with Zuko that foreshadows their future friendship, though Zuko's pursuit of honor stops him from accepting it yet. Aang returns the totem, and Koh, surprisingly, keeps his word and returns every soul he had taken.

Episodes 7 and 8: Yue's sacrifice and Iroh's blow against Zhao

Zhao tries to assassinate Zuko with an exploding boat, without success. At the Northern Water Tribe, Sokka falls for Princess Yue, who had met him before: through her connection to the Moon Spirit, she traveled the spirit realm in her dreams as a fox. Master Pakku tells Katara to train with the women, who are limited to healing. She confronts him, and though she loses their sparring match, she gains the village's respect and makes Pakku reconsider his views. At Kuruk's shrine, Aang hears how Kuruk spent his life battling spirits and hated Koh most for stealing the face of his beloved. Aang tells Katara he can't truly be the Avatar if he has to worry about her safety.

In the finale, Legends, Katara convinces Pakku that women can fight, letting the tribe's women join a battle for the first time in their history. Zhao learns that the water and moon spirits can take vulnerable mortal forms. Since waterbending is apparently sourced from the moon, he aims to kill it, using the hot air balloon to sneak in from behind, and kills the Moon Spirit in its fish form. With waterbending disabled, Aang puts his own needs aside and merges with the remaining water spirit to become a giant water monster, wiping out the ships. That would cost Aang his identity forever, so Yue, infused with the Moon Spirit as a child, kisses Sokka goodbye and gives that energy back, restoring the moon.

Meanwhile, Zuko and Zhao duel on a bridge, much like in the cartoon. Zhao reveals that Ozai used Zuko's banishment to motivate Azula, motivation that works as she uses her anger to generate lightning, one of her favorite moves in the original. The outcome differs here: Iroh deals the fatal blow to Zhao, instead of Zhao dying at the hands of Aang's water form. Pakku gives Katara water from the Oasis and his blessing as a master. Ozai then reveals the northern attack was a ruse to distract from bringing Omashu and Bumi to their knees with Azula's help, and the season ends with a fire sage tracking Sozin's Comet, which Ozai plans to use to finish Sozin's mission.

What season 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender looked set to bring

When the first season arrived, I expected a second season to visit Ba Sing Se, since Ozai names it as his next target after Omashu. With the story moving toward earthbending, I also expected it to follow many cues from the cartoon's second book, which means the arrival of the blind earthbending master Toph.

It would be amazing if the production got Dwayne Johnson to play The Boulder, since that character is a funny parody of The Rock. But whether or not that happens, I'm excited to see a live action Toph in motion, because Toph is my favorite of Aang's bending masters.