The definitive rewatch of Avatar: The Last Airbender begins in Season 2

I feel a little guilty about the way I look back Avatar: The last airbender.

I consider the show to be one of my favorite television series ever. Even as an adult, I’m impressed by the way the showrunners used Aang’s journey to defeat the Fire Nation to string together an entire tapestry of a world stricken by violence and injustice. The characters’ stories, such as Prince Zuko’s redemption, become tools to create a story that is both political and personal. Just the mention of it Avatar can create a flood of positive thoughts about why I love the series and want more. But despite all this, I have a hard time bringing myself to watch the vast majority of the show every time I rewatch it, and I end up skipping a lot of it. Whenever I rewatch the series, I start at Book 2, Episode 6, an episode called “The Blind Bandit.”

Here I admit – somewhat embarrassingly – that I started three reps from this exact point in the series. At first it didn’t start as a conscious choice. I would rewatch that particular episode because I always loved Toph as a character and just wanted to rewatch the episode where she joins the gang. I loved the action scenes and the thrill of seeing Toph in action for the first time, but I also appreciated the way she breaks away from her parents’ idea of ​​her being a helpless child. The point is that if you’re on the Avatar Rewatching Train, even if it’s just for that episode, it’s kind of hard to put down.

There’s just so much good stuff in this part of the series. Zuko struggles to find his own moral compass as he seeks shelter with an Earth Kingdom family and we get a glimpse into his childhood life. Princess Azula chases Aang on the back of a lizard, immediately instilling a renewed sense of fear and shortness of breath in Team Avatar. Aang finally learns how to earthbend. Before we know it, we’ll be at the Spirit Library episode, and so will you know I have to keep watching until Appa and Aang are reunited. It really is banger after banger.

I’m not saying that everything leading up to this is bad. Some of my favorite episodes arrive before Season 2, Episode 6. I love seeing Sokka’s ass kicked by the Kyoshi Warriors in the first season and Aang’s reunion with the bumbling King Bumi early in Season 2. But I can’t help but feel like the showrunners have really found the beating heart of the series. Aang’s mission to confront the Fire Nation comes with a heightened sense of direction as he learns earthbending and recruits comrades to fight during the upcoming solar eclipse. But even then, this part of the series shows us what sets Avatar apart as a truly great television series. Episodes like “The Tales of Ba Sing Se” don’t contribute much to the development of the plot, but they enrich the world with emotional portraits of the characters and creatures.

Image: Nickelodeon Animation Studio

Considering the importance of episodes like the aforementioned “Tales of Ba Sing Se” in Avatar, I feel a little guilty if I skip straight to the juicy stuff. But this is how I see it. Season 1 plants the seeds for many of the stories I love in the show and develops a much-needed foundation for understanding the world at large. The stories of characters like Zuko wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t see him running around as an angry teenager for so long, and I would never recommend a first viewer start in Season 2.

By the second season, however, we have a strong sense of what the world is like at this point, and we see the show really blossom and bear the fruits of so many points set up earlier in the story, even planting a plant. some new seeds of our own! So now when I start a repetition, I just start from there. I imagine I’d see something new if I rewatched it from the beginning of the series, but still I can’t help but feel that maybe, just maybe, I’ve intuitively stumbled upon the best way to to watch again. Avatar.