The Airbenders That SURVIVED the Air Nomad Genocide | Avatar Lore

in the third episode of The Last Airbender the southern air Temple we see Aang having to come to grips with the hard truth that his entire nation the air Nomads were completely wiped out in a genocide that his mentor and Father Figure Monk yatso Is Dead he is The Last Airbender all this in the very beginning of the story both The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra make it pretty abundantly clear that Eng his son tinsen and his children are the last of the Airbenders and the show doesn't really play this as a subtle fact I mean it's even in the title of the original show but what if I told you that that's actually not true that in reality not all of the Airbenders were wiped out that Aang in fact well he isn't The Last Airbender top things to give pretty good advice and great tea the key to both is proper aging the simple fact of the matter is a few Airbenders actually escape and this isn't some twisting of words it's completely canon in fact readers of The Last Airbender Comics will know that this was first revealed in the short comic strip relics which you can find in the book The Lost tales in the comic Eng discovers an old Airbender pendant in an earth Kingdom Market believing that this may be a sign of other Airbenders he explores the region and comes across an ancient Airbender site containing old relics this however ends up being a trap said by Admiral Zhao in an attempt which succeeds to capture Aang he reveals that the relics in the pendant were set up to lure the Avatar in the same tactic was used many years ago by fire lord sozin he says a few Airbenders that escaped the first assault were too hard to hunt down instead he laid traps for them in an old Avatar trading cards game we find two named airbending survivors Malu and afico and while the game isn't directly confirmed to be in Canon the two characters do demonstrate that the creators definitely intended a handful of Airbenders to survive the genocide now while afiko was eventually killed off by firelord sozen even after literally helping lead the firelord to the air temples to kill his own people I might add we're never really told exactly if Malu met the same fate though we do know that she lived in solitude in the mountains of the earth Kingdom and was supposed by the Earth Kingdom citizens to control the spirits and vanish at will both abilities from her airbending but how was it exactly that these few Airbenders managed to escape the first attacks well to understand that we first need to understand a little bit about the structure of air Nomad culture the first item is that all known air Nomads were Airbenders unlike the other nations there's no mention of any non-bending air Nomad prior to the hundred year war and even after the war one could argue that technically the air acolytes weren't necessarily air Nomads sure they followed the traditions and upheld the culture but they weren't aeronomeds in the sense that we're referring to so it's pretty safe to assume here that a non-bending air Nomad simply wasn't and isn't a thing I come seeking boring stories to take back to the spirit world [Music] now file that away because I have some evidence as to why that could be the case and also this will be an important Point later on air temples were also divided based on gender with the boys residing in the Southern and Northern temples in the girls in the Western and Eastern temples although all Airbenders eventually did come to the Eastern Temple to bond air bison however while the Airbenders did live in their temples they also traveled quite often following their nomadic Traditions Aang often talks about his travels to the Fire Nation the desert and the Earth Kingdom and even the other air temples now when the hundred year war came about and the Fire Nation began their assault on the air Nomads their first strike was specifically directed on the air temples as we see in the episode The Southern air Temple so all the air Nomads outside the temples would have evaded the first attack right it's absolutely likely that these Airbenders would have heard of this massive genocide that is occurring on their people and so use the same tactic that we see many many persecuted peoples throughout real world history using they hid in Blended in with Society it's commonly thought the majority of the surviving aeronomads hid in the northern mountains of the earth Kingdom which was also the Fire Nation colonies which is also near udao and UA Bay we find Malu one of the name survivors doing this exact thing on an interesting side note which will become more relevant later in book 3 of Legend of Korra Korra and Tenzin set off in search of new Airbenders and actually end up finding the majority of these binders in the exact same area which by this time is the United Republic anyway as Josh stated sozin tried to capture and kill as many of these survivors as he possibly get his hands on and so set up these air Nomad Relic traps all around the earth Kingdom and it's pretty clear that the Fire Nation truly believed that they had killed every last one of the Airbenders except Aang yet I don't believe that was totally true while these traps certainly work to capture a number of these survivors news would have most definitely spread about these traps and the remaining handful of Airbenders would have certainly avoided them so airbrenders definitely survived the first perch however the conclusion does raise one burning question and that is well where'd they all go during Avatar in The Last Airbender there's zero mention of any Airbenders in the world the Legend of Korra takes place 70 years after the end of The 100 Year War and by this time you would think if there were any Airbenders left they would have revealed themselves 70 years after the threat to their lives is gone Legend of Korra is pretty clear in stating that Tenzin and his three children are the only Airbenders left in the world so what happened well the most probable answer is that they would have died off in the 100 Year span between the genocide and the end of the war that we see in Last Airbender and especially in the 170 years between the genocide and when Korra begins but what about their descendants it's pretty unlikely that none of them would have had children or even grandchildren when the Airbenders settled they likely would have had families of their own so where are these descendants when they have inherited their parents bending abilities well in order to answer that question we need to understand how bending and Works while not outrightly stated in either show the creators have confirmed that bending works by the user controlling the flow of chi within their own body and extending it outward reaching for the element they wish to manipulate control of the elements also depends heavily on the spirituality of the Bender the more attuned spiritually abander is the stronger they are aeronomats had a huge emphasis on spirituality more so than any other nation and this is most likely the case for why all Air Nomads were Benders since the entire nation itself is so spiritually attuned every one person grows up in an environment that's hyper focused on one's spirituality not only did the nation itself rely on spirituality but airbending in of itself depends greatly on it more so than any other element this is especially demonstrated through genera's spiritual projection abilities and also Zahir and Guru lahima's abilities to fly both being Feats that depend more so on the spirituality of the binder not just connection to one's change check out my latest invention an airbender finder wait that can find Airbenders [Music] uh I think it's broken it's not broken she needs to air bend into it how else do you expect the thing to work so how does this answer why there were no Airbenders after the Hundred Year War following the logic of a Benders and especially an airbender spiritual connection it's highly plausible that the descendants of the surviving Airbenders would have lost that special connection they're living in a ward-torn world where we see spirituality in one's connection to it almost completely ignored and lost hence why we don't see any Airbenders by the time the hundred year war ends now by the time Legend of Korra comes about we still don't see any Airbenders until after a harmonic convergence and after that there's a sudden Resurgence of all these Airbenders one interesting thing to note is that all of these new Airbenders pop up around the Fire Nation colonies which is now the United Republic which is also exactly where most of the original airbending survivors settled it's never stated directly why all of a sudden we find these random non-benders starting to manifest airbending yet when you think about the timing and place it doesn't seem too far off to assume that maybe these new Airbenders were the descendants of the surviving air Nomads as previously mentioned these descendants wouldn't possess the capability to airbend because of their lack of spiritual connection but harmonic convergence bringing about this huge spiritual shift in the world not to mention Korra opening both Spirit portals combining the spirit and Mortal worlds together may have been the exact spiritual shift that was needed to awaken the airbending powers in these non-vendors this actually makes complete sense when you consider Aang's son boomi a non-bender and the son of an air Nomad Survivor who suddenly developed airbending abilities after harmonic convergence as stated in the show boomi seemed to be a late bloomer when it came to airbending this could have been partly due to the fact that Aang didn't exactly give boomi the attention or even the spiritual training he needed to develop his abilities instead it was diverted all to Tenzin who had already developed his abilities wait until I tell Mom she's gonna love this and throughout Cora it's definitely shown that Boogie did indeed have a stronger connection to the spirit world than tenzen did but it wasn't only boomi who developed his abilities so here the villain in book 3 was also shown to have manifested these new air bending skills and he actually puts a pretty large hole in this Theory following the theory assumes that sahir had air-bending ancestors which is quite possible yet the theory also makes the assumption that none of the descendants of aerome has developed their bending because of a lack of spiritual connection now Zahir is clearly shown to have a spiritual connection already with his seemingly infinite knowledge of Guru lahima's teaching in the aeronomat culture Guru lock shmir Guru lahima right you know I could never keep all those gurus straight and this leads one to wonder why he wouldn't have developed his airbending sooner any number of answers could be given not of all which are exactly believable one suggests that sahir originally did have air bending and was even trained by Aang himself yet at some point his bending was removed by Aang like he did to Yacon and ozai maybe because of his alignment with the Red Lotus really though I can't exactly see how this would have been the case I feel like this most definitely would have been mentioned somewhere in the show if that was true another thought is that maybe Zahir wasn't as spiritually connected prior to being locked away for 13 years and maybe during his time in jail he studied Guru lahima and sought spiritual enlightenment while this argument has more merits I can't really see why the Red Lotus would allow this to occur knowing how dangerous and Powerful is to hear already is as a non-bender the most plausible reasoning I can find is that even though Zahir was spiritually in tune just like boomi was he still wasn't as connected as the bending required not being trained as Tenzin had been or even the other Airbenders prior to the genocide and some evidence for this is the fact that Zahir was never shown to enter the spirit world before harmonic convergence afterward however we see him entering jaipal's Grove to talk to Korra he even guides Korra into the spirit world himself in book four but we never see him doing any of this before harmonic convergence harmonic convergence eventually gave him that spiritual shift which could also be a possible explanation as to why his airbending was so much more advanced than the other Newfound Benders anyway let me know what you think of these thoughts this was super fun for me to write even though this isn't exactly my usual type of content I'm really wanting to have more video essays theories and these interesting lore videos in the future I'm hoping to get a good mix of this type of content and writing help well I hope this gave you some interesting new knowledge on Airbenders in this universe and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: The Art of Storytelling - Saige J. Oliver

Views: 279,416

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Id: -8RyB71cDqY

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 22 2023