Why There Will NEVER be Another Villain Like Fire Lord Ozai - Avatar the Last Airbender

one of the most interesting things about Avatar to me has always been how it tackles its antagonists with it constantly bluring the line between a oneof adventure of the week type of BD an overarching seasonal villain and of course the big bad fire lord himself looming over the entire story outside of like a grand fantasy story with dozens of clashing interests and personal motives you'd expect there to be some side villains along the way and just a big bad at the end but Avatar just said yeah actually no as soon as book won we have the overarching antagonist that is Zuko who has his own antagonist that is also an antagonist to us in Xiao on top of that we also have the smaller scale conflicts with characters like the prison Warden the Pirates or even Jets and at the very end there is the big bat ozy serving as the primary antagonist for both Ang as well as Zuko so right off the bat there are multiple layers and he really does feel like this unreachable foe with impossible gravitas and speaking of let us address the elephant in the room when I say that he is a looming Force I mean that quite literally as before Zuko's return home all the way in book three we never actually see his face each and every time he is hidden in the shadows and his lines are C into the points he doesn't deliver any over-the-top monologues or do anything really which all adds to the sense of him just being truly Untouchable from a creative standpoint much like we later see with Co and being unable to express any emotions I think the decision to hide his face is to deliberately avoid humanizing him humans are in inherently social creatures no matter how socially awkward we may be we are incredibly fine to and to recognize and read faces and when there's a mismatch between what we expect to see and what we actually see that is when things get really really uncanny things you these very creepy smile or again Co your face represents your humanity and with oai we get none of that and by the way I think that is also why we meet Zuko with his face already being scarred without even knowing how he was burned we already see that he has been wounded so while we are a very very long ways off from him joining our side there is already a very clear empathetic link there but okay returning to oai as soon as the series starts clearly we expect some sort of confrontation with the Fire Nation and importantly our only points of reference to what that might even look like are the occasional squabbles with Zuko and Xiao one of them well you're just a teenager and the other one even in Exile my nephew is more honorable than you so on a purely conceptual level having seen Ang's Avatar States you'd be forgiven for thinking that Ang just needs a few training arcs and we be sorted that is until we reach the solstice and meet Roku not only does a fully realized Avatar explain the true gravity of the situation but we are also given an explicit deadline along with our first ever glimpse of oai one which even in roku's retelling is just this fiery demon said to be even further empowered by literal celestial events his power is quite literally out of this world and there is not a single thing we can do to stop him except face him head on our first concrete details of the fire lord are not how to beat him not how to reach him or who he even is no the previous Avatar who Ang must succeed just bluntly tells him if you don't stop him before the comet arrives not even a full-fledged Avatar would be able to restore balance some of the first ever spoken words in the series is of how the Avatar is the only one capable of mastering all the elements and maintaining balance but now we are told that this single man can do something as unspeakable as the mass on Al living of San's Reign and even with the power of all the four nations the Avatar would be helpless to stop him and the genius thing here is that ozai's power continues to be built up through Roku right after we are explicitly told that the Avatar will not be able to stop him Roku casually solos the sages Xiao and everyone else implicitly telling us that even this is nothing compared to what oai can do so while we haven't seen oai Bend we know that he can bend a whole lot more than this but we don't stop there because just a few episodes later we get another Glimpse at oai but this time it is from a very different perspective that being IR roll's retelling of Zuko's agnik Kai we've been told of his impossible strength so now we get a whole lot more more up close and personal and instead see how he views his children and really the social hierarchy of the Fire Nation if from Ang's point of view p is this horrific fiery monster then from Zuko he is just a shadow forcing him to his knees without ever so much as raising a hand but most of all he strikes his helpless son oai is not only impossibly strong he is also absolutely ruthless if he will burn his own crying son his own flesh and blood for just speak speaking up for what he believes in what will he do to the only person who threatens his Reign even from broader fantasy tropes very often you'll see the whole father respecting his son for speaking up for what he believes in even if their own personal opinions oppose one another the mere Act of speaking up is already worthy of respect because it shows that they are confident in their own opinions that is kind of a quality you would want in your successor right on top of that it is considered very dishonorable to strike a helpless Target even more so when that Target has explicitly surrendered but again for oai absolutely none of that matters if anyone or anything challenges him they will be burned including his own son but there's another angle explored even as far back as book one after The Siege on the north we also see him send a Zula after them an idea up that the live action version played with as well so we'll talk about that in a second but here we see that manipulative side of oai he nonchalantly calls his own brother a traitor his his son a failure and then sends his own daughter after them this is a Game of Thrones level dysfunctional family but that's just who oai is he is monstrously strong he is ruthless but perhaps the most dangerous part of him is his manipulation just from a handful of scenes he is immediately cemented as the ultimate big bad and while it may not really seem like that big of a deal pulling something like this requires extreme confidence in planning I mean keep in mind there was no guarantee that we would ever a pay off to this Avatar was not renewed on top of that only naturally the longer you tease something the more the audience's expectations build so you already face the impossible challenge of trying to satisfy the head cannons people would have constructed and don't get me wrong purely rationally speaking you absolutely cannot fault a story for the reader SLV viwer piping themselves up and then being disappointed but the thing is as much as they say you can't do that that doesn't matter this isn't science where you must adhere to some strict rules if the audience is disappointed they are disappointed it doesn't matter how quote unquote valid that is you must keep those expectations in mind and manage them accordingly when it comes to media and just about everything consumer facing really perception really is reality the single closest comparison I can think of and don't worry I'm not going to spoil anything is the basement mystery and Attack on Titan much like oai it is a core thing established way way back in season 1 that doesn't see a payoff until coincidentally a very similar number of episodes there too the story faced literal years of fans speculating so with Mysteries like this you must always remember that there is a good reason why the whole saying about reality never meeting expectations exists we as people are unfortunately very good at coming up with the most Fantastical and impossible things and then setting ourselves up for disappointments so when a story manages to stick the landing well that is something special indeed but okay you may now ask why have I gone on this whole spiel about keeping goai hidden and how will never happen again yada yada well it is just a cool sounding title but that is not actually clickbait exhibit a the liveaction version of Avatar revealed oai straight away he wasn't hidden like seriously at all but okay settled down Mike and Brian supposedly left even though they're still credited we'll talk about that in a second but that's apples to oranges but wait your honor have the record show that there is also exhibit B braving the elements podcast with Mike and briyan I think early on we just wanted to have like the Intrigue of who is this guy he was supposed to be the big bad Ang was never going to face him in the first two books so we were trying to build that mystery around him and stuff um you know in retrospect maybe it would have been interesting to meet him earlier I don't know so like I said the fact that he is never actually revealed up until book three is just something you don't see often for the simple reason of say it with me now morally gray villains one of the most common things you see nowadays especially after the likes of The Sopranos are breaking bad is everyone trying to write the next Walter White everyone wants to have an incredibly bad dude who despite his twisted acts the audience can sympathize with it is always a matter of if he does something evil we must understand why he did it and that right there is the problem because frankly most people cannot write a Walter whites the reason why we don't see a lot of Oz eyes nowadays is because if you want a quote unquote villain you can hide him for like 90% of the show right but not every bad guy needs to have some tragic backstory or justification sometimes it's perfectly fine to have a bad guy be just a bad guy because he's bad think Doo Handsome Jack morgoth even Voldemort for the most part these are evil dudes just being evil and that is totally fine in Avatar's case we actually already have Zuko as that quote unquote complex antagonist with him taking many many swings and roundabouts in finding his place in the world but as far as oai goes he is just bad while it is obviously incredibly interesting to explore how villains became villains their insecurities what makes them tick etc etc this is not the real world where understanding that behavior is like a net positive this is a fictional setting Simplicity often makes for just a better story in the same way that the Lord of the Rings is a story of a battle against evil Avatar story is not a political drama it is the story of a story destroying balance to the world and oai is the villain in that plain and simple I also have a video about this in the context of Kora and how that Simplicity can also be very very bad so it's of course not a one-size fits-all solution but before we move on to the payoff of this entire thing I want to briefly return to that point of Mike and Brian talking about potentially meeting oai earlier let me put it this way I don't think it's a coincidence that even after their formal departure from the Netflix series they are still credited as the writers for the oai and z Co agnik Kai episode I say that because I think the way it shapes out is a very interesting spin on what we actually saw in the original and I would not at all be surprised if much of this is their actual Vision that I want to very briefly talk about throughout the first season that angle of oai pitting aula against Zuko is played up a ton more so that narcissistic and manipulative angle of him is really brought to the Forefront for him they are just pieces on the board to forward his own position and if it's beneficial those pieces can also be very easy easily sacrificed it's basically the same thing we see in the animation only there is more of it and it's way more explicit but by far the biggest thing are of course the changes during the agony Kai like we talked about a second ago with the animation that ruthlessness was portrayed through the fact that Zuko never did a thing the Netflix version on the other hand allows Zuko to dodge around and even block a direct blow but importantly throughout most of the fights oai is just casually keeping his hand behind his back this constant toying with him is his very Twisted form of teaching Zuko a lesson one that climaxes with Zuko supposedly finding an opening in ozai's defense apparently and I genuinely don't know how some people have interpreted the scene as Zuko actually getting a hit on oai but to me it was pretty clearly oai just waiting to see what Zuko would do exactly because he is still fishing for a successor he doesn't have some explicit hatred or love for Zuko or aula both of them are just tools the only only reason why he quote unquote cared for aula is because she was a prodigy and the only reason he ateed zuka was because he perceived him as weak so I think with this sequence in a way it almost elevates that ruthlessness that was in the original this is not oai just coming to the AGN Kai and striking Zuko if he does nothing no all of this is toying with him and trying to teach him this very Twisted lesson and to really cement that it's not just one blow to punish Zuko for holding back rather he crouches down explicitly tells him that compassion is weakness and very very slowly Burns him while never even flinching Zuko is his firstborn son he is supposed to be his Heir so this is him trying to forge him a new one last time him later visiting Zuko is not some Act of care just like the animation it is him just giving Zuko this cared on a stick just in case he managed to prove useful so going back to that Mike and Brian points it is a very very different spin on how to reveal oai but making up for that by showing us just how twisted oai is even with him roasting the bunch of dudes it removes that monstrous and unknown side of oai that we see from Ang's perspective and instead zeros in on that cold ruthlessness from Zuko's perspective going back to that a face is humanizing angle the fact that we Linger on oai as he deforms Zuko says everything you need to know about who he is a face is fundamentally humanizing but in this sequence it is actually dehumanizing oai as that same fiery monster but right enough of the live action let us look back to the OG where our big fire boy has been kept a 100% hint throughout the first two books and much like the rest of his characterization his true introduction is another stroke of Genius like with most of the story the opening to book three often parallels the stories of Zuko and Ang where Ang feels the absolute furthest from being the Avatar just like he did during the storm Zuko has actually returned home and is being praised as a national hero but importantly in the same way that Ang is now masquerading as a part of the Fire Nation their flag literally looming over him the theme for the entirety of Zuko's story is also exactly that he is masquerading as that hero the dominant feeling on Zuko's side of the story is just plain unease we know full well that Ang is alive and we know full well that aula is setting up Zuko as just the Fall Guy which brings me back to those monstrous depictions of oai we had seen th Far We've now gone from this unreachable fiery monster to Zuko standing at ozai's door but nothing about it is in any way triumphant he is still scared even now oai is still a fearful figure something that I think is conveyed beautifully by that firey overlay in the close upon on Zuko and the absolute greatest part as oai Rises and walks through the Flames the first words out of his mouth as we actually see him are just welcome home this this is one of those times where Direction elevates the episode beyond anything written on paper because in any other story building up this big bad fire lord for years only to reveal him as just some dude would seem kind of pointless right but with how the episode unfolds on both sides of the narrative it is like walking a knife's Edge the music the constant paralleling to Ang who flies directly into a fire nation blockade potentially exposing zuku at this very moment everything about this is just plain unsettling this is supposed to be Zuko's big moment but it's not he is right in the clutches of his father who burned him for the mere Act of speaking out what would happen now if he were to learn that Ang is indeed alive personally I've always thought that the thing that separates a good show from an excellent one is when the direction uses this almost fourth wall Breaky way to manipulate the audience based on their expectations and perceptions without getting into massive spoilers think of the attack on Titan season 2 while revealed none of that is really story per se it is rather a very meticulously planned dance with the audience itself which is why I also have a 40-minute video about it just like we see with Zuko here it might just be a simple reveal of ozai's face there is no Grand mystery here he doesn't have a third eye and he is not some Demon but it is the execution of that quote unquote simple reveal that makes it so so great this is not just a story as it is written on paper no it is taking advantage of the medium itself to plant us as the audience in the same heads space as Zo and Ang I think that is also why the whole subverting expectation saying became such a meme just like I said not everyone can write a Walter whes very few people actually know how to manage those expectations in a way that just doesn't feel cheap hiding goai only to reveal that P some gigachad would be cool but like what's the point hiding oai building him up as this unreachable Foe and then revealing him not through the protagonist but through this oddly cold and weirdly unsettling welcoming is a whole another story literally actually because it is Zuko's story Avatar is obviously heavily inspired by anime and with oai being the big bad everything points to him being a villain exclusively for the protagonist but he's not which very nicely leads us onto the raw power of oai I rambled a whole bunch about making oai be this fiery devil and how it's that anticipation that colors our perception of a strength so what do you do once his face is already shown and he is no longer a mysterious shadow man you could just just do Ang versus oai and it'd be great but what you could also do outside of the very extensive emotional manipulation that is is the day of black Sun I think it's quite easy to forget that outside of the finale we basically don't see oai Bend at all for the simple reason of building that anticipation and big surprise the only times we actually see him Bend is against Zuko I think their confrontation during the eclipse is basically the perfect encapsulation of everything we've been talking about thus far only this time the series brief tips the balance in Zuko's favor to really show us that ruthless and almost Reckless side of oai that we only got glimpses of with their AGN Kai right away we see the confidence and almost snarkiness of oai as he immediately dismisses his guards jesting that this truth during the eclipse is bound to be interesting and to immediately showcase that as Zuko reveals that he was not the one to bring down the Avatar ozai's response is a very very calm why would she lie to me about that keep in mind that for aula setting up Zuko as the supposed hero who brought down the Avatar is a win-win for her if Ang is truly dead it actually doesn't matter clearly ozai favors her as she is the one who almost single-handedly conquered bossing say and again based on his totally calm reaction I don't think it's a stress to say that oai always suspected that the final blow was also a Zula and the most convenient part for aula if Ang were to survive oai already considers Zuko a failure so he'd be far more willing to accept that it had indeed been Zuko who once again failed and that is once again demonstrated beautifully with the following scene because the Avatar is not dead he survived what get out get out of my sight right now if you know what's good for you for the first time in the series we see that the all knowing and Almighty Fire Nation were actually entirely duped and that's not even mentioning the fact that this two is mirrored on Ang's side as their entire invasion is completely lost more on that in a second the greatest thing about the rest of this conversation is how it shows us the many different sides of oai we've now seen him genuinely caught off guard but we also see him very quickly compose himself and let Zuko speak his mind only budding in with his remarks when Zuko insults his or the fire nation's supposed Pride I think that is best showcased by him saying oh you must have learned a lot from your uncle only to grow very very annoyed when Zuko says that yes I did those are io's teachings not yours just like their Agy Kai all of this is a matter of Pride even if he doesn't care at all for Zuko on a personal level and he is just a tool implying that his brother is a better teacher than him just hits a Nerf for oai I mean this is a dude who came up with a new title for himself just because but as Zuko turns to leave saying that it's not his Destiny to fight oai he pulls the ace up his sleeve and mentions his mom so again that very manipulative angle and suddenly we've gone from this intense but simple confrontation to that same fear and unease of Zuko's return at the start of book three suddenly the board is flipped completely upside down and oai is once again in complete control once again the direction plants us directly in the shoes of Zuko as we are just captivated by ozai's monologue only to get completely blindsided about why he baited him into staying in the first place even very visually the camera punches closer and closer from the room to Zuko beginning to cry to a closeup of ozai's face those almost claustrophobic shots are pushing us further and further until suddenly we fade back to the [Music] sun if thus far the series had been extremely koi about ozai's bending then here he literally dual wheels lightning bolts with the tiniest fraction of the sun peeking through this is but a glimpse at his true power and he uses it against his own son this is fire lord oai a ruthless Bender with power absolutely eclipsing aula and even iro keep in mind that oai thinks Zuko is weak he doesn't know of any lightning redirection techniques and PE out classes Zuko in every sense of the word but even so p goes right for lightning the most deadly and way Overkill technique imaginable because Zuko hurt his pride and very visually Zuko redirects that cold and ruthless blow he is not a killer like his father and he rejects the power that is lightning as we've learned lightning redirection takes an immense amount of self-control and confidence one wrong move and he could be dead but with almost no practice he still doesn't just unleash it randomly no he shoots it not at oai but right next to him sending the Fire Nation flag falling to the floor and that is when we see ozai's true face and his true rage his failure of a son rejected him disrespected him and somehow even resisted a power that should just not be resistible he Revels in raw strength and superiority that is why he names himself Phoenix King he views himself as the chosen one to end this war to transcend the Nations themselves and to surpass even San For Whom the comet was named he wants to rewrite history with him alone at the very top and if the world needs to burn in order to achieve that so be it he is a byproduct of the ever tightening grip that is the war machine started by soan one that after aund long years of war now faces its biggest and potentially final challenge he no longer cares for successors with the blessing that is the comet it is all or nothing that is who Ang must now face the fire lord the Phoenix King with little to no knowledge of how to fire Bend and the fear that stems from burning Katara he must now face fire the element that consumes all be it qara or the entire world the most beautiful and often overlooked thing about Avatar is that it is so so much more than the sum of its parts much of Avatar storytelling relies on theme and ideas that are then interwoven into multiple perspective characters most often of course angan Zuko the storm is a very literal storm but it is also a metaphorical one the fear of being lost in the storm that is life and Destiny something we explore through two directly opposing sides the day of black Sun it is a crushing defeat for The Invasion but it is also the greatest Triumph while it might not have been team Avatar facing goai the first shot of this final battle is actually Zuko he is the one who brings down the Fire Nation flag and he is the one to announc that the Avatar has returned yet again what I'm getting at is that oai isn't just a great villain because we don't see him until book three he's not just scary because he's so much stronger and infinitely more ruthless than anyone else in the series he is all of those things and more because of the familial and antagonistic themes we explore through both Zuko and Ang he is the manipulative father who Zuko desperately wanted to impress but he is also the single person threatening to essentially destroy the world Avatar is not one piece where keeping someone hidden for literally hundreds of chapters is basically a form of World building Avatar is a short and closed narrative keeping oai hidden for most of it and just unveiling him in book three shows a very great amount of confidence that he will not be at disappointment even with so little explicit screen time to be totally honest with you I do think that if the series came out today perceptions around oai would be different and maybe more people would say that he is too simplistic when compared to even aoua for example like I said so much of Storytelling nowadays has shifted to this always morally gray complex layers and layers of backstory type of writing that I think a whole lot of people just can't see the forest for the trees sometimes myself included the reason why I don't think we see a lot of ozis nowadays is because he is simple but is the story in the world that he exists in that are complex he is just an evil dude but what makes him interesting are the countless themes of betrayal trust hurts growth Decay and transformation that we explore to face said great evil in the race to make everything morally gray the story itself can also very easily become just gray and gray is a very good color one of my favorites actually but it is not a terribly exciting one oai is not someone you can just copy paste into any story and have it be the greatest thing ever no not at all but I think in the hands of an artist sometimes instead of making everything gray leveraging that contrast that is just a black and white straightforward villain makes for some of the most interesting stories not of evil but of good and of peace and that's the video Springtime is usually Avatar rewatch time for me anyway but the liveaction version has sped that up a little bit so I think you can expect plenty more very very soon especially now that we know that the entire story is happening in live action as well also side notes there are rumors flying around that the adults Ang movie might have been pushed back to 2026 and the animated next Avatar series is actually happening in 2025 so whatever the case there is plenty more stuff to look forward to as well basically we are eating real real good but anyway with that I want to say a massive thank you to our current patrons and YouTube members who allow me to produce even more of these for you all and let's also give a warm welcome to the newest member of the team Yanik or jic bod Peron I am so sorry if I Brer the name I definitely did but without you there'll be a whole lot less of my rambling so seriously thank you thank you other than that I want to say thank you very much for watching I hope you have a great day and hopefully I'll see you in the next one bye-bye

Channel: Korotos Mystery Shack

Views: 179,515

Keywords: Koroto's, Mystery, Shack, Korotos, Koroto, Avatar the Last Airbender, Avatar, Netflix Avatar, Netflix avatar the last airbender, Fire Lord Ozai, Ozai, Phoenix King Ozai, Aang vs Ozai, Aang, Zuko vs Ozai, Day of Black Sun, Sozins comet, Roku vs Sozin, essay, analysis, nickelodeon, avatar roku

Id: IBfrhzJw2C0

Length: 27min 37sec (1657 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2024