The Final Avatar The Last Airbender Iceberg Explained

me I I want the problem it's me hello everybody and welcome to today's Iceberg video you know those those memes that were super popular like a year ago and I'm I'm doing one now yeah I'm so good at my job but if you don't know how an iceberg video works then we start at the top with the light-hearted or things that you might know and then we work our way down into the dark depths of the lore and theories and things you might not have ever heard of the bizarre and weird as we explore the the depths of avatar The Last Airbender and I am in the unique position you might say of being the originator of some of the things that you might find on these icebergs uh having been doing this job talking about this for years this is my life and this video by the way was kindly sponsored by curiositystream and nebula a thing that I am a part of which is really cool I've got a whole series of videos called Beyond writing accompanying my writing series on here that is four episodes up already you can go check them out by clicking the link in the description below and for the record by signing up you get both curiosity stream and nebula together so let's start right at the top kiyoshi made the dialy yes you know everyone's favorite barsing say secret police Kyoshi looked at them and was like you know what that's a great idea this is because the story of Marsing say is basically just French history it's a bunch of peasant revolts and so one time the peasants were revolting the earth king demanded that kiyoshi put them down and you know Kyoshi she was like No And she single-handedly smashed the earth king but she made a compromise she said all right you're going to treat these people better but I'm gonna create the daily who are gonna predict the cultural heritage of basing say and create order in the city and you know she later said ah well yeah if I knew what they were gonna become I never would have done it but she also said right from the start that they were gonna be so silent precise and feared by all I mean she kinda knew what she was doing and to be clear she modeled the Dai Lee on zhenzu's tactics his subterfusion networking his strategies and to be clear zhenzu is not like a hero in this book he is a brutal powerful man next up we have the classic mystery what happened to Zuko's mother famously in the series she vanished with virtually no explanation and at the end of the series it ends on a cliffhanger with him going to ozai and saying hey where is my mother well we get those answers in the comic book the search and to be honest I really like it very much basically she agrees to murder Fire Lord azulon and Forge a will that puts Ozil on the throne instead of iro right after that moment where zulon's all like uh you will know the pain of losing a firstborn son and as part of it she was banished now her story is basically she was in love with this guy called ikim when the fire lord turned up and said hey I like that one that one's mine now and then she had to marry him and was forced to never see I came again but then when she got banished she went back to him and they changed their faces with this actually really cool Spirit called the mother of faces completely lost all of her memories all of her past and then became a new person called Noriko Zuko and Azula went to go and find her and they were like oh hey this is my mom now I suppose and then we're going to leave her as is but then she got her Memories Back and decided to become Ursa again I don't like this very much because I don't know I just wiping the memories I didn't really feel like the right answer to go for in my opinion but then we have the Avatar equivalent of did you know Vigo Morrison broke his toe when he kicks that helmet those screams are real because did you know that Momo was meant to be the reincarnated gyotso but it never really made it into the series but you can see the design there he even LED and two gyotso's body there might have been some spiritual connection there moving a little bit down we have Zuko's hair evolution this is a design animation Quirk and there's just thousands of these I can make endless numbers of videos of little details like this that just give the show a little bit more depth basically Zuko's hair reflects his character development because of the starters here is tightly bound up and that Fire Nation symbolic haircut to reflect how he is totally wrapped up in the propaganda and ideology of the Fire Nation but at the start of season 2 he cuts it off to symbolize him cutting ties with the Fire Nation he grows it out and he becomes loose he becomes someone else it's his character growth as he becomes someone else but then he goes back to the fire Nations here returns to that you know being kept inside that that that clasp but there are little little straggly bits of here around it to reflect that yeah maybe he's fitting in but it's not all not all perfect then after he faces his father he puts down the class again he leaves behind the Fire Nation as it is and he grows out these beautiful free luscious box that I could never have he has Freer than he has ever been before and then at the end and throughout the comics we see that he has a mixture between being loose and tied up he's found a balance between his loyalty to the Fire Nation and of course who he knows that he should be who does he want to be personally that's kind of his whole art then we have one of the great perplexing Mysteries I've never been able to figure out why is azula's fire blue uh it's because it's hot that's why no okay symbolically uh you could say that it's because of perfection when she fire bins you know she is very very precise she'll send off single bolts every single Arc of Fire will be very very deliberate nothing's chaotic about her and so you could say that you know like the blue flames is about her perfectionism you know not one hair out of place it is a perfect flame and certainly not a way for the enemies to distinguish between Zuko and azula's Fire the ear no man survived this one is pretty well known by now not all of them were wiped out and that single attack on the temples I mean after all that'd be virtually impossible and they're Nomads they're wandering throughout the world the uh comic relics does confirm that the Fire Nation would send out death squads basically to lure inner meds into traps with relics and then trap and kill them but of course this does raise some perplexing questions like if some of them survived did any of them survive long enough to have a child and if so where is their air bending you know uh well there is some evidence to suggest that uh being able to live in a nomad Community to live the internet lifestyle uh raises the chance of you having air bending and likewise it could decrease it so if they're not raised in their environment then potentially they just never develop that skill it does also fit in with another theory the idea that pretty much all of the Airbenders that appeared after harmonic convergence in Cora because a bunch just suddenly appear after this big magical event they might be the descendants of those ear Nomads who survived now if you didn't know there was an avatar trading card game I actually have a copy of it somewhere and there were two ear Nomad characters in that there was afico the betrayer and Malu afico was an airbender who betrayed the nomads and told the Fire Nation when and where to attack and he was also murdered too eventually Malu survived and became kind of this lone spirit in the mountains but to be clear the training card game is not canon these things don't really matter Susan's weird fire bending it's a tiny little detail only on screen for a few seconds but in the episode The Avatar and the fire lord you can see soulzen doing something that looks exactly like water bending or air bending is animated in the series he's doing something to this lava right in real quality what he's actually doing is he is taking the heat out of the lava and turning it into like a cooler Stone this is a visual representation of that because we do see throughout the series that firebenders can put heat into or take heat out of things like iro hates his tea Without fire bending this is just a more extreme version of that this is seemingly a high level fire bending skill in fact it even has the exact same technique as Lightning redirection if you actually look at it he's got the same posture even down to the two fingers he's taking the energy in through his stomach and passing it out the other side into the sky and it tells us a bit more about how thigh bending and its fundamentals is about kind of the management of energy not just fire and given this is heavily dependent on water bending techniques it is entirely possible that it was lost as an ability across the Hundred Year War as the Fire Nation came to believe in their own superiority and neglect knowledge coming from other nations the Fire Nation equals Imperial Japan all I'll say is watch out for my next video original tough now tough's character was originally meant to be a guy and more like the boulder or toff's character in The imba Island players this hyper masculine big muscly do this is before they came up with the idea of a blind girl someone who is virtually the entire opposite of everything they were thinking and the best decision they possibly could have made but that's the simple the well-known the easy the light-hearted let's move down a layer soccer is White Lotus at the end of the episode soccer's Master he has given a single pie show tile a White Lotus this is the universal symbol for the White Lotus Society a a world spanning organization of the most powerful wisest strongest people on the planet all trying to ensure that things don't go to hell the group wonders why he was given this and supposedly it's just something to remember him by but it could be an initiation into the order and you've got to think about what this episode is about right it's about soccer finding his place recognizing his own value his own skills and considering he is all about coordinating other people about planning about thinking outside the box soccer is textbook White Lotus and pienda tells them you know you are worthy more worthy than any other man I have ever trained but soccer's death has always been a mystery we know he was deeply involved with creating this post-war world and that is exactly what the White Lotus organization was doing as well and being involved in the White Lotus would bring him up against any number of powerful enemies one of whom could have killed him glass bending I made a video ages ago about this and I actually can't remember if I said I thought glass bending was possible or not but it is the books confirm it the shards of glass on her skin plucked themselves out under the force of Earth bending and balled into a floating clump it's actually not in the book it's my phone youtubing 101 if they're reading from a book They're filthy Liars but glass bending does come into kind of the difficulties in defining bending and I made a video on this called is flesh bending possible because for some reason people are goddamn obsessed with the idea that earthbenders should be able to like bend the iron in our blood or something makes me angry go watch the video Guru patique is Lao ghee this is a fascinating Theory okay now Guru patik is said to be around a 150 years old when we meet him in Avatar he tells Aang that he was a personal friend of mankyatso and a spiritual companion to the internet but what does that really mean right supposedly he was born 50 years before the Enderman genocide but he may well be a lot older than that there is a man in the Kyoshi novels called Lao ghee he appears like a quirky loner often friendly often lazy but in truth he's hinted to have gained the secret of immortality over here the tragedy the Lions being several thousand years old at the point in the story he's described as having a wispy white beard wearing ragged clothes that conceal corded muscle with white hair wiry arms and bony fingers can you get an even more exact description of Guru patig I don't think so but even more than that laoghi says he subscribes to the philosophy of a man called Guru shoken an airbender who believes that you must let go of pity small things you can't let the Judgment or guilt of others control you at all and that included he specifically mentions letting go of loved ones he tells kiyoshi to let go of the woman she loves just the same as batik tells Aang to let go of Katara the philosophy is all about realizing your own potential your destiny by cutting yourself off from anything else around you honestly I don't just think this is likely I reckon this was intended to be Canon but this also means that Guru patik is hiding a dark past see laoghi wasn't just a philosopher a Wandering criminal like he says in the books he was an assassin and a moral one concerned with holding the world to be the way he thinks it should be supposedly dealing out Justice more than caring about anyone else he murdered his children in the name of justice but he lets Mass murderers walk free because they're supposedly good politicians perhaps gouda fatigue had a change of heart in those hundreds of years but we will never know I actually thought that I came up with this Theory because I put this all together on my own but then I looked it up and a bunch of other people had also thought of it oh well arpa understands human speech now throughout the series Arbor has a bunch of moments where he understands incredibly complicated instructions and responds in ways that a human would as if he has a very real awareness of what people are talking about and this is Momo my cat how are you today Momo so we have scenes written from Momo's perspective don't we and all we hear is just gibberish right does not understand human speech arpa's seems though perfectly clear 100 English but secondly Sky bison are literally magic okay they're just Sky wizards they can air bend that is Magic there is a suggestion that they might be part spirit in some way I mean dragons are certainly more intelligent they are also clearly more than animals why not Skye bison what are the chances that they are connected to the spirit world and why other animals aren't too I I quite like that idea when you look at the other original Benders the moon the ocean the dragons the even the lion turtles bestowing the elements themselves they're so much more than animals I love the idea that the sky bison and bajimos are intelligent but intelligent in a different way to humanity that beyond all of the floof and Cuddles they have a deep tie to the spiritual World there own wisdom that we never quite truly see that we can't even possibly comprehend just like the lion turtles but it gets even weirder because of one little detail that's thrown away that barely anyone even thinks about there is no bending in the spirit world why is that there are huge spiritual Dimensions to bending powers like water bending and lightning redirection and air bending as a whole like literally just living in a spiritual Community meant that every single child born into it was born an airbender it's not a perfect correlation like ozai is of course one of the most powerful Benders ever but is very much not a spiritual person but that relationship is there and bending ability is in a way an expression of someone's relationship with the spirit world and if that's the case where does that leave our Sky bison especially given how important it is to air bending specifically what what what do you what do you think Momo what what do you do you think what do you think do you think anything giatso is a Murderer let's think about how we found his body there are enough dead Fire Nation soldiers around him to re-carpet his entire house okay and let me remind you when they attacked him this was Comet super powered firebenders they are not normal firebenders how did he kill them all and how did he kill them all here specifically in this area you know you could kind of understand him killing them one by one as he as vades and escapes and whatever but all right here at this moment well the famous fan Theory suggests that he basically sucked all of the air out of the room vacuumed it all and this does two things number one it suffocates the firebenders but number two it kills their fire bending no matter how powerful full it is it's got no oxygen to burn and this was considered pretty nothing until we see Zahir do it in Legend of Korra he creates a vacuum around the earth Queen's head sucks out the air and she dies gyotso may have done that on a larger scale I quite like this idea because it makes him more Mythic and I have to imagine that he killed all of these firebenders at once in this place and I'm struggling to feel how we might have otherwise done that twin avatars this is a fan theory that has been around for ages or not a fan Theory it's just a fan I idea a fan thought which is basically hey what if there were there were twin avatars you know two of them the Avatar Spirit got split and the itch had two elements and uh warmth what an idea um not gonna happen the Aang's parent episode apparently there was meant to be an episode about Aang's parents or that backstory but I I think this might be a myth I couldn't find any confirmation from a real Source saying this I could only find other people talking about it I did however find real confirmation from one of the writers that there was meant to be an iro backstory and we just never got it but even then an episode about Aang's parents would be really weird because like innomeds don't have family units the way that we imagine them Zuko says you know hey you were raised by monks like that is common knowledge that the children in the animates get sent to the temples and are kind of raised by a community of other monks I'm not even sure what the episode would kind of be about you know there's no Gap in the series that kind of Demands it like Aang doesn't even really seem to think about it all that much original Airbenders this has been an old argument in the fandom for years basically in the original series we were told that the original Benders were the moon in the ocean in case of water uh the badger moles the sky bison the dragons great cool but then in Legend of Korra we find out pretty concretely that the lion turtles you know that that did this and then they gave people bending and people didn't really like this I also have talked extensively about why I don't like these episodes go watch that but there is technically a law answer right uh the line Turtles gave people the elements but these creatures taught them bending it's like giving someone a paintbrush versus actually teaching them how to paint bending is an art and look I don't like the answer but it is the case I've always so much more preferred the idea that like these people discovered bending by being super attuned to the world around them you know being spiritually involved in the Earth or the the air or the water or or you know the fire in the Sun ah oh well Kyoshi lived for 230 years this was a mistake the creators didn't do the maths and she just ended up super old there's a couple of them like this but they just came up with an excuse they said oh no no no no no no no we we totally intended that uh kiyoshi lived that long because of her uh Advanced Chi Fields yes that personally I love this I love that they didn't Rick on it I love that it makes Kyoshi more Mythic I love that it fits in with how you know in some Eastern religions Mastery over your body even allows you to control your aging it means you don't have to eat you have to drink right and you can see this a little bit with Guru patik as well you know he is super ancient but incredibly healthy and has done that because he seems to have absolute control over his Chi and likewise Kyoshi seems to extend her own life but those are all on the surface those are all out in the open for people to see now we have to go into the dark depths because most of the iceberg lives under the ocean let us discover its Secrets dragons are from the spirit world this is actually a theory of mine they are magical and clearly in touch with the spiritual side of fire binning but here is the kick up there is no Sun Spirit in the entirety of the Avatar Mythos we've got a spirit for the moon for the ocean for identity but no Sun Spirit why is that especially when the sun Warriors the first fire-bending civilization whose entire you know city is built around framing the sunset where is it but I pose to you that they are the sun Spirits the race of dragons themselves after all if Tui and La the moon and ocean could cross over to the mortal world and become subject to Mortal rules then why not the Sun as well and on top of this in Legend of Korra we see in the communities of spirits when they're all hanging out in this world the dragons are amongst them they are one of them and this is to say nothing of how the Sun Warriors are based on the Aztecs and Mayans who have a sun god at the center of their mythology and guess what the sun Warriors have at the center of theirs dragons I put this Theory so high because I think it's probably one of the best supported theories out there which given I came up with it sounds sounds like really arrogant but uh iro is a war criminal you might know iro as a Calm tea loving wise old man with no skeletons in his closet you would be wrong Ira was a general right at the height of Fire Nation power he himself was responsible for the siege of basing say but he was all in on the glorification of War and the Fire Nation right up until his son died now being a general laying Siege does not make you a world criminal but we do not know what else he did and this is the same fire nation that systematically hunted down civilians in the southern water tribe something that I wrote as the second ranking member of the Fire Nation royalty would surely know or at least would have approved of or not proved of that would have approved of other things and the Avatar role-playing rule book which came out this year does also show us that the Fire Nation military as an institution was doing war crimes left right and Center I mean fination soldiers were committing war crimes like children collate Halloween candy it's always terrible but they get a lot of them right we don't have any evidence yet but I'm sure it is out there but if we are talking about war criminals that is a term we have made up for our world but one class of them that we tend to prosecute at things like the Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo trials are crimes against peace people who instigate or perpetuate War iro would have fallen into that even if he didn't start the war zhen Zoo now this is one of my favorite characters in the entirety of the Avatar Mythos uh he is a politicking manipulating brutal powerful incredibly intelligent great character that appears in the kiyoshi novels he was a friend of Avatar kuruk before kuruk died and he got spiteful he said all right fine if the Avatar's not going to be around to handle all of the chaos in the world then I'll do it myself and he built up this network which involved subterfuge and murder and assassination and control others and as part of it he aimed to control who trained the Avatar to turn the Avatar into a pawn of his own and if you look at his story he is arguably responsible for a lot of the way that the world has turned out for the record janzu had thousands of surrendered prisoners of War dig a hole in the ground saying that the ones who did it fastest will be dealt with mercifully and then he buried them all alive he's ruthless but a fascinating and Brilliant character next Theory UA should have been the Avatar this is not my favorite Theory at all uh it basically says that because UA was meant to be the Avatar but Aang throws himself and delayed his death UA was born without kind of like an extra Spirit the Avatar spirit that she was meant to have so the moon had to step in and fill the Gap I don't like this theory for a couple of reasons one I think it takes away some of the Thematic resonance that we see in the siege of the north you know when it's all about UA giving her life and then her giving life back to the moon it's about that intimate connection but two um it makes no sense it raises some really weird questions about like philosophical determinism in Avatar that the Avatar Spirit knows who it's going to reincarnate into and has known it for thousands of years in advance and that that in turn means that person has to be born so a bunch of other things are already predetermined but then again there is like the concept of Destiny but then for some reason Aang freezing himself wasn't part of the plan that that action was somehow completely out of the blue for the Avatar Sprint they're like well screw this what the hell am I meant to do now not to say that Aang was like predetermined to die at that certain age there are concepts of a fate and destiny written into the series but I I don't think it works in this way all right let's just get all the UA theories out of the way UA a sent the meteor in soccer's Master a meteor comes out of the sky and then he ends up turning that into space sword my light went out you'll all have to deal basically this Theory says that because follow me closely because the Moon is from space and the asteroid is from space then that must mean that UA saw that soccer was feeling down and not really happening at this place a space sword as the theory now UA does intervene sometimes she becomes a storm to save Aang once but this is not it soccer and tsuki boned and this one is Canon and I love it in the episode The Southern Raider Zuko walks into soccer's tent only to find him incredibly willing and ready to lay down the pipe for Suki then in the morning soccer is wearing this wreath which in Hawaiian culture I believe symbolically represents that they have consummated Kaya equals Katara now if you didn't know katara's original name was meant to be Kaya but some other company had the rights to it so they had to change it you can actually uh see that Katara is named Kaya in the uneared pilot episode but then when Legend of Korra came out they could use it they had the rights to it now and so they named engs uh kid Kaya the water bender and she is a lesbian you ever hear the tragedy of Kaya the lesbian it's a little bonus tidbit for you soccer died fighting The Red Lotus we don't know how soccer died it's one of those Mysteries we know he was around 80. I mean he was old and it was around the time either just before Cora was born or when she was very young but something interesting happened when Cora was just an infant the Red Lotus tried to kidnap her and if soccer is part of the White Lotus then this could even be symbolically resonant that the Red Lotus split off after the White Lotus emerges into the open with soccer leading it in part and then and after contending with the Splinter Group his entire life he gives up his life in order to preserve its Mission and protect is it a coincidence that these two things happened around exactly the same time I don't know it's a weird thing though to not mention when talking about the Red Lotus that you know uh he gave up his life defending you at least not explicitly it could have happened off the page and there are important story beats in Avatar that have happened off page before need I remind you of how they clarified that some Airbenders did in fact survive Aang is a mon when Legend of Korra was first airing we had no idea who was behind that mask and there was all sorts of speculation about who it might be and so was Rife with speculation but perhaps the most popular theory was that behind that mask was an old grizzled egg this was fueled by a single image that popped up across the forums with little explanation supposedly as a leak of future episodes of of Amman removing his mask and revealing Aang's face see we knew by this point that Aang had supposedly died pretty young but we didn't know how it was a bit of a mystery it was strange that it hadn't been communicated at all and of course a mon could remove bending and the only other person who was even known to be able to do that was Aang The Theory went on to suggest that after a long life of being the most powerful Bender in the world Aang came to realize that bending was a Scourge on the world and that he could remove it and save a lot of people suffering either that or Aang did die but only part of the Avatar Spirit moved on into Korra and that was why she couldn't air bend because the air bending part hadn't moved on yet and it was still Aang moving around being him on and so Oman was a spirit of sorts and to be honest it's not the worst Theory especially with the knowledge that we had at the time and credit where credit is due that image which of course did turn out to be fake was really well put together it looked exactly like the animation style in the series it would have been an interesting twist to play with that potentially it ends with Aang dying and moving on the last of the spirit moving into Cora and allowing her to airbend but I think a lot of people would have been really frustrated with what they did to Ang's character tough and soccer babies we have no idea who Toff had kids with and so this has been endless fertile ground for speculation and theorizing and the number one name that rises to the top every time is soccer supported by a few things number one tough pairs a crush on soccer in the series number two soccer doesn't seemingly have any kids or concrete family of his own Left Behind which means that there's a nice gap for them to fill with the soo Yin and Lin but number three and this is the most compelling reason in my opinion uh zaofu the the metal bending City represents kind of a combination between Toff and soccer pretty well you know middle bending and Ingenuity and creativity and thinking outside the box but there are also a couple of problems with this Theory soccer probably died late enough that Soo Yin would definitely remember her dad said and for some reason never really brings it up in the entire series it's also heavily implied that he wasn't around as a father for the girls when they were little Toff does mention a man by the name of Kanto which could be a fire nation Earth Kingdom or water tribe man but she says that it doesn't really work out and that name could easily be a cover for someone else she's trying to hide and Toff having a crush on soccer doesn't really mean that much when she also had a crush on Zuko and that does not mean that she gave birth to Azumi another candidate is possibly satoru a an inventor guy that only appears in the comics he kind of hits it off a bit with Toff but he also has wavy here which is very similar to soo yin's but my friends let us delve even deeper to another layer of the iceberg with zutara works better to be honest romantic chemistry is not one of Avatar's strong points some people say that Aang and Katara have the chemistry of noble gases this ship has been around for ages ever since the series came out and perhaps for some people it's because there's more narrative depth to it but at least half of the attraction is the tall dark handsome you know man sweeping the girl up it's a Trope we've seen in a million stories let's just be on this door what is kind of the Thematic symmetry of fire and water and blue and red character Opposites Attract and them both having traumatic pasts with the Fire Nation with their mother which they help each other get over and zutara was thrown around by the writers at some point in early development but I mean Zuko is 16 Katara is 14 and they really did not have enough time with each other in the series and in my opinion I think that there's something very beautiful about deep friendships where people can change each other without it necessarily needing to be romantic so well yeah I can see that perhaps Aang and Katara choosing each other didn't have as much narrative or thematic meaning or depth as perhaps Zuko and Katara choosing one another might have meant uh but I don't think that it would have been the right way to end the series energy bending was bad this is another favorite little bit of commentary about the series that you see popping up from time to time and it's not an unfair criticism you can read about how basically the creators didn't have any idea how they were going to end the series you know with Aang defeating ozai until the final season even perhaps kind of the latter half of the final season and they were like oh crap how are we gonna get out of this without him killing him they had written themselves into a corner and this was one short way out of it because to be honest the lion turtles were not well foreshadowed them being shown in a couple of episodes is not the same thing as setting up energy bending as a concept as a way to resolve the conflict of the series calling a deus ex machina is not an unfair interpretation especially because the finale is set up around this point of tension of is ain't going to choose himself and Let ozai Live or choose the world and kill him and energy bending was an easy way out of that dilemma in reality I think of energy bending as a relatively poorly executed of something thematic they were trying to do because if you read Aang's Ark and him in his role in the series as him continually telling everyone around him there is always another way there you don't have to choose violence you don't have to choose killing and everyone else seems to be like no at some point do you do except for Aang Aang's the only one in the entire series who keeps on insisting that right if you look at it on a thematic level then that is Aang's ideology manifesting in a very real way a way that only he would have ever seen because other people are just too blind to the idea that you can even find other ways out a lot of the time because alternatively the Thematic meaning is that Ang was wrong and the world is so much darker than we thought and if you look at the story of Avatar as people repeatedly telling Aang that he has to let go of parts of himself most iconically in the Avatar state that is him literally losing control and becoming all-powerful but he rejects that power he doesn't like that power then with Guru patik he chooses to keep a hold of Katara rather than become this automaton with no real Earthly attachment then this is validation of that decision that there is power in staying true to yourself which is why the real climax in the fight against ozai is actually when Aang is about to kill him in the Avatar State he's got all the four elements and you and your forefathers of devastated the balance of this world and he doesn't he steps out of the Avatar State he he chooses another way this isn't and giving in but him resisting the power that everyone tells him he should take up and use and there's meant to be something incredible to that that's what energy bending is kinda meant to mean and I think that they just did not do that at all very well to put it very simply energy bending is meant to be a manifestation of Aang's Spirit his will his conviction his unbendable morality and the tension is meant to be about whether he gives in to this draw of power that everyone else is telling him he should take that ozai even mocks him for not taking even with all the power in the world you are still weak but as I said not very well executed I don't think this was communicated at all really iro is half dragon this one again kind of originates with me and it builds on that dragons are from the spirit world theory because I mean it's been an age-old question how did Ira get into the spirit world how did he see the spirits that other people could not in the real world well my over convoluted answer is that he might be half dragon Spirit after all we're told that iro found and killed The Last Dragon but he didn't so what did he do instead did he just leave them or did potentially they give him a part of their spirit and that's why he is able to transcend into the spirit world when he dies maybe either that or he was just super spiritually attuned Which is far far more likely Thai Lee secret Airbender this is perhaps the most popular and a common theory out there and there's something to it she has gray eyes something associated only with Airbenders like Aang has and I genetics are a big thing in the Avatar World there are a lot more indicative a lot more concrete a lot less random than our world they work quite a bit differently and of course she moves a little bit like an airbender which I suppose uh but more importantly um in the Avatar role-playing rule book there's a bunch of new law and we find out that the Fire Nation Noble houses got really in on inner man philosophy Before the War Began so it's not inconceivable that some of them even hand in omad children in fact phylord Susan's sister was really into enomad culture so potentially there was some kind of Secret In Nomad sect within the Fire Nation Noble houses and that got transliterated into tylies and you know watered-down version with her auras and spirituality that kind of sounds like pseudoir Nomad philosophy is this one true well she's probably not an airbender but she might have some ear Nomad Heritage way down the line I think it kind of takes away from Aang being The Last Airbender if there's like this other one out there at the same time but it's possible giantso is White Lotus this one is mostly just Vibes you know you kind of look at gyata and you go oh you know what he he kind of he kind of looks like he belongs in the White Lotus and he he does play The White Lotus tile on pie show games with Aang uh so uh maybe we do get some hints in the role-playing book that he was super interested in cooperation with other nations and stuff which I guess is White Lotus territory but no concrete confirmation it's it's all just Vibes do you Vibe at yourself do you feel do you feel the monkey yatso White Lotus Vibes iro is half knowledge Seeker so the knowledge Seekers were uh the little wolves that helped one XI Tong in his Library they they go across the world and they pick up Scrolls and information and bring it back to he who knows ten thousand things and um I came up with this Theory and that's why I can tell you that this theory is awful all it makes no sense whatsoever there's no evidence to it that video I I wish I never made it the the idea is that he's seen with a knowledge spirit and Legend of Korra and there's like maybe one fewer knowledge Spirits uh at the library when we see it in Legend of Korra again so maybe he he took it ah I came up with it in a rush and it very much shows and I came up with a better version of it like two weeks later with him being half dragon the dragon's being Spirits so no don't believe this one katara's mum died because of harm you know the the creepy old woman Puppeteer bloodbender yeah her so this theory has kind of two versions of it number one apparently Hammer escaped right and then she tipped off the firebenders that there was still a a a water bender in the southern water tribe and that's why they went and searched for this one that's why he says you know we got a tip that there's one more around there in order to throw them off her Trail and then they found katara's mum and they were like all right founder that's that's fine we've got Hammer again and that is why katara's mum died because harma was trying to throw them off her trail and I mean this has a bunch of problems like why why would why would the Fire Nation be like man we're looking for a 65 70 year old woman uh oh yes you you 30 year old you look like the right one but the second version of it is perhaps more believable why did the Fire Nation start killing them rather than taking prisoners and it may well be because they discovered they were too dangerous and so katara's Mom at least indirectly died because Hama broke out using blood bending we don't know I don't mind the second version of the theory but I like to think that the Fire Nation is more competent than they are in the first but this brings us to another level of the iceberg and we're getting deep into it now we're getting into to the Obscure stuff you might have never heard of the darker and the weirder stuff among hear me out is bathroom uh this is just a little known joke that's been circling around the community for a while basically there are quite a number of scenes in the first season of Legend of Korra where Cora is looking for the bathroom but she never finds one she we never actually get to see her in the bathroom and so the theory goes well she's also searching for a mom but a mon eludes her as well so henceforth therefore I'm on his bathroom because she's been searching for him the whole time it's quite incredible this one is of course absolutely Canon there's no doubt to it I I don't think I've actually ever seen a theory with more evidence than this Co killed the blue Spirit color the face stealer is a fan favorite probably the most fascinating Spirit we have had in the entire series and he only appears once and he promises we will meet again Avatar and then we never see him I was so pumped and we never did I that is the that is the biggest letdown of the series but there is a small moment where he is flashing through the faces that he has stolen and we see this blue uh mask type one with with white fangs and red eyes and it looks very very similar to the blue spirit mask that Zuko uses in in his disguise but he is the kicker the blue mask comes from this play Called Love amongst the dragons and in that play there is a dark water spirit who has this mask all right now there's a possibility that this story is like an old myth you know it's an old story that's been transliterated into a plane so this dark water spirit may have been a thing until Co stole its face and we do see that Co is perfectly capable of stealing Spirit faces as much as human faces I really like this one just because I love CO as a character and anything that I get on him is just awesome the Avatar fixes mistakes this is basically the idea that each incarnation of the Avatar fixes the mistakes of the previous one and I quite like this idea actually uh because you know fate and destiny are a thing in the Avatar world and this is like loose enough and undefined enough then it kind of plays into it and just a little detail way you know but let's look at the evidence Avatar Sato neglected other nations he basically worked in the fination administration his entire life then Yang chin like she was Universal she was loved by all of the world but she kinda arguably favored you know humans over spirits but then kuruk who came after well he fought dark Spirits he tried to restore the spiritual balance of the world but he was also kind of neglectful and lazy and maybe a little bit too careful free not as involved as he should have been and then we get kiyoshi who was incredibly involved perhaps who involved you know with the whole daily thing she was assertive and made controversial decisions but Roku who followed her while he was quite a bit more reserved he was you know more careful in the decisions he made as an avatar but he did also let the Hundred Year War happen he failed to stop it and then we have Ang who of course ended the Hundred Year War but you know he didn't manage to save the ear Nomads and then we've got Cora who brings them back or at least was there when they came back the evidence for this theory is kind of loose enough that you can believe what you want to you know if you want to think that this is the case then you can point to all of that and if you don't want to you can poke a bunch of holes in it but I like that it adds kind of a an arc to history in a way I like that there is there is a sense of some sort of design uh behind all of this which I think feeds a little bit into the themes of the series and if it is true then this might mean that the next Avatar is all about restoring the connection with past lives or something like that the lion turtles are Gods this is another one of mine and it's probably one of my favorite theories that I've come up with basically we get this little moment in Beginnings right where rather refers to the lion turtles as ancient one like the spirit of light and goodness and Order herself refers to a line Turtle as older than her but there are a couple of other hints number one obviously the world Turtle appears as the originator being in a ton of uh you know different mythologies the mythologies that Avatar heavily draws on but two uh there is this little line when the lion turtle is talking to Ang and he says in beginningless time we did this right and those words are just vague enough that we can interpret them however we want and I like to imagine it as they him having come from an era when there was no time that they exist outside of it turn gave birth to time symbolically in the tree of time which we see in Legend of Korra but what's really interesting about the tree of time is it is surrounded by this yin yang symbol right and the yin yang symbol are what rava and vatu also represent the light in the dark with a little bit of light in the dark and a little bit of dark in the light and we do know that spirits come into being progressively they weren't all there at the start so we can go we've got the lion turtles and then we had rather and vatu and then we had you know the mother of faces and and father glowworm and all these other really powerful Spirits until eventually we got to the little ones that we see scattered throughout the place that represent trees and forests but the lion turtles are at the top and of course they exist both outside the material world and outside the spiritual world the Shia shoe can't smell Aang when he he's on it because he's literally not on the planet Amman is spiritual all right so we never really got a concrete answer as to how a mon takes people's bending away but it's basically this you know water healing where uh you know Katara does all the magic water and it glows and stuff like that well what that is doing is it's helping the energy flow through the chi Paths of the body and water helps it do that Amman is pretty much doing the reverse of that he's using water healing to block people's chi paths and prevent them from bending but water healing is a spiritual ability as well and the more spiritual you are the better you are at it if that is the case then Amman must also be very very spiritual very in tune with himself and the world especially because I'm sure that doing the reverse it takes even more Precision even more power given he seems to be the only one one that can do it now he tells his followers that he was given the power to take away bending by a spirit and that's such a good story I I kind of wish that they went with that because there's so much more mythology to it but theoretically it could still be true yeah he is a water bender but this is a power that he was taught by a spirit I mean we saw that Zuko learns how to re-firebend a new type of fire bending from the dragons why not the same with this I love the idea that Amman even though we never really get to see it is the spiritual Powerhouse but here's the thing about icebergs right most of them are underwater and that applies to the World At Large as well most of it is ocean and we should learn a bit more about that world right and that is our world which is why you should watch a documentary by David Attenborough yeah the man himself called deep ocean and it explores the ecological world of the deep ocean and everything in it and its beauty and majesty and the amazing things that live under there and you know that you need to watch a David Attenborough documentary everyone does it's just a thing that you do okay and you can do that on curiosity stream which you can get access to by clicking the link down below but in addition to that by the way curiositystream has supported the service called nebula thing that us creators a bunch of YouTubers got together and made so that we didn't have to be beholden to like Google ads and things like that and it has all of our videos and I actually have a whole other series on there called Beyond writing which Builds on the writing stuff that I put on here and you get access to that as well so go watch depotion by David Attenborough on curiositystream and get access to nebula and that uh Beyond writing series it's basically nothing for an entire catalog of amazing educational documentaries and all of nebula which has all of our stuff amazing creators who you all know including me and by the way I wouldn't promote this if it wasn't really cheap you get all of this for 14.79 for the entire year that's 26 off right now only right now though click the link down in the description below the dropped fourth season yes despite the facts that the third season very much concludes the story apparently there was meant to be a fourth season at one point so Aaron has who is one of the head writers of the show is quoted to have said yes I always believed there would be a fourth season there was a moment in time when we all thought we would do a fourth season of Avatar then along cane M night though to be clear imageland wanted us to do a fourth season but Mike and Brian wanted to focus on the movie you can interpret the hell out of that if you want and that lost fourth season may have been what we eventually got in the comics with the problem with dealing with fination colonies and the search for Zuko as a mother we don't know instead uh maybe yeah yeah M Night shyaman's film ended up being made though that's definitely something actually not the tragedy of Zelda Aang eats meat uh yeah so this is in my opinion probably just an animation mistake there are a couple of little scenes in the series where we see Eng holding a a plate and there is very clearly like meat on the bone on it and we never see him eat it I'm pretty sure but it you could imply that maybe he has Ursa was abused Avatar is Rife with dark things that are just subtext or only hinted at but never fully shown and this is one of them we're given this one image in the comic smoke and Shadow where Ursa returns home to the Fire Nation Palace and she basically has a PTSD flashback it's one of my favorite depictions of it I think I've ever seen I encourage you to go watch my videos on azula's psychology and Zuko psychology where I discuss kind of their family Dynamic and more depth but we do see that he also explicitly threatens her with violence and I can definitely imagine that attitude being both sexual emotional physical all of those things together it is no doubt in my mind that that Ursa is a traumatized person but the comics do give Ursa a story where she eventually faces up to ozai and she kind of reasserts her own agency in a story that is very reminiscent of a lot of uh Survivor stories it's very very good I like that detail but this is definitely something that you might have potentially missed I I think that about as terrible things you can imagine happened to her probably did varrock is soccer's son now you have to look at all of the compelling evidence that there is for this Theory and that's very easy to lay on the table you'll be 100 convinced when I tell you what this evidence is which is of course that varric is a little bit like soccer that's it that's basically the entire theory that they're both inventors and funny and talk a little bit fast and again it's that fertile soil of soccer not having any family of his own and so you know what let's just slack a soccer parental label on it I need a meme where like all of the characters from Cora are in a car and like a fan slapping her you can fit so many soccer sex scenes in this new avatars look like past incarnations lovers and this theory has been around for a while now and it's mostly just Vibes like uh kiyoshi looks a little bit like a kuruk's wife and uh Aang looks a tad like roku's wife and Cora looks a little bit like Katara I guess connected to this is though another really funny Theory which is that the Avatar likes women because we have never had an example of where like an avatar ends up with a man though I'm pretty convinced that the people who have a real hard on for this Theory basically just have a strong brunette woman Kink and now they see two types of people in the world strong brunette women and everyone else again we descend deeper into the iceberg with Toff is a bad singer this is one that I just saw in the comments of my post and I found it funny so I wanted to include it basically canonically we know that bad Jamal's respond well to bad singing alright bad music all right we know that is true Toff has a great relationship with the badgemos henceforth therefore top is a bad singer you know what I'm I'm on board I'm on board what are you bending should have been more impressive so one of the things that people say about Legend of Korra is that they ruined bending somehow uh and part of that is that they don't like that it's faster and and flashier and bigger and better and whatever uh but here's the thing that is how bending was meant to be so when the original series was made the creators wanted it to be more like that but they just didn't have the budget animation particularly for water just wasn't up to scratch it just wasn't really capable of producing it in the way that we see it in quora that's why things in The Last Airbender are slower and smaller compared to Cora and if they had their way it would have been more like Korra Miyuki is a war criminal this is an old meme in the community that comes entirely from the fact that there is this one throwaway line uh where the herbalist says to Miyuki her cat you know the little fluffy cat in in the episode the blue Spirit uh she says did you get into trouble with the Fire Nation again and people have come up with Incredible stories about miyuki's Adventures except it gets even funnier when you look up the phrase Miyuki is a war criminal and Google gives you this answer she is believed to have murdered dozens of infants along with several accomplices Azula fire Priestess so in Legend of Korra comes to this island where she meets a bunch of fire seiji type people and one of them is this fire Priestess and some people think that this might be Azula for two reasons number one she's roughly as old as Azula would be at the time and two uh there were always plans and potentially they may still happen for Azula to have a Redemption Arc and that she would become more spiritual and and and stuff like that and and given we have very little information about what happened to Azula later on in her life it is Rife for speculation it's like soccer's loins activities all over again I don't think there's much to this one personally and I don't think that this would be a particularly interesting answer to what happened to Azula anyway The Darkest Day in fination History these words come up when soccer is researching a day to attack the Fire Nation any chances across the solar eclipse which is described as The Darkest Day in Fire Nation history but why was it described this way sure firebending stopped working but words like those are usually used to describe horrific tragedies massacres and genocides that stay in the minds of people for Generations if you look up The Darkest Day in American history you'll come across 911. if you look up The Darkest Day in Japanese history you'll come across the hiroshimuru Nagasaki bombings we know very little around what happened in this time but it was during an era of intense Civil War dynasties falling like flies left right and Center royal family members murdering each other in a storm of conspiracies it is noted though that around this time Fire Nation history and politics began to stabilize suggesting that perhaps this first solar eclipse was used to Cull enemies of the fire lord a horrific tragedy so terrible it could be used to take power and settle these feuds for Generations how many died to make that possible what dark packs with Spirits were made how many firebenders were murdered when those who were kept under their boot finally realized that they could overthrow them the next one down is that Animal Guides die with their Avatar this basically comes from one scene in the original series where Avatar Roku spirit guide Fang the dragon chooses to die with him in the volcanic eruption Spirit guides are kind of these animals that uh all avatars seem to end up with uh Avatar one had a kuribo Ang had arpa uh Cora had Naga Roku had Fang it does seem like this isn't just like a random connection with an animal it's deeply spiritual it's profound in a way that other people that aren't the Avatar don't really get to have the idea being that they are so deeply connected that they cannot live without each other and I like this one I think it adds a nice Dimension to that relationship but this does mean that at the end of it all Aang an upper went on to live together forever just like Fang and Roku did how exactly tell me did boomi become king you don't know no now that is anyone else there is no indication in that flashback that boomi was either of Royal Blood and Aang certainly doesn't recognize him as royalty at all the fact is when Aang knew him he mustn't have been considered royalty now there are any number of ways that monarchs can Ascend to the throne they can be elected chosen by the people or Nobles but there's no evidence that this happens in omashu nor anywhere in the earth Kingdom for that matter and in the Kyoshi novels we see that the king or queen of amashu has absolute power with no oversight whatsoever perhaps they are chosen by some sort of earth-bending contest that's why they have the pit and the challenges that boomi puts and through and boomiyuv's course would be perfectly capable of winning that but it's also heavily implied that some of the previous uh monarchs were not Benders at all this leaves us with one other option he took Power by force and of course what is boomi good at what does he tell Aang wait wait for the right moment to strike perhaps that is exactly what he did see omashu was on the front lines it was likely it had been contending with the Fire Nation for decades throughout boomi's life who knows what sort of politicking had gone on in the Royal courts of omashu perhaps they had been corrupted perhaps they fled but either way boomi stepped into the role overthrowing the royal family taking the throne wiping out any threats to his grip on power potentially because he wanted to protect amashu and he didn't think that the regime as it was was doing that in the Kyoshi novels we also know that omasha was home to a complex web of diplomats and schemas and yet we see none of that in the series what happened to them well maybe boomi happened all these diplomats and schemas could be corrupted and bribed by the Fire Nation and he got rid of them safeguarding omashu for decades to come the Earth Kingdom takes a lot from the many dynasties of Chinese history some of which did rise to power in Rebellion with new peasant people taking the throne by force and using that mandate from Heaven to say that well the gods have chosen me so yes maybe boomi wiped out the royal family of omashu to take power but perhaps he did it for a good reason moving down Zuko's wife who was she it could have been may it could have been tsuki it could have been soccer who knows at this point it might as well have been but he does have one daughter Azumi Izumi does seem to have the cold assertiveness of me but may and Zuko broke up in the comics maybe they got back together later in life we just don't know one detail we have is that Zuko retired in 167 AG when he still seemed incredibly physically and mentally capable did his wife die did that change his life we just don't really know omashu is a lion turtle so in Beginnings we see that the Earth lion turtle one of them Rises out of the earth that is would literally submerged under the ground until someone called it up and we also know that lion turtles stay dormant for long periods of time uh they just kind of sink under the ocean and become Islands they become part of the landscape and they sleep they they they dream there was also a City built on the top of that lion turtle's bank so the question becomes what if omashu is that City it's the remains of that City built up and up and up and up and there is a lion turtle buried underneath it that has been dormant this entire time why hasn't omashu spread out into the surrounding regions it's clearly capable of it it's a large enough City it even has similar architecture to the one we see in beginnings and here is the kicker the story of Omar and shu is about the origin of Earth bending the idea that these two lovers you know on either side learned Earth bending as a way of getting back to one another and of course it takes place in the location where omashu is right it that's the region that Earth bending supposedly started and if the lion Turtles were actually the ones that gave them Earth bending then why not why not earth bending originated here with that lion turtle and omashu isn't the only city in the earth Kingdom that is seemingly built around a large Rocky Mount taku is another it follows a similar sort of structure but it's built into the side of a mountain perhaps it too is hiding a dormant lion turtle under the surface after all humans hunted the line Turtles to near Extinction and the few that remained went into hiding it all connects now but we must go deeper we must learn the truth deeper into the iceberg because hybrid animals were just possessed by Spirits this is one of my favorite theories okay think about it alright hear me out we see that Spirits can possess living things in beginnings and when they do that it changes their appearance it gives them elements of that spirit's appearance the human walks away with like parts of the eye Spirit kind of these lima-like features and patterns on his face so is this how the hybrid animals first originated because there are some normal animals we've got Bosco the beer we have Miyuki the cat we've got a few other insects and I think a gecko or a bird at some point but all of these hybrid animals dominate the planet they're totally out there too so what if the spirits you know possessed animals and imparted some of their characteristics to them creating a whole new race of them that perpetuated throughout the world especially because if you actually look at the designs of a lot of spirits you can see animal features in them you can see lemurs you can see turtles you can see goat horns you can see Hooves you can see all sorts of half animal-like features that could create these hybrid animals and this would explain why the humans remember the names of just the animals as they are and take the names for the hybrid animals from them because they were around at a time when there were just those animals before the spirits were sent to the spirit world but of course it's been too long that everyone has forgotten how they came to be in the first place and to add to this the creators actually have stated that the Lotus spirits that we see in one episode of Korra may have once been a monkey a monkey that fell through into the spirit world and took on the appearance of what it was eating that being a turnip given back in the era of the lion turtles animals could freely move through the portals it was a lot easier for them to merge with the spirits or the spirit world it's not impossible that this happened more often too the Avatar world is Pluto okay well not Pluto Pluto but the size of Pluto because the funny thing is if you actually try to map out how big this world must be it is Tiny if you account for like travel times and distances they can make it like halfway across the world on arpa in a few days flat and so hence therefore wince forth the planet must be tiny which is I think Fair there are a bunch of different calculations trying to figure out exactly how small some people use you know estimating upper's speed or the speed of a fire nation warship or something like that but the fact remains that the planet must be very small also it is worth noting that we see in quora that the entirety of the world as we know at the world map takes place virtually on one side of the planet suggesting that perhaps there is a whole other continent on the other side that we have not seen that would be very cool azula's Redemption Arc let me just read you this quote I always intended for Azula to have a Redemption Arc longer and far more complicated than the zukos she had not bottomed in the end of season three she had further to go at the deepest moment in her own Abyss she would found Zuko despite it all her brother would be there for her believing in her sticking by her doing his best to understand and help behold her pain that she can no longer hold alone Zuko patient forgiving and unconditionally loving all the strengths that he gained from Uncle iro that's how she would have gotten out and changed with the faith and love of someone she had hurt but who had stuck by her anyway just as he had been saved by faith and love from someone he had hurt but had stuck by him so this is where that Azula Redemption art kind of came from and we we see the beginnings of it in the comics they're a little hints of that there's this moment where Zuko and her are sitting by a fire and she is sleeping and he's watching her and staying up to protect her and you know Katara asks him why do you do this you know after all she's done why are you sticking by her why do you stand up her and then he says she's my little sister you know she is family I'm gonna stick by her it's that Uncle iro uh being passed down to him and through him and I like that idea though I'm not sure we're ever going to see that Redemption Arc the uneared pilot so the creators of course had to figure out a Test episode to show Nickelodeon to be like hey we should make this show and wow the onion the onion pilot is awful I hate it so much it's terrible uh but you do get to see uh that Zuko is more evil you can see the Fire Nation costumes are more extremes and they've got like horns and stuff uh you see the serpent from the Serpent's Pass which uh they reuse for the series and um there's the scaffolding fight which is uh we see again in return to a mashu between Azula and Ty Lee and and May and and team Avatar uh there are little bits of the series and you can see where they came from in that uneared pilot episode Aang is a murderer I mean this one is kind of undeniably true if you discount cartoon logic I mean when he turned into the uh ocean spirit and then totally wiped out dozens of Fire Nation ships like turned them over upside down washed people into freezing Arctic water in full body armor with knowing that they would probably drown it is hard to believe that Aang has not murdered people and there are tons of other little moments in the show where Aang does things that probably killed someone if he thought a little bit more about them like when he eco-terrorists the Fire Nation Factory and the painted lady was there really no one else in there causing a flood or whatever you know but again cartoon logic these people survive and sometimes they actually go out of their way to show individuals who you think probably would have died actually did survive but if you really do pay attention he has probably killed quite a few people Avatar form equals greatest moment or perhaps more most memorable moment is more accurate because there has to be a reason that they appear the way they do in the spirit world or when an avatar is calling on them and it's not simply how they looked when they died because Kyoshi appears really young as does Avatar won it's got to be more than that and I thought about this for a while but if you think about it one of kiyoshi's most important moments was her defeat of chin the Conqueror so potentially she looks like she does at her greatest Victory her greatest moment or decision was consequential decisions she made which was creating kiyoshi Island and killing chin the Conqueror then we have Avatar who looks like he does at the moment that he loses his wife the event that dictates his entire life Avatar won he looks like he does when he became the Avatar the first avatar when he combined with rava Roku on the other hand looks like he does when he dies but it's more important that he looks like he does when he fails to stop sozen starting the war it's his greatest failure and then there's Aang Aang is reflected as being mostly young even though again he died a fair bit older but the reason he appears like that and this was my idea is that it's the moment he has his children it's the moment that he is no longer The Last Airbender when Tenzin is born the world of Avatar is a post-apocalyptic hellscape that all came about because of genetic engineering this this Theory appears in every single fantasy world doesn't it that like everything is just super far in the future uh after a bad nuclear disaster or something well here's Avatar's version of that the idea being that uh there were nanites and the nanites gave people the ability to bend the elements around them to go then it went out into the world and picked things up for them and whatever and they got too powerful so there was a special project that created the Avatar as a chick on the power of all these Benders and uh also there was genetic engineering which is why there are hybrid animals and this is why humans also remember that there were once normal animals and they use those terms because they know that they were once just beers but now there's you know platypus beers because they genetically engineered them ages ago and who knows you know the the the the huge desert the great desert uh in the earth Kingdom maybe that's covered in in ruins of some ancient civilization we do have the library after all buried I mean this one is obviously not true but some people find it a lot of fun to think about but now we descend once more one last time and the deepest layer of the iceberg to find the unknown the Abominations the horrors we all try to forget because if you didn't know combustion Benders are tortured into existence combustion Benders have always been mysterious how do they come to be are they born or are they created well in reality they're kind of like the tortured Elite shock troops that you see in other stories firebenders who are often kidnapped at Birth and molded into the perfect weapons they began with something called the unanimity project a bunch of cities in the earth Kingdom wanted to break free and become kind of a fifth nation of their own and so they try to create super weapons that could help them win a war and that's how the combustion binders came to be it involved submerging them underwater for long periods of time breaking their minds breaking their bodies almost everyone involved in the unanimity project died except for three people who became the first combustion binders combustion man is himself mutilated he's missing an arm he's missing a leg and he's mute or he is conditioned not to talk he takes orders like a machine he doesn't question things at all likewise Pali and Legend of Korra was captured and enslaved by a warlord likely subjected and brutalized with similar treatments submerged underwater and force to hold their breath until eventually they either die or rise against something new they're beaten and broken until they have no will of their own pili was freed by Zahir that's why she fell in love with him he taught her the value of Liberty and freedom escaping before she became nothing more than a murderous automaton but the ability is also strangely spiritual the tattoo on their head is representative of the third eye to see better and greater than all others and it also reflects how the cheese projected out of their forehead to create the fire blast combustion binders are simultaneously conditioned as incredibly ruthless obedient and powerful weapons while being spiritual powerhouses without any of the wisdom or self-awareness that they otherwise might have given their spirituality is sometimes explored as letting go of Earthly attachment of things that bind us to this earth of our own wants and desires and needs and emotions potentially this is that taken to the extreme and the worst form of it possible combustion Benders are stripped of any need and want an emotion and thought of their own until they are just these murderous spiritual automatons who have no real attachments to the world around them they are asked to destroy the Cherry pip servant doesn't exist there's a famous scene when Azula is having her mental breakdown where she plucks a cherry from a Bowl held by a servant and bites into it only to find there's a pip a pip she could have choked on very quickly she unleashes her off on the servant banishing her from the the Kingdom from the Fire Nation only was the servant ever really there if you look at the other two servants in the scene you could read their expressions as shock looking to where Azula is speaking and seeing nothing but more importantly the servant herself is voiced by azula's voice actress suggesting that the servant is a voice inside azula's head and we already know that by this time Azula is seeing people around her she's seeing her mother in mirrors symbolically this could also represent harizula is Her Own Worst Enemy she has isolated herself from her own friends so when she bites into that cherry and feels that pip that's her choking herself the White Lotus murdered Aang I know how this sounds but hear me out it's why it's further down on the iceberg there are a couple of strange lines where members of the White Lotus tell Cora that avatarang tasked us with keeping you safe while you mastered the four elements only was this really the case we only have their word to verify it Aang died shockingly young the biological age of 66 when previous avatars had lived hundreds of years old now the creators have said that Aang being in the Avatar state for so long had drained his life force but that doesn't really make sense see avatars lived longer when they were spiritual and Aang was arguably the most spiritual of them all Kyoshi of course lasted for 230 years and it's implied that many other avatars lasted much longer What If instead they killed him because someone else came onto the scene none other than a mon see it was around this exact time when Aang died that the equalists began to form and didn't they too want to bring balance to the world across the world across all foreign Nations regarding No Boundaries balance between Benders and non-benders but balanced nonetheless and doesn't that sound like the white lotus's Mission too surely this issue had occurred to the White Lotus too and it seems to sort of fit in with their goals even if it's a perversion of it if a mon had secretly corrupted the white lotus's goals from within then their need to kill Aang to ensure he couldn't interfere while Armon built up his strength the White Lotus is of course also made up of the strongest Benders in the world and Amman fits right in this would also explain why Cora was kept secluded and far away from a public city for so long the White Lotus couldn't have her getting in the way and on top of this when you actually watch The White Lotus members fighting a mons equalis in the series it's like they barely do anything they're easily defeated virtually every single time almost as if they kind of want to be almost like they're in onamon's plan and can't let the world know and let's not forget the red loader split off from the White Lotus because they felt they had lost their way their true purpose now Zahir tells us it's because they had come out into the open and just served as the glorifier Bodyguards of the Avatar but what if it was more than that what if they truly did lose their way and came to see bending as something evil as something they could use to bring an end to the imbalance in the world but something evil nonetheless blue people Avatar now you might not know but in 2009 there was a little known film called Avatar that came out it was a spectacularly strange adaptation of the series it involved people being put into bodies who who couldn't really bend the elements so much but they they did use bows and arrows and swords kind of like in the series uh and I guess they had guns which are a little bit like fire bending and uh the world did have you know a huge massive spiritual tree kind of like an avatar as well it's widely panned as as a as a very bad adaptation of the series uh I don't know if you've seen it in fact you almost definitely haven't seen it it's it's it's a very very little known film a very uh had almost no budget as well no advertising there was no real hype for it either um yeah and but apparently they are trying to bring out a sequel to it tell me down below have you guys seen the blue people Avatar film it's a very weird adaptation the Eldritch horrors of the deep one of the older spirits in the world is the mother of faces and ancient Spirit to has crafted every face and identity in the mortal and spiritual Realms she says through me separateness came into the world through me came identity we see many faces floating behind her including those of spirits and it's from this that we understand a little bit about how Spirits really work that they represent idea and Concepts at their highest levels the most ancient and Powerful ones the mother of faces may seem benevolent but she crafts just as many horrific and terrible people as she does good and kind ones she is an a moral being she is in fact the mother of Co the face stealer who steals the identities of others in a desperate beard to acquire his mother's affection and love he brings her their faces see mother I have brought you your Creations do you not love me do you not love your son but there are many spirits far darker and far older than her one who has no face that was not crafted by her its name is Father glowworm a spirit who is simply a great luminescent eye the size of a wagon wheel trapped in a web of pulsating veins it's capable of tunneling from the spirit realm to the Mortal realm and all it wants to do is Feast on human blood there are of course many stories of forests and lakes across the world through which people never return that supposedly cross into the spirit world the forest of the mother of faces is one such place and all of these suggest that father glowworm has dwelled in these traps for Mortals so he can Feast on them when they fall through the entire mortal world is riddled with these little holes but father glowworm is simply an eye floating in The Ether and this is interesting because the mother of faces has every single feature of a normal mortal face except one and I she has none at all this suggests to some that they may be two halves of a whole some ancient being divided into two at the beginning of creation but father glow worm's story gets even darker because he has eventually merged with a mortal man named young and after that happens he is described in this way a blinding nauseating sense of wrongness poured out of his body people had always been drawn to young but he had changed there was something essential missing from the otherworldly being in front of her something human he had become a hollow scaffolding a rotting corpse people couldn't bear to be near him there are spirits and creatures darker and stranger to the human mind than we can comprehend father glowworm hint said creatures and Spirits who are far older and Stranger than him who view Humanity as inconveniences things that can be played within devoured who they think little or nothing of it's always been a puzzle as to how one Shi Tong sunk the library back into the spirit world after all getting there in the series was nigh impossible well that's where father glowworm comes in perhaps he punctured a hole through the world as a place to lure people in people like Professor Zay who sure enough we see did and Legend of Korra except he died clearly while in the middle of reading suddenly it seems hardly expecting a tubby of old age or the like or hunger perhaps glowworm murdered him and drank his blood if the mother of faces represents Identity or separateness in the architecture of the universe then what does Father glowworm represent death what do all these other creatures he alludes to manifest as what do they represent and mean could we even comprehend them and given that Spirits cannot die it suggests that Yan merged with Father glowworm was distant to reincarnate over and over flitting between the mortal world and the spiritual one and much like the Avatar who has merged with rava is destined to seek out balance between the worlds maybe young is distant to seek out the Flesh and Blood of Mortals to feed his spiritual half unable to satisfy that insatiable hunger for mortal flesh and blood doomed to live that life of Vengeance over and over and over till the end of time till he becomes nothing but Vengeance and hunger with no Humanity to him at all Royal inbreeding to monopolize firebending power in the search we're given this little line from firelord zulon appearing of the Avatar's Grand order with our own sun will yield a bloodline of great power one that would ensure my family's rule for centuries after I am gone it's well known that lightning bending was really only an ability held by the Fire Nation royal family and they were in turn the most powerful firebenders in the world it was the basis of their power and virtually every single person in the Fire Nation lineage was a bender how is this the case the answer controlled breeding Eugenics almost the royal family is always looking for the right Bloodlines to breed with to ensure their fire bending power is kept within the family after all there are a number of other clans in the fire nation that would potentially attempt to take their throne in the books zhenzu even captures the only lightning Bender in the entire world and hands him over to the royal family in order to interrogate how he lightning Bend and and then from that point on that ability was virtually only expressed in the Fire Nation royal family it's not unlike the targaryens trying to keep the ability to ride and control dragons within the family it is the source of their power and they want to keep it with them so perhaps it is not surprising that Madness shows up in the Fire Nation bloodline a fair amount they're so goddamn inbred that they're losing their genetic grip on the world we also know that ozai almost threw Zuko into the ocean as an infant when he suspected he wasn't a Firebender and sure ozai is a bad guy but what if this is what the family does that if there is a child with no bending abilities they simply never let them reach adulthood that a long line of dead infants keeps the Fire Nation royal family on the throne and so we come to the bottom of the iceberg and right there at the bottom is that Zuko is the prince that was promised if you didn't know there's this prophecy that there is going to be someone called Azore ahai who saves the world right and there are a bunch of different signs as to who this person might be one of the first signs is that he will be heralded by a bleeding star falling from the sky and what better way to explain that than the comet at the end of the series Zuko becomes the hero that we know him as under that Comet and on top of that when Zuko is struck by azula's lightning he is given a scar on his chest and what shape does that take a star a red bleeding star he was also born amid salt and smoke smoke of course being firebending perhaps the smoke of the Comet and he may have even been born or conceived at the the Ember Island house that his parents had Azor ahai is also said to wield a sword called lightbringer Zuko noticeably is one of the only characters in the entire series to use swords which he often uses in combination with his firebending they are lightbringers unlike any other sword in the series it is also said that for Azor ahai to come to be there needs to be a sacrifice and of course Zuko sacrifices himself under the bleeding star when he takes that lightning bolt for Katara he is the sacrifice and in doing so he becomes the hero that we know him as but most damning of all the last sign of the prince that was promised of azure ahai of this hero that will save the world as that he will quote wake dragons out of stone and what does Zuko do in the fire bending Masters other than summon the dragons that have not been seen in ages out of the stone mountains and they give him a power that is an incredible number of symbols that Zuko seems to fit he is Azor ahai he is the prince with that was promised and if you're not in on the joke yet uh azorahine the principles are promised is a prophecy from A Song of Ice and Fire from The Game of Thrones world and it's a little bit of a meme uh because so many people kind of fit it because they're the the symbols are so vague and they can be applied in so many different ways that that it can apply to anyone virtually and I just wanted to have some fun and talk about how very clearly Zuko fits the Azora High signs actually better than many of the people in Game of Thrones itself which is hilarious but that brings us to the bottom of the iceberg this was just a fun little video to throw together I hope you guys enjoyed it what did I miss because I mean I know that there are just a million little tidbits of information you know little law bits that you could put on these things or little fun facts about the series that I just just couldn't include not for time's sake but what are your favorite little bits that I could have included let me know down in the comments below foreign foreign foreign

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 2,043,152

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, last airbender, airbender, firebender, iceberg, korra, aang, zuko, katara, sokka, asami, bumi, firebending, earthbending, bending, fight, ozai, iroh, uncle, lion turtle, tumblr, twitter

Id: 6u31JGV8aKg

Length: 97min 12sec (5832 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2022