Avatar trivia

Book one : water

The Boy in the Iceberg

After Appa sneezes on Sokka, the latter's entire right side is shown covered in bison snot. A few seconds later he is clean again, as if the incident never occurred. When Aang is letting the kids use Appa's tail as a slide, the first scene shows his tail propped up on Sokka's spear. The next scene shows Appa a few feet away, with his tail on the ground. In the scene after that, Appa's tail returns to its original position atop the spear. When Aang and Katara stand next to the abandoned ship, they look up at the tattered flag still waving atop the mast. In that shot, they are about five feet away from the shadow of the boat. In the next shot, however, they are standing right next to the shadow. When Aang crashes into the watch tower at the Southern Water Tribe he is covered in snow but when Katara pulls him up, he is lying on top of the snow. In the beginning of the episode, when Katara and Sokka are fishing, before Katara Waterbends the fish out of the water she takes her glove off, but in the next scene and for the rest of that day, the glove is back on her hand. Katara was never shown putting the glove back on.

Series continuity

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The abandoned Fire Navy ship they explore is likely the same one Hama and the other Waterbenders were shown uprooting decades before in a flashback from the episode "The Puppetmaster". The subtitle of the last episode in the series, "Avatar Aang", and this episode's title both refer to Aang himself. They also highlight how he has changed. In the beginning, he is a young Avatar who has not mastered the elements and is found in an iceberg. By the end he is a fully-realized Avatar. This is the first episode of the series. This episode takes place in and around the Southern Water Tribe, location number 42 on the map of the World of Avatar. In the close ups of Aang at the start of this episode Aang's eyebrows are a light golden brown color but at the start of Book 3 until The Day of Black Sun Aang's hair and eyebrows are a dark brown color. When Sokka says "You can't fight Firebenders with fun", Aang responds with "You should try it". This foreshadows the events in "The Headband", when Aang uses fun to weaken the Fire Nation's control over their youth. This episode marks the debut of Aang, Katara, Sokka, Appa, Zuko, Iroh, and Kanna.

Trivia

Edit This is the only episode to feature a different and extended opening sequence. Though this is the first official episode of the series, the Avatar Series Pilot was created before this, but was never aired on television. Sokka said he might have "Midnight Sun Madness" because during summertime in the South Pole, which is the wintertime in the Northern Hemisphere, there are more hours of sunlight in the day, due to the southern hemisphere facing the sun. This is one of only two episodes that shows "To be continued" before the ending credits. The other one is "The Boiling Rock, Part 1".

Character revelations

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In this episode, Katara reveals that she is the only Waterbender in the South Pole. During Aang's dream, we find out how Aang was frozen in the iceberg.

The Avatar Returns

Goofs

Edit During the scene where Zuko is trying to get Iroh to teach him an advanced set of Firebending moves, Zuko's belt is momentarily silver instead of the usual gold. When Sokka and Katara first see Aang in the iceberg, there is nothing in the water between them, but in the next frame there are many floating icebergs in the water.

Series continuity

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This is the first episode in which Aang Waterbends, albeit while in the Avatar State. This episode is the only time in the series when Iroh attacks Aang.

This episode takes place in and around the Southern Water Village, location number 42 on the map of the World of Avatar.

and his staff lands behind him. But when the screen goes to a close-up the staff is missing.

Character revelations

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In the ending, when Aang says, "Because I never wanted to be," for a split second when he turns his head, his arrow points at his right eye, at the tip at his brow. This is kept in a panel for the Cine-Manga.

Aang reveals that he is the Avatar. Trivia Edit When Aang fights Zuko in the village, this is technically the first time Aang has actually had to fight or defend himself, as opposed to before the war when he just trained with other Airbenders. This is the only episode to have no opening sequence. This episode has the longest recap of all the other episodes. This is the first of three episodes in the series to have a name that starts with "The Avatar"; "The Avatar State" and "The Avatar and the Fire Lord" are the other two.

Goofs

Edit In the opening sequence, Katara narrates that Aang is the Avatar, even though by that point in the series it has not been revealed to her that he is actually the Avatar. When Aang is banished from the Water Tribe, Katara grabs Aang and says that she is banished, too. From the side shot, she grabs him and he is on her left side, but when the shot changes to the front, he is on her right-hand side. Just after Zuko breaks Sokka's spear, Sokka's left leg appears to switch places with his right. The pieces of Sokka's spear just vanish after Zuko breaks them off. When Aang sleds into Zuko, Sokka disappears from in front of Zuko. When Aang turns to speak to the villagers, Sokka appears next to Katara. When Zuko orders his men to surround Aang, the man on the far right side and the one on the far left are walking into the head of the man below them. After Zuko nods in agreement in response to Aang's offer to have himself captured, the parting in the orange portion of Aang's shirt becomes blatantly misshapen for a few frames. After Zuko left the village, several children are shown repairing a broken tent that was harmed by the Fire Nation; however in earlier shots, the Fire Nation do absolutely nothing to the tent, which is shown stable in the background. In the Finnish dub, Zuko implies that Ozai was raised by monks. This is probably because the translator misinterpreted the phrase Zuko said to Aang, "I guess you haven't heard of fathers, being raised by monks." When Zuko jumps onto Aang's glider and they crash onto the ship's deck, Aang's staff goes flying towards the bow, but when he stands up, it's in his hand. When Aang first comes out of the water in the Avatar State, the arrow on his head is not glowing. When Aang shows Katara and Sokka the map, he hops down from his spot on Appa,

The Southern Air Temple

Series continuity

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Momo joins Team Avatar. While in the Air temple sanctuary, the Earth Avatar before Roku doesn't appear to be Avatar Kyoshi, introduced in the very next episode. This is due in part of Kyoshi's character design not yet being solidified at the time of writing. [1] More so, the Air Avatar before Kuruk does not appear to be Avatar Yangchen, the Air Avatar before Aang. Still, there are statues that look remarkably like Kuruk and Kyoshi, visible for a short time in one of the shots, but they are shown in a different row than Roku. There is also an Avatar that looks like Kyoshi on the mural in the Earth Kingdom Avatar Temple . Aang notices Roku's statue, but wasn't sure how he knew Roku's name. However, in "Winter Solstice Part 1: The Spirit World", he mentions that Gyatso told him that Roku would help him. Aang had probably never seen Roku before, however, meaning that he knew the name matched this Avatar. This episode primarily takes place in the Southern Air Temple in the Patola Mountain Range, locations number 41 and 48 respectively on the map of the World of Avatar.


Character revelations Edit

Aang reveals that Monk Gyatso was his Airbending teacher. It's revealed that Roku was one of Aang's past lives. Zhao reveals that Zuko was banished. Iroh refers to Zhao as a Firebending Master. It is revealed that Katara and Sokka's mother was killed by the Fire Nation. Although it was already stated by Katara in "The Boy in the Iceberg", it was unknown what the cause of their mother's death was.

In this episode, Aang goes into the Avatar State and everyone around the world can see he has returned because various items begin glowing. However, they would have already known, because he had also been in the Avatar State in "The Avatar Returns" to escape Zuko and when he first appears in "The Boy in the Iceberg". Also, this has never been mentioned during any of the other episodes in which Aang goes into the Avatar State. Aang claimed that it would be impossible for the Fire Nation to reach the Air Temple because you would have to fly, even though in later episodes he states they had dragons in his time, thus Aang had either forgotten about dragons, or wanted to believe the Fire Nation wouldn't have used them. When Iroh is looking at the weapons in Zhao's tent, he knocks it over. The weapons can be seen up again a few scenes after it was knocked down. When Katara is watching the Avatar Statues and comes next to Roku, his headpiece is missing. In the next scene it's on his head again.

Goofs Edit When Katara is about to tell Aang about the monks as they're flying to the temple, there is no arrow on Aang's right hand. This also happens before Sokka's stomach growls. Right before Sokka asks where he could get something to eat, when Aang is running ahead of Katara and Sokka, Aang's mouth is moving as if he's saying something but no words are coming out. Presumably they cut out his dialogue there. When the gang saw Momo entering the temple's sanctuary, Sokka warned the others that it's a Firebender and everyone hid behind the statues. However, Aang shouldn't have believed this claim since he was so convinced that no Firebender could ever come to the Air Temple in the first place. In Aang's flashback with Monk Gyatso, when Gyatso is talking, one of the beads on his necklace suddenly changes from brown to red, right when he says, "...when you're old enough to enter the..." (after "the"). At the same time, the rest of the beads move slightly. After the bead goes off screen and comes back on screen it is brown again. When Aang opens the door to the sanctuary, the camera flashes back to look down the corridor and both Katara and Sokka have vanished. In the Air temple sanctuary, the Avatar statue next to Roku was a male Earthbender, not Avatar Kyoshi. After Zuko knocks Zhao down, he stands beside him. Then, when the angle changes, he is standing in front of him. When Aang is in the Avatar State and Katara tries to calm him down, Sokka was behind Katara, then, in the next scene Sokka is next to Katara. Aang was making a hurricane, so he couldn't have moved that quickly, if he could move at all.

Trivia

Edit In the air sanctuary, there is a male Avatar with a sword next to Roku, where Avatar Kyoshi should have been. This is the only episode in which the title screen, which denotes the chapter and book, does not have a plain white background as the background is an animated sunrise. According to Nick.com's website for Avatar, the episode was originally titled "Aang Goes Home". In some early advertising of the episode, the preview shows the scene in which the group first sees the Southern Air Temple. In the preview, Aang calls it the "Jong-Mu Air Temple", while it is the "Southern Air Temple" in the actual episode. When Zuko and Iroh arrived at Commander Zhao's harbor, Zhao asked them how their ship got damaged. Zuko lied to him, stating that they came across an Earth Kingdom ship. This is one of only two references in the entire series to the Earth Kingdom having any form of navy. Zhao's act of lashing out after admitting defeat in this episode is a foreshadowing of Chapter 20, in which he does the exact same thing. When Iroh convinces him to release the moon spirit, he releases it, only to kill it immediately afterward. After the flying lemur steals a peach from Sokka, Aang says he will name the lemur "Momo". It turns out that Momo, apart from being the Japanese equivalent of "Fido" in

terms of popular pet names, translates into "peach".

This is the second time we see Aang entering the Avatar State.

hair; the others have dark brown hair. When Sokka goes to confront them while they were training, the other warriors have lighter brown colored hair. This may be due to outdoor lighting.

The Warriors of Kyoshi

The Kyoshi Warriors have stripes on their arms, but they seem to disappear at times, as seen in review picture. When the Kyoshi Warriors capture Team Avatar, Momo is over half the size of Aang's body. Before the gang got captured by the Kyoshi Warriors, Aang put his clothes back on except for his outer yellow pants. In the next frame, after being tied up, his pants are on. When the statue of Avatar Kyoshi is first shown, the color is significantly faded. When Aang jumps into the air, however, the color appears to be normal. The color was not restored until later in the episode. When Aang shows the people of Kyoshi his marble trick, at the time Sokka and Katara are tied to the statue of Kyoshi, Sokka's hair is drawn incorrectly. Oyaji claims that Avatar Kyoshi has "been dead for centuries". For this to be true, she must have been dead for at least 200 years. Kyoshi had only been dead for 182 years when Team Avatar first visited Kyoshi Island, in late 99 ASC. When Aang exclaims, "That's me!" to the village, the rope isn't tied around him. When Sokka first confronts the Kyoshi Warriors, Suki is in front with the other girls behind her, but as Sokka starts to charge and Suki swings him around, the girls behind her vanish. After Sokka is tied up with his own belt, they reappear. When Sokka got humiliated by Suki in her training spot, she tied Sokka's hand to his foot with the white band he wears around his waist. In the next scene it becomes a brown rope. As Sokka is knocked to the ground a final time by Suki, there are six Kyoshi Warriors behind him. In the next shot, there are the regular five. When Aang was talking to Katara in the marketplace, there's a background character making hand movement suggesting he's holding some sort of conversation, but there was no one else there. Presumably, the creators forgot to animate another person. When Sokka and Suki are training, Sokka throws a fan, but in the next clip, both fans are in his belt; the same thing happened with Suki. Katara mentioned Zuko by name, despite none of the gang having been shown to have learned his name in previous episodes. However, some off-screen time has passed between "The Southern Air Temple" and

Series continuity

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This episode is the first episode where Aang, Katara and Sokka enter the Earth Kingdom. This episode marks the first appearance of Suki. The man who begins foaming at the mouth and passes out from sheer amazement that Aang is the Avatar is also featured in the episode "Avatar Day". While Sokka undergoes training, Suki is the first to promote the importance of treating the weapon, in this case a metal fan, as an extension of one's self. In the episode, "Sokka's Master", Piandao will reiterate the same principle to Sokka as he learns the way of the sword from the master swordsman. Furthermore in "The Firebending Masters", Toph herself admits to the significance of the aforementioned principle of being able to see when she told her story about how she learned Earthbending from badgermoles not just as a martial art but as an extension of her senses. This is the first time Katara bends liquid in one's body. After saving Aang from the unagi, Katara bends water out of Aang's lungs in order to help him breathe. The second time she bends liquid in one's body is in "The Puppetmaster" and the third occurred in "The Southern Raiders". The technique Zuko uses to knock down Sokka and two Kyoshi Warriors when he's on the floor and surrounded is the same move he uses to defeat both his opponents in both Agni Kais during the series. This episode takes place in and around Kyoshi Island, location number 39 on the map of the World of Avatar.

Character revelations

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Aang reveals that Kyoshi was one of his past lives.

Goofs Edit When the Kyoshi Warriors are first introduced, only Suki has auburn colored

"The Warriors of Kyoshi" so they could have learned his name during off-screen time.

When Aang and his friends fly off to lead the Fire Nation away from Kyoshi Island, the Fire Nation ship is nowhere to be found on the shore. With the exception of Suki, all the Kyoshi Warriors have the same features and brown hair. Yet in "Appa's Lost Days" and "Sozin's Comet, Part 4: Avatar Aang", the Warriors are facially all different with black hair all styled differently. When leaving Kyoshi Island, Sokka was looking back at the island, but in the next scene he's washing off the makeup. In the Finnish dub, all the references to unagi in this episode are replaced by the Finnish equivalent of fish (plural), or in one occasion, Giant Carp. This is probably due to an error on the translators part. When Sokka goes to the training area the second time when the girls are practicing with their fans, one of the girls arms seems to disappear behind the person that is behind her. The girl is at the bottom left.

If it wasn't for her popularity among fans, this was going to be the only episode featuring Suki

The King of Omashu

Series continuity

Edit

This is the first episode in which Zuko and Iroh do not make an appearance. This is the first episode in which the Fire Lord is mentioned by his given name, Ozai. The Cabbage Merchant makes his first appearance in this episode when his cart was destroyed by an Earthbender on his way into the city. Though it was destroyed, the Cabbage Merchant is later seen with his cart, where it was destroyed again by Aang and his friends. In "The King of Omashu" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, one of the commentary bubbles says that some Avatar fans, enough worth mentioning, believe this episode is simply "filler", having no real plot involvement, instead focusing on developing or adding to Aang's past. Those fans are described as being as crazy as King Bumi. In "The King of Omashu" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, when Aang, Sokka, and Katara went sliding the delivery system, one of the commentary bubbles says that Omashu's prime trade resource is making weapons for the Earth Kingdom to fight against the Fire Nation. During the "Avatar Extras" when Bumi tells Aang to always open his brain to the possibilities in life, it shows that this is an example of the expression "to think outside of the box".

Trivia

Edit Aang's statement to Sokka about not needing pants where they were headed to early in the episode becomes a reality later when Sokka ends up wearing a dress, also known as a Kyoshi warrior uniform, to be trained by Suki. The fighting style of the Kyoshi Warriors is similar to the Waterbending tactic of turning their defense to offense. This is also a tactic of Ninjutsu. If you look closely when Sokka is stretching, you can see the stitch Katara made. In this episode, Sokka receives his first kiss. The scene when the girls are chasing Aang is based on the Beatles film A Hard Day's Night. Sokka is the first outsider to become a Kyoshi Warrior, with the second being Ty Lee. When Aang is showing off for the locals, he does push-ups, switches to one-handed push-ups, and then tops it with push-ups propelled only by his breath. This progression strongly resembles another show-off scene in the movie Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, which was released in 2002. When they arrived at Kyoshi Island, Katara stated that if they keep on making pit stops along the way to the North Pole, they wouldn't get there until spring, but when they got to the North Pole it was still in the middle of winter. They probably moved at a faster rate to make it there on time.

Character revelations

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Aang reveals that he is a vegetarian.

Goofs

Edit After Aang tells Bumi that he doesn't eat meat, Bumi shoves the chicken leg into Sokka's mouth, leaving Aang's plate empty. After Katara asks if Bumi's crown's a little crooked, the camera angle changes to a wide shot and the chicken leg is back on Aang's plate. When Bumi throws the meat at Aang which he catches using his Airbending, there appears to be a piece of meat on his plate

already. When he stops Airbending the meat, however, it lands on an empty plate.

During Aang's first deadly test, he is thrown out of the waterfall twice, but both times he emerges completely dry without using Airbending to dry himself off. Flopsie lowers himself into the pit as if he were hanging from something, but when the camera angle pans out there is nothing nearby for him to have hung from. When Aang uses the stalagmite to complete his first deadly test, the key is hanging from the chain, but after Aang says he wants his friends back and the camera switches to Bumi, the key and stalagmite in the wall are gone. Before Aang introduces himself to the guards of Omashu as Bonzu, he saw the guards rejecting cabbages from the merchant, but during the super slide scene, he fell onto the cart of the same cabbage merchant. It could be that once entering the city, said cabbage merchant purchased a new cart of cabbages, only to have it destroyed by the gang. During Bumi and Aang's duel, the Earthbending symbols in the corners or the ceiling changes shape with almost every shot. When Bumi teaches Aang of his duty, he says, "You'll need Momo, too!" Bumi somehow knew of Momo's name, although Aang never mentioned it at any point throughout his stay in Omashu. A possible explanation can be that some of the guards or even Bumi himself overheard Aang mention Momo's name while in the prison cell. During Aang and Bumi's fight, the rocks Bumi launches at Aang frequently disappear while they continue fighting. When Aang finishes the second challenge and King Bumi is rubbing Flopsie's stomach they are on the platform above the ring where Aang did the challenge. After he talks to Sokka and Katara, Bumi and Flopsie are in the ring.

This episode is the first time Earthbending is seen outside of the opening sequence. Avatar Extras reveal that "initially, Bumi was supposed to have the body of a frail old man, the idea being that you don't have to have muscles to be a great Earthbender, but it was decided that he looks cooler with abs." In this episode, Bumi claims he is the most powerful Earthbender in the world, though Toph also claims this multiple times throughout the series. This is the first and only time Katara's and Sokka's grandfather is mentioned in the series. This episode is the only one in which the Cabbage Merchant's cabbages are destroyed numerous times: one time by the guards at Omashu front gate, one time by Team Avatar when riding the mail delivery system and one time by Bumi and Aang, again using the Omashu delivery system as a game. It is learned that in Omashu there are no take-backsies. This is the first of two episodes, the other is "Return to Omashu," where "Omashu" is in the episode title

Imprisoned

Goofs

Edit When Sokka is warning the rest of the group to approach Haru carefully, Katara's shoulder is slightly seen in the lower left corner of the screen. However, in the next scene, she is very far away from Sokka and Aang and is already greeting Haru. When Tyro is thanking Katara for help, Katara's braid becomes detached from the rest of her hair. The scene where the prisoners are being seen in the prison for the first time, Katara is second to farthest left in the line-up, but when the warden is shown walking while talking to the prisoners, she is shown farthest left in the line. Before Katara gets arrested, the camera is looking at the second air vent, but Aang isn't there. When the camera view gets closer to the air vent, Aang is playing with a butterfly. When Katara is speaking to the Earthbenders, she uses a pan lid to draw their attention, but while she is speaking, the pan lid disappears; she is not shown putting it down. When Sokka explains his plan to get coal to the Earthbenders, there is no one around for a great distance, as seen by an overhead shot. When he finishes his explanation only

Trivia

Edit Aang lies, stating that he is from Kangaroo Island, which is in fact a real place in southern Australia. According to the Nick.com's website for Avatar, the episode was originally titled "The King and Aang", a title which may be a reference to the famous musical The King and I. Bumi's voice actor, Andr Sogliuzzo, would go on to also voice Hakoda, Sokka and Katara's father, later in the series.

moments later, nobody is shown directly behind them again, but then in the very next frame they are surrounded by every Earthbender prisoner and numerous Fire Nation guards.

was previously just referred to as the "Earth Kingdom's capital city" in "The Southern Air Temple".

Haru's mother is sometimes shown with both locks of hair in front of her shoulders and sometimes only one in front.

The sandal that Zuko finds on the ground which belongs to Iroh is the same one he used to find him with June's shirshu, Nyla, in "Sozin's Comet, Part 2: The Old Masters". Aang mentions that Monk Gyatso told him Avatar Roku would help him, despite the fact that in the third chapter, he says he doesn't know how he knew the name of Roku's statue. However, this is not an error as Gyatso never said Roku would help Aang, just that someone would. Aang knows, as Roku is his previous incarnation, he can just sense it, and believes correctly that Roku is the one Gyatso is referring to. This episode introduces the Spirit World and the capacity of an Avatar to contact spirits. This will become very important in the final chapters of this book. This is the first episode where Aang meets Hei Bai, whom he meets again in "The Siege of the North, Part 2". When Katara asks Sokka how he feels after his return from the Spirit World, he says he seriously needs to use the bathroom. In the episode "The Avatar and the Fire Lord", Katara asks if they have bathrooms in the Spirit World to which Sokka replies that they do not.

Trivia

Edit George Takei, who played helmsman Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek: The Original Series, lends his unmistakable voice to the character of the Warden. Kevin Michael Richardson, who lent his voice to the Jedi Jolee Bindo in Knights of the Old Republic and to Captain Gantu in Lilo and Stitch, voices Tyro. He previously voiced King Bumi's pet Flopsie in "The King of Omashu" and would eventually go on to voice the Lion Turtle in "Sozin's Comet, Part 2: The Old Masters". This is the first episode in which all four elements are bent outside the opening credits: Haru, Tyro and the other prisoners Earthbending, Katara Waterbending, the Warden and other Fire Nation soldiers Firebending and Aang Airbending. It is possible that the Earthbender rebellions mentioned later on in the series, in Zuko's flashback of Ozai's war meeting in "Sozin's Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King", were precipitated by the escape of the reinvigorated Earthbenders from this rig, as Tyro says, "[We're going] to take back all our villages!" In "Imprisoned" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, when Aang is asleep the night the Fire Nation troops take Haru, he is dreaming about Katara, as he has a big smile on his face. This is the first episode whose name does not start with the word "The" and one of only two episodes to only consist of one word, the other episode being "Jet" Goofs

Character revelations

Edit

Iroh is shown to have some connection with the Spirit World because he sees Roku's dragon while others do not. It is later revealed in "The Siege of the North, Part 2" that he may have traveled to the Spirit World in the past.

Edit When Aang is about to crash into his real body, his cheeks blush and are temporarily red, but while in the Spirit World, he must always be blue. When the gang enter the village at sunset, Katara's dress is bright blue and Sokka's clothes are a dull blue. In the next shot, we see Katara and Sokka from the front, and their clothing is roughly the same color. When the Old wanderer places a coat over Katara and says, "You should get some rest," his mouth doesn't move. When Aang returns to the village while in the Spirit World he does not have his staff with him. However, after the scene where Zuko finds the sandal, Aang is sitting crosslegged holding his staff, which is also blue.

Winter Solstice Part 1: The Spirit World

Series continuity Edit

Although Aang sees a statue of a giant bear in this episode and a Panda Bear spirit in the end, the party still expresses doubt that such an animal as a "bear" can exist, in "City of Walls and Secrets". This episode sees the first mention by name of Ba Sing Se, the walled city to which General Iroh laid siege for 600 days and which would become important in Book 2. It

When he leaves with the dragon, it disappears again.

The official Finnish name of this episode is Pivnseisaus (Solstice), but in the DVD release it is mistakenly named Pivntasaus (Equinox). This episode ends with a shot of a crescent moon. The next episode, "Winter Solstice, Part 2: Avatar Roku", starts with a shot of a full moon despite the fact it is the same night and the phases cannot change that suddenly.

and greatly increases the power of the Fire Nation's Firebenders. Aang must master Water, Earth and Fire before the comet's arrival, or he will be unable to defeat the Fire Lord and the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes will completely lose the war. Basically, this is when we learn that Aang has a time limit to fulfill his destiny.

As of this episode, Aang and his friends have been to each of the four nations. This is the first time Fire Lord Ozai is shown, albeit as a silhouette only. This is the first episode in which another Avatar shows up through Aang's body, the others being "The Deserter" and "Avatar Day". This is the first episode to recap what happened previously at the beginning of the episode.

Trivia

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The episode is strongly influenced by Hayao Miyazaki's movie, Princess Mononoke. When Fang shows the calendar for how the sunlight passes through the gem to Roku's Statue, it shows that the way the sun sets in the Southern Hemisphere is from right to left. In the North Hemisphere the way the sun sets is from left to right due to the planet's circular formation. When chasing Hei Bai through the forest, Aang is replaced by a CGI replica. In the very beginning of the episode, Aang is chewing on the end of a piece of wheat, similar to Jet. In this episode, the Spirit World appears to be an extension of the physical world, but in future episodes, it is an entirely different realm. This may be due to how close this episode takes place to the winter solstice as the village elder mentions that the lines between the real world and the spirit world are very weak close to the solstice. This is the first episode in which Ba Sing Se is mentioned. In Avatar Extras, in the episode "Zuko Alone", it is rumored that Iroh journeyed to the Spirirt World to find his late son, Lu Ten, giving Iroh the ability to see spirits. The last shot of the episode is a glimpse of the crescent moon in the night sky. This is a foreshadow to the events of "Winter Solstice Part 2: Avatar Roku", as Aang travels to Crescent Island to convene with Roku's spirit at the Fire Temple.

Goofs

Edit At the end of "Winter Solstice Part 1: The Spirit World", there was a crescent moon, but in the beginning of this episode, on the very same night, the moon is full. The moon is not able to change that swiftly, and it should have taken at least a week for it to make that shift. When Avatar Roku hits the floor of the temple before he destroys it, his voice is actually Shyu's voice.

Trivia

Edit This is the first time the Buddhist chant, "Na Mo A Mi Tuo Fo Shin Di", is heard. The chant can be faintly heard before Aang merges with La in "The Siege of the North, Part 2". It is later heard in "Sozin's Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King" when Aang meditates and when Aang meets the Lion Turtle in "Sozin's Comet, Part 2: The Old Masters". It is also heard when Aang begins to Energybend on Fire Lord Ozai in "Sozin's Comet, Part 4: Avatar Aang".

The Waterbending Scroll Winter Solstice Part 2: Avatar Roku

Series continuity Series continuity Edit

Edit

This episode introduces Sozin's Comet, a returning comet which will give the Fire Nation army the power to conquer the territory still not under its control. The comet returns once every hundred years

In "The Desert", it is discovered that Iroh's White lotus tile holds significance outside of being a significant piece in the game of Pai Sho. The piece is also a symbol for the Order of the White Lotus, of which Iroh is a Grand Lotus.

In "The Library", Katara surrenders the Waterbending scroll to Wan Shi Tong to be admitted to his library. The Knowledge Spirit found the illustrations on the scroll to be "quite stylish". This is the episode where Aang purchases his bison whistle, which appears in many later episodes to call Appa and other animals, such as in "The Desert" and "Tales of Ba Sing Se". This is the first episode where the ruby encrusted monkey statue is seen. It also appears in the episodes "The Blue Spirit" and "The Runaway". The pirates that Prince Zuko hires to capture the Avatar are again hired by Admiral Zhao in the episode "The Waterbending Master" to kill Zuko. Some of the pirates are hired again as actors to portray themselves in "The Ember Island Players". This episode marks the first time Katara uses the water whip. This episode foreshadows the fact that Katara will end up being Aang's Waterbending teacher. It would be interesting to note that this is the first time Aang uses Waterbending along with someone else, all the previous times being alone in the Avatar State.

When Zuko is coming out from the smoke, he puts the scroll in his belt. When he's fighting it disappears, then reappears in the next scene. When Zuko is talking to Katara after she is captured, Zuko's belt buckle changes colors multiple times throughout the scene. When Zuko is threatening to burn the scroll and lights a fire under it, the fire is in contact with the scroll which would easily cause it to catch fire.

Trivia

Edit This is the first episode in which Aang Waterbends outside of the Avatar State. Prince Zuko makes a deal with the pirates to track down their scroll in exchange for their help in capturing Aang. Coincidentally, Dante Basco, the voice actor for Zuko played the character of Rufio, leader of the Lost Boys, in the movie Hook. This episode is one of two episodes in which Zuko laughs, the other being in "The Headband". Zuko rarely laughs in the series because he is often angry and ill-tempered. This is the second episode where the Cabbage Merchant appears.

Jet

Goofs

Edit When Katara is attempting to form a powerful wave while teaching Aang, she fails and her attempt falls into the water. As she leans over in defeat, 'ghosting' duplicates of her movement appear. The pirates crashed down a waterfall, even though they came upriver from the seashore village earlier. There is no visible way they could have gotten their ships over the waterfall on the way up. When Katara says, "These are real Waterbending forms; you know how crucial it is for Aang to learn Waterbending," the Waterbending scroll is much thicker than before. When Katara says, "Aang, can we get out of here? I feel like we're getting weird looks," her mother's necklace can be seen around her neck, despite the fact that it was currently under Zuko's possession. When Katara takes the Waterbending scroll out of the shelf, it was originally on the second row, right in the middle. However, afterwards when the Pirate captain puts the Waterbending scroll back, a thicker scroll has suddenly appeared in its previous place. When Katara and Sokka escape with Aang on his glider staff, Momo is not seen flying with them.

Series continuity

Edit

Jet is not seen again after this episode until "The Serpent's Pass", along with Smellerbee and Longshot. Pipsqueak and The Duke aren't seen again until "The Awakening". Sneers is never seen again. This episode is continuously referenced to in the episode "Lake Laogai", where Aang and his friends meet up with Jet once again in Ba Sing Se and are initially less than happy to see him. Like many episodes, this episode was referenced in "The Ember Island Players", where the interaction of Jet and Katara is exaggerated to be highly romantic. In the play, Jet floods the town of Gaipan just to impress Katara rather than to eliminate the Fire Nation. Blasting jelly is first mentioned in this episode. It is quite important later in the season as it is used when Zhao hires the pirates to assassinate Zuko.

Goofs

Edit Katara claims to have never tried bending water that she could not see, even though she did so in previous episodes, such as when she bent the water from Aang's lungs so he could breathe in "The Warriors of Kyoshi" and when she bent water from the well in "Imprisoned". At night when Sokka goes to follow Jet, it shows him leaning on the trunk of the tree, asleep. When he wakes up, he is leaning against the wall of the hut. When Sokka is found by Jet's gang, his boomerang disappears in a couple scenes. Jet tells The Duke that there has to be a price to pay when they blow up the dam, but Jet just calls him "Duke" instead, even though The Duke gets angry at Teo for calling him this. However, this may be Jet's nickname for The Duke. When Aang first tries to fly using his damaged glider, a large rip is shown on its right side. In the next shot, however, the rip is on the opposite side. When Sokka discovers Jet's plot, it is night. When he confronts Jet, it is still night. After Pipsqueak and Smellerbee get a hold of him, a commercial break starts. When the show comes back on, it is midday. When Jet tells Katara to hold on to him, her water skin is on her back. As they are pulled up, the water skin disappears and isn't shown again until later in the episode. At the beginning of the episode, when Sokka, Aang and Katara travel on foot so as not to attract the attention of the Fire Nation, they carry all their belongings on their person, when they could easily have left them on Appa. When Pipsqueak and Smellerbee push Sokka to the ground, he holds himself up with one arm and rubs his shoulder with the other. When it shows Sokka from the front, his arms are switched. At the beginning of the episode when Sokka takes the pack from Aang his pack and Aang's can be seen on the ground. In the next scene, however, when they zoom out, his pack and Aang's are gone. When Jet is making his speech after the raid, Longshot is shown pumping his fist in the air to cheer, as well as putting his hands at his mouth to boo which is contrary to the fact that Longshot does not speak, although he could have simply been making the motions, and not actually making the sounds.

Trivia

Edit In "Jet" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, one of the commentary bubbles stated that the fight between Aang and Jet in the trees was inspired by the Naruto and Samurai Champloo animes, as much of the fighting in Naruto takes place in forests with trees at least six stories high. According to Nick.com's flash website for Avatar, the episode was originally titled "The Rebels". "Jet" is the second episode in the series whose title consists of only one word. "Imprisoned " being the first. When Sokka was waiting with Jet in the trees, he used a previously unseen short sword to detect the old man down the road. The sword used a method similar to the way Toph sees: the sword takes the vibrations and focuses them into the end of the sword to make sounds, which Sokka puts his ear to listen. Toph uses her Earthbending to sense vibrations and feel where people are. This episode bears a foreshadowing for Aang and Katara's relationship, despite Katara's obvious infatuation with Jet. Upon Katara attempting to discern Jet's reasons for attacking the old Fire Nation man, the leaf-hat that Katara had made specifically for Jet is being casually worn by Aang. The assassin's dagger that Jet shows Katara is shown slightly later in the episode. In fact, Smellerbee is shown using it against Sokka when she and Pipsqueak find him spying on Jet. Sneers is the only named Freedom Fighter who does not make an appearance later in the series, and is the only one not to speak at all during the series. Jet's hideout is very similar to Peter Pan's hideout in the 1991 movie Hook. Oddly, Dante Basco, Zuko's voice actor, stars in that movie as Rufio, a Jet-like character. This is the first episode where Katara is seen using her icy breath to freeze someone. However, it isn't the first time she has actually encased a person in ice, as she exhibited in "The Avatar Returns." It seems that the Freedom Fighters are based on Robin Hood's Merry Men, with Pipsqueak likely being named after Little John. Jet's design, specifically his hairstyle, seems to be loosely based on Spike's design from the anime Cowboy Bebop.[1] Dave Filoni designed the forest and Jet's hideout. He is a huge fan of Star Wars, so the forest is a reference to the Ewoks' forest village in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983). In the original sketches of the hideout, he even referred to the middle section of the trees where the hideout was

located as the "Ewok" area.[2] Contradictory to this, Avatar Extras says the forest was based on the film, House of Flying Daggers. The Great Divide

Goofs

Edit When the Canyon guide gets attacked by the canyon crawler, the canyon crawler picks him up using it's leg, but in the next scene it is holding him with its mouth.

Translations

Edit

"Zhang" (, zng) means dirty in Mandarin Chinese while "Gan Jin" (, gnjng) means clean. Since both sides can agree that the Gan Jin's forefather, Jin Wei, was supposed to deliver the sacred orb, his name can be written as (ji wi) which translates as 'to transport under guard.' Since no one can agree whether Zhang's forefather, Wei Jin, was there to help or steal, his name can be written as (wi ji) which translates as 'great divide.'

Trivia

Edit When the canyon guide's arms are broken by a canyon crawler, he states that he has no bending. This is contrary to Toph Bei Fong's bending style, as she is seen on many occasions Earthbending using only her legs. There is also the Earthbender in the opening sequence, who is seen performing with only his legs. It is possible that the guide uses a style of Earthbending that is dependent on his arms, or that as he already knew his leg was badly injured, using his arms was the only way he would have been able to Earthbend. The situation between the two tribes provides an example of a Rashomon effect, in which multiple individuals who are witnesses to an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it, commonly used in episodes of television programs. The concept was popularized by Akira Kurosawa's 1950s film Rashomon, in which a crime witnessed by four individuals is described in four mutually contradictory ways. Avatar Extras reveal that canyon crawlers are a cross between crocodiles and spiders. Overall among fans, this episode is one of the least popular episodes in the entire series simply because of the pointless plot. This fact did not go unnoticed by the creators, and in the play in the episode "The Ember Island Players", the characters chose to fly right over the canyon without stopping, which is what some would have preferred to occur. "Avatar Extras" also referenced it, with the bubbles, "This references an episode called The Great Divide," immediately followed by, "...That episode was not a fan favorite." The episode title is one of several episode titles that have multiple meanings. It refers not only to the geographical feature the Great Divide, but also to the great divide that has grown between the two tribes, as well as the literal meaning of Wei Jin's name. In "Avatar Extras," it says that this is the first episode to mention Ba Sing Se. However, in "Winter Solstice Part 1: The Spirit World", the Earthbender captain mentions Ba Sing Se as the place that his team will be taking Iroh to see justice.

Character revelations

Edit

According to Aang, Appa has five stomachs. Although Aang is a vegetarian, his reaction to the egg custard tart reveals he has no qualms about eating eggs and milk, both of which are ingredients in egg custard. However, it should be noted that vegetarians are generally more likely to eat animal products like milk and cheese. It is vegans that are strictly against meat and any other products that comes from animals.

Connections

Edit

In the real world, the "Great Divide" most commonly refers to the Atlantic/Pacific continental divide, a mountainous ridge that separates the watersheds that drain into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The "Great Divide" of the Avatar's world is the exact oppositea canyon analogous to the realworld Grand Canyon. The Canyon guide is a parody of Grand Canyon tour guides. His explanation of how the Great Divide was created is a parody of the explanation such guides give about the Grand Canyon. The art and direction style of the Zhang's version of the story is similar to that of the animated film Dead Leaves.

This is the first episode in the series to not be seen again in "Previously on Avatar...". The others are "The Puppetmaster", "The Fortuneteller", "The Northern Air Temple", and "The Painted Lady" This is the lowest-rated episode in the series.

briefly seen smirking with a fist up in excitement, in the crowd during a flashback of Zuko's Agni Kai with his father. Zhao is also seen smirking just as Iroh turns away.

Iroh is seen redirecting lightning for the first time, though he seems surprised that it worked, suggesting it was the first time he tried it as well. During one of Aang's flashbacks to his life before being trapped in the iceberg, two Airbenders are seen playing the Avatar World's own version of "Rock, Paper, Scissors", the difference being that the four elements are used instead of the familiar stationery. In the three rounds seen playing, two hand forms were shown: a pound fist later revealed to represent earth, and what looked like a "stop" hand or a "eight trigram palm" from Baguazhang. This game is seen again in "City of Walls and Secrets", when it is played by Aang and Sokka. As revealed in the later episode, earth appears to beat fire, which had the hand emulating flames or what looked like a dragon grasp from Northern Shaolin style. This is the second time Monk Gyatso is seen talking in a flashback. The first was in "The Southern Air Temple".

The Storm

It is greatly stressed in this episode how the Avatar is a symbol of hope for all peoples alike. In an attempt to cheer Aang up, Katara notes how he "gives people hope" in ending the century-long war. With those same words, Iroh states that the Avatar gives Zuko hope of regaining his honor, although they are apparent enemies. These two scenes were explicitly juxtaposed to stress this point. This is the favorite episode of Zuko's voice actor, Dante Basco. During the scene where Zuko faces against his father in the Agni Kai, Basco worked with Mark Hamill and relates the scene to those in Star Wars in which Luke Skywalker (Hamill) faces off with Darth Vader. This is Michael Dante DiMartino's third favorite episode because of how the story goes deep into both Aang's and Zuko's pasts. It was shown that the four toys Aang chose that determined his destiny are a clay turtle, a string-powered propeller, a wooden hog monkey and a wooden hand drum. This method is akin to the one used in determining the next incarnation of a Tulku Lama in Tibetan Buddhism.

Goofs

Edit When Zuko and Iroh are arguing about the storm, right before the picture cuts to the close-up of Iroh's face, Zuko's ponytail disappears. In the scene where Zuko tells Lieutenant Jee to show respect, he is wearing his usual turtleneck-like garment under his armor, but in the next few shots it disappears. When Aang is hiding in the cave, Katara's shadow should have blocked the shadows of the rain on Aang, but it didn't. Appa entered the cave with Katara even though he generally hates going underground or in tunnels. However, he might not have minded this time since it was the only way he could shelter himself from the storm. In various camera angle switches, we see both Aang and Katara, separate scenes, nearly pressed up against the rock wall, only to have the camera change and suddenly they're sitting a good distance from it. In a few scenes, in particular, when Aang briefly enters the Avatar State in his anger, Katara's lower kimono no longer has slits that begin at her hips. Instead, it resembles a complete dress with no separation. During Aang's story, in the shot when he is on the Air Scooter asking if he can't play, there are six boys standing around him but in the next shot where he walks away there are only five.

Series continuity

Edit

For a split second at the end of Aang's dream, there is a very brief silhouette of Fire Lord Ozai. This nightmarish image of Ozai is first seen in "Winter Solstice Part 2: Avatar Roku" when Aang learns about Sozin's Comet and again in "The Guru" when Aang must confront and overcome his greatest fear: fighting the Fire Lord. This is the episode that revealed how Aang was trapped in the iceberg, where he was found in "The Boy in the Iceberg". This is the episode that revealed how Zuko got his scar and why he was banished from the Fire Nation. This is the first of three times in the series where Aang has continuous nightmares. The second time is in "The Avatar State" and the third time is in "Nightmares and Daydreams". This is the first episode in which Azula, Zuko's sister, appears, though she is only

When the old fisherman's wife is telling the fisherman to give Aang an apology, her hairclip is in her bun, but usually it is in the rest of her hair. When Iroh tells the soldiers about Zuko's scar, the soldiers believe it was a training accident and seem to be unaware of the events that occurred during the Agni Kai, even though the whole arena was crowded with people. Furthermore even some people in the Earth Kingdom seemingly know how Zuko was banished and how his own father burned him, it is strange that the soldiers wouldn't know about it. When a soaked Appa walks into the cave where Aang is hiding, his muzzle is white instead of the usual gray. While Aang and Appa are in the ocean, Aang is on top of Appa and went into the Avatar State. A moment later Appa is above him instead. The same thing happened in "The Boy in the Iceberg". In the scene where Zuko is begging for his father's mercy, it is shown that many of the Agni Kai's spectators are wearing green, blue and yellow. This is odd as they are Fire Nation and the episode's close up of the audience shows them wearing red and gray. When Monk Tashi interrupts Aang and Monk Gyatso's game of Pai Sho, his necklace is seen with no decoration. Later, when he and Monk Gyatso are speaking with Monk Pasang, his necklace has three reddish feathers. All the times that people get wet in this episode, no one is seen drying off or even having wet clothing. It is humorous to note that Sokka and the tribes were claiming it was the dry season, only to leave the canyon and end up in a massive storm.

Avatar State for a split second and another when he forms an air pocket around Appa.

According to "Avatar Extras", the note left by Aang reads, "Dear Gyatso, I've stolen a sky bison and ran away." This makes no sense as Aang rightfully owns Appa and would not have to steal him. The title of this episode, "The Storm", is one of many titles that has multiple meanings; this one has at least three. It refers to the actual storm in which the characters get caught, to the reasons for Aang's "stormy" feelings of guilt and shame, and to Zuko's "stormy" history of how and why he was banished. This episode explores the emotional stress that is placed on the Avatar, serving as the first of many episodes that has Aang reluctantly confront his duty as the Avatar. The fact that Momo could talk and say unkind things in one of Aang's daydreams, in the episode "Nightmares and Daydreams", may have been inspired by what Sokka said about his dream, early in this episode: "Momo could talk. You said some very unkind things."

The Blue Spirit

Series continuity

Edit

Zuko disguises himself as the Blue Spirit for the first time, although the name is not actually mentioned in in-episode dialogue or text until "The Waterbending Master". He adopts the same identity in "The Swamp", "Avatar Day" and "Lake Laogai". A wanted poster for the Blue Spirit is prominently placed next to the festival poster in the beginning of "The Deserter." In Zhao's victory speech, he states that the Fire Nation will finally breach the "impenetrable" walls of Ba Sing Se and use Sozin's Comet to burn the Earth Kingdom capital city to the ground. This has several foreshadowing elements for later events in the series: o The Fire Nation successfully penetrates the walls of Ba Sing Se in the episode "The Drill", but ultimately fails to invade and take over the city. Instead, it is because of Princess Azula infiltrating the city and instigating a coup that the city is finally conquered by the Fire Nation. o The speech hints at the events of the third season finale, where in Sozin's Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King it is revealed that Phoenix King Ozai's plan is to indeed use the comet's Firebending-enhancing power to destroy Ba Sing Se and

Trivia

Edit Zuko cries for the first time during this episode. When the gang and the fisherman are struggling in the storm, a strange white blob flashes onto the background. When Aang asks Gyatso if the Council might have made a mistake when they said he was the Avatar, Gyatso says that, "The only mistake they made was telling you before you turned sixteen," meaning that Avatars aren't made aware of their status until their sixteenth birthday. This is further proven in the episode "The Avatar and the Fire Lord", when the Fire Sages told Roku he is the Avatar on his sixteenth birthday. This is the first time Aang goes into the Avatar State twice in the same episode. Once in the cave, when he goes into the

literally burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground to win the war once and for all.

show, and would later name Wulong Forest after the show's currency.

When Iroh plays the tsungi horn as Zuko returns, the bejeweled monkey statue that he was eying in the pirate's store in "The Waterbending Scroll" can be seen. It can also be seen in "The Runaway" while Sokka and Aang are contemplating how to get Toph and Katara to be friends again. In "The Western Air Temple," Aang and Sokka refer to the events of this episode, with Sokka claiming that the frog gave him a wart on his uvula, which he called his "throatal flap." Katara insists, however, it was psychosomatic, meaning it was all in his head. During "The Ember Island Players", in the scene where the Blue Spirit rescues Aang, the enemy he faces is Zuko rather than Zhao. A copy of the Blue Spirit mask appears on a merchant's cart in the beginning of the episode "The Swamp". Zuko keeps this particular copy and later disposes of it in the episode "Lake Laogai, where it sinks to the bottom of the lake. Zuko cooperating with Aang foreshadows him joining Team Avatar in the third book. It becomes sort of a running joke in the series that none of the population outside Team Avatar and Admiral Zhao knew Zuko and the Blue Spirit were one and the same, such as in "The Ember Island Players". The crown which Momo brings to Katara when she tells him to search for water makes a reappearance in "The Swamp".

Goofs

Edit When Aang is trying to escape, the Blue Spirit hands him the next ladder while holding the middle of the ladder, but when they need to put it on the ground, they are suddenly at the top of it. When Katara gives Momo her pouch for water, Momo later comes back without it. Instead he has a meadow vole, which would mean he left it somewhere. However, Katara has it in later episodes. When Momo is sent to get water he brings back a lot of junk. When Aang gets back, it's scattered around Appa, but when he and his friends wake up, all of the junk is gone.

Trivia

Edit Zhao's speech makes it appear that, in the Fire Nation, both men and women can be in the army. This is Michael DiMartino's second favorite episode out of three because of the mysteriousness of the Blue Spirit that was involved in it. He also likes it because it had a lot of action and a surprising twist at the end. In "The Blue Spirit" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, one of the commentary bubbles states that this episode was originally called "The Red Spirit," with the mask being red, of course. During some airings of this episode, the title is mistakenly given as "The Red Spirit" and still appears as so on some program guides, such as DIRECTV. o In the film prequel manga "Zuko's Story," Zuko was robbed by an actor/thief named Hong Shen who posed as the Red Spirit, taking on a Robin Hood-esque persona. The Red Spirit's mask design and clothing were identical to those that Zuko wears in the show, although Zuko's Blue Spirit persona corresponds to what it was in The Last Airbender. Incidentally, Mike and Bryan got the idea of Zuko basing his Blue Spirit persona on a pre-existing figure during a postSeason 2 interview. The tsungi horn is played whenever Prince Zuko switches to his Blue Spirit alter ego. The instrument used for the sound effect is the Duduk, which the Tsungi horn is based on. This is the first time a character gets sick.

Connections

Edit

The idea of sucking on frogs for medicinal purposes very likely traces its origin to realworld toads such as the Colorado River toad, which secrete a psychoactive hallucinogenic venom through their skin. In the 1970s, rumors were widely propagated of hippies and other teenagers sucking on or licking these toads to get high; but these rumors were never found to be true. Also, the practice would not actually work for humans, because the human digestive system cancels out the venom it would have to be injected, inhaled, or smoked in order to have an effect. The scene in which Aang asks Zuko if they know each other back then they could be friends is almost the exact same as Session 8 "Waltz for Venus" from Cowboy Bebop in which Roco asks Spike "If I had met you earlier in my lifetime, do you think that we would've been friends?" This comes to no surprise as the creators are big fans of that

In "The Blue Spirit" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, when Aang was running up the stairs to the herbalist, one of the commentary bubbles states that the movie "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" is used as reference for that scene. In "The Blue Spirit" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, one of the commentary bubbles states that the mask Zuko wears when he is the "Blue Spirit" is actually an Earth Kingdom theater mask similar to the two frowning and smiling masks displayed in real life acting theaters. In "The Blue Spirit" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, when Aang jumped off the cliff when he was running from the Yu Yan Archers, one of the commentary bubbles stated that the movie "Rambo" was used as reference for that scene. This is the first time a character goes by another alias to achieve a plot-twisting goal. The second is in the episode "The Painted Lady", from the third season, when Katara dresses as a local legend to save the Fire Nation village of Jang Hui. In The Last Airbender movie, the Blue Spirit mask also comes with hair, unlike the one in the television show. This is the third time in the series an unhybridized animal (Miyuki, who is simply a cat) has been seen. The first time was the rabbit in Flopsie's pen in Omashu and the second was with Hei Bai, a panda bear. The small speech given to Zuko by Aang is a slight foreshadow into how the relationship between them will end up by the end of Book 3.

in Book Three, they frequently employ Cloudbending to disguise Appa and travel the skies without the risk of being spotted.

Meng is the second girl who had a crush on Aang; the first was Koko, a Kyoshi Island resident, seen in "The Warriors of Kyoshi". Aunt Wu's prediction that Katara would marry a powerful bender foreshadows the development of Aang and Katara's relationship over the series, and specifically the last scene of the series. Notably, all of Aunt Wu's proven predictions are in fact proven correct and shaped by the actions of the gang, except for one. Aang did, in fact, fall in love and get married, when Aunt Wu instead stated that she didn't see love in his fortune.

Goofs

Edit The necklace Aang made for Katara, which she wears at the beginning of the episode, disappears once they arrive at Aunt Wu's village. It's never seen again in the series, most likely because Katara's original necklace is returned to her in the next episode. When Team Avatar first meets Aunt Wu and she asks, "Who's next?" Katara's braid disappears. When the gang gathers the villagers to warn them about the eruption, the woman who speaks first is originally wearing a purple and pink robe; when she speaks again, it turns green. Her robe continues to change colors back and forth several more times. During the volcano eruption, the trees should be on fire, but they're not. After Sokka is slapped by the fish and gets out of the river, he is soaking wet. However, when he is yelling at the calm man in the next scene with the platypus bear, he is dry. He is never shown drying off. The first man seen with the panda lily must have climbed the volcano and should have noticed that it was about to erupt, but he did not. This can be explained by him having such faith in Aunt Wu that he didn't pay it any mind. When Aang went to obtain a Panda lily, he could have simply glided up the mountain. Instead, he climbed with Sokka.

The Fortuneteller

Series continuity

Edit

Though Aang fights a volcano for the first time in his life, it is the second known time for an Avatar, the other time being in his former life as Avatar Roku in "The Avatar and the Fire Lord". Roku fought to protect his home, an unnamed island in the Fire Nation simply called Roku's island. The parasol given to Aang by the traveler is seen again in "Appa's Lost Days" when the Sandbenders raid Appa's saddle for loot. Aang and Katara use the knowledge that clouds are made of water and air in this episode to bend them for the first time in the series. They first learned that clouds are water in "Winter Solstice Part 1: The Spirit World", when Aang jumped through a cloud and was soaked. They used this knowledge of clouds again in "The Desert" to bend the water for the group to drink as they were stranded in the Si Wong Desert. Later in the series, as the travel around the Fire Nation

Trivia

Edit Aang and Katara are seen sharing an umbrella in this episode. Sharing an umbrella is an old romantic motif ("Ai-AiGasa") in Japanese history [1] and is commonly used in manga and anime.

The volcano is called Mt. Makapu. Meaning 'bulging eye' in Hawaiian, Makapu'u is a name given to the extreme eastern end of the Island of Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands. In ancient China, osteomancy, a type of pyromancy, was practiced in the Neolithic period and Shng and Zhu dynasties in the form of burning or heating oracle bones usually the scapulae (shoulder blades) of oxen or turtle shellsto produce cracks which were then read as portents. This was the form used by Aunt Wu to see the future. Katara reveals in this episode that she hates papayas. The statues seen being burned by the lava flow look similar to real-life statues called daruma, which are commonly seen in Japanese shinto shrines. When Aang realizes Mt. Makapu will erupt and drops the Panda lily into the volcano, the flower is replaced by CGI flames when it hits the surface of the magma. It is definitively shown that even with identical twins, one can be born a bender while the other isn't. Of course, this wouldn't apply to Air Nomad twins, who would always be born as Airbenders. When the title of this episode appeared, it lasted less than any other episodes' titles did throughout the series. Jessie Flower, the voice of Meng, would later join the main cast as Toph.

Goofs

Edit When Bato says the sisters craft perfume and ointments, Katara is seen wearing her mother's necklace, even though, at that point, Zuko has it. After June captures the stowaway on Zuko's ship, the stowaway can't be seen when she runs off the dock. In a distant look of the Abbey we see the doors open. The next moment, when Zuko, Iroh and June enter, they break through the door that was already open. When Katara and Sokka are by the boat, Aang's footprints disappear. In the next scene, they reappear. When Katara and Sokka find out Aang had the map that would lead them to their father, we see Sokka, Katara and Bato's footprints. When Sokka, Katara and Bato are walking away, their footprints disappear. Zuko and June stop at the hilltop herbalist in their pursuit of Aang, despite the fact that Katara never went there, and it's her necklace and scent that they are following, although it could be that Aang has Katara's scent on him, as she hugs him quite a lot. When Bato is saying he can't do anything while dodging, Katara's rope is behind Sokka and Aang. When Sokka is yelling at Aang the mark on his forehead is an arch, but when he turns back at Katara, it is more triangle shaped. When Nyla struck Zuko with his tongue, June was on the saddle, but in the next frame where Nyla struck June, she was off the saddle.

Bato of the Water Tribe

Series continuity Edit

Katara's necklace, which she lost in the episode "Imprisoned" is recovered by Aang and returned to her during his battle with Zuko. The Herbalist and her pet cat Miyuki make a return appearance in this episode. She is seen gathering herbs near the ruins of Taku. June, Zuko and Iroh make a stop at Makapu Village and briefly converse with Aunt Wu. June comments that, "The girl must have spent a lot of time here," referring to Katara's repeated visits to have her fortune read. When Zuko tries to get Nyla the shirshu back on the scent, June sarcastically says, "He likes you," when Zuko nearly got struck by its tongue. However, June may not have been kidding, seeing how Nyla reacted the same way to her while being pet. The man June was arm-wrestling appears later in the series, fighting her.

Trivia

Edit In the scene where June is arm wrestling in the local tavern, the man she is arm wrestling bears a striking resemblance to Ryu from Street Fighter. Also when she is arm wrestling, there is a woman in the background who looks somewhat like Jin. According to iTunes, this is the lowest rated episode. However, many believe it to be "The Great Divide". This is the first episode in which Appa actually engages people in combat, using his size and ability to Airbend to great effect.

The Deserter


Allusions Edit

Before Zhao steps through Jeong Jeong's wall of fire, an outline of his figure should have been seen through the flames, but it wasn't. No burn marks from Zhao were visible on Aang during the battle, but they suddenly appeared when he got out of the water after jumping off Zhao's boat.

When Roku visits Jeong Jeong in his vision, he lights up a small tree to emphasize his instructions. This is most likely a reference to the Biblical tale of Moses and the burning bush, in which the then outcast and future prophet also received instructions by means of a spiritual epiphany.

Trivia Series continuity Edit

Edit The Firebending magician, Malu, is voiced by Scott Menville, who voices Robin in the animated series Teen Titans. He also does the voice of actor Sokka in "The Ember Island Players" and the Gan Jin scout in "The Great Divide". When Sokka argues he doesn't think they should go see Jeong Jeong, Katara says, "It wouldn't hurt to at least talk to him." Ironically, Katara later gets hurt because of the Firebending Aang learned from Jeong Jeong. When Aang saves Katara from the Firebending magician, he uses the same move that he did in the opening sequence. This is the only episode where Zhao appears but Zuko does not.

This is the first episode where Aang Firebends. He keeps true to his promise to refrain from Firebending until "The Firebending Masters", where he finally becomes comfortable with Firebending. Jeong Jeong is spoken about in "The Western Air Temple", when the group is talking about the chances of finding a Firebender willing to teach Aang. Aang says they will never see Jeong Jeong again. Jeong Jeong is not seen again in the series until "Sozin's Comet, Part 2: The Old Masters", although Aang wasn't with the group at the time. All four wanted posters later show up in the episode "The Desert", along with new ones for Iroh and Zuko. This is the first episode in which Katara uses Waterbending for healing and is also the first episode where it is revealed that Waterbenders have healing capabilities.

The Northern Air Temple

Series continuity

Edit

Goofs

Edit When at the Fire Festival, Katara, though wearing a mask, is still wearing her Water Tribe necklace, which if noticed, could have gotten them captured. During the Taming the Dragon part of Malu's act, the wall behind Katara is perfectly intact, but when the gang runs away the wall is partially destroyed, even though nothing happened that could have blown up that part of the wall. When Katara switches Aang and Sokka's masks at the festival, her necklace disappears. Throughout the festival her necklace disappears and reappears multiple times. The Firebending magician's clothes change several times during his scene. As Aang is breathing on the mountain, Jeong Jeong is walking down the mountain. Right before he completely disappears, the rest of his visible hair completely vanishes.

On the desk in the Mechanist's office are plans for the Fire Nation drill that was seen in "The Drill". The captured war balloon is the prototype for the war balloons that were used by the Fire Nation in "The Day of Black Sun, Part 2: The Eclipse". This episode marks the first appearance of the steampunk elements that will later become a substantial part of the series' story, as well as in The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra.

Goofs

Edit When Teo first shows Aang and Katara the door to the Northern Air Temple sanctuary all three tubes on the door are horizontally aligned, but when it shows the door seconds later, the two outer tubes are vertically aligned. When the Mechanist and his men are making room for the bath house, he blows

the head off one of the statues of the monks, but when the dust cleared, the head is still there.

the natural gas another area to leak, albeit small.

When Aang and Teo confront The Mechanist in his office, Teo's open-fingered gloves disappear and re-appear several times. When War Minister Qin and the Mechanist are heading for the inventions, Aang closes the door. In a short flash looking through Aang's legs, Qin's hair is loose, but in the next scene his hair is normal, and loose again after Aang uses Airbending against him. When the Mechanist is talking to Aang about why he's at the temple, Aang's staff looks like a regular stick. When the Mechanist says, "You're the Avatar? But you're twelve," it was just a few seconds before he met Aang, and nobody mentioned how old he was while with The Mechanist. So it would have been impossible for him to know his age. In "The Southern Air Temple", Aang states that the only way to reach an Air Temple is on a flying bison , yet in this episode the Fire Nation troops are able to walk right up the mountain, and would have reached the temple this way had it not been for the resistance. It can be assumed that the current inhabitants of the temple also reached it on foot. Also, before Aang froze himself and Appa 100 years ago and before Firebenders inexplicably hunted them to near extinction, some Firebenders apparently rode dragons. Sokka's war balloon, built by the Mechanist, is a very unique and important invention. Both of them should have been aware that, if the Fire Nation captured such a balloon, it can spell disaster for future missions. It is surprising that neither took any measures to avoid the loss of the balloon and simply allowed it to crash, whereby it could be recovered by the Fire Nation and reverseengineered by their scientists. Some cable TV providers, such as Comcast, list this episode as "The Southern Air Temple", but there is already another episode in the series named as such. Sokka and the Mechanist decide to mix the rotten eggs in with the gas supply so that gas leaks can be detected by the concomitant rotten egg odor. However, eggs that are only a week oldwhich, the Mechanist tells us, is their agehardly stink noticeably. Perhaps they would stink without refrigeration, but recall that the Northern Air Temple is in a cold geographical area that essentially provides natural refrigeration for perishable foodstuffs. The natural gas room door has a small sliding door to look into. However, since the natural gas is invisible and the room is dark, there seems to be no point in looking into the room. Furthermore, it might just provide

The Mechanist created candles that spark to tell you the time, but when they were first shown he knew what time it was just by looking at them. The spark powder didn't go off until he was explaining it to Sokka. It is possible that he could tell the time by counting the lines on the candles and figuring how long they had been burning, but this would render the spark powder redundant. However, it could possibly be for the convenience of others who couldn't bother doing that.

Trivia

Edit When purchased in iTunes, this episode is called "The Northern Air Temple (a.k.a. The Gliders)". Sokka and the Mechanist's idea of adding the scent of rotten eggs to the gas to identify the source of the leak is similar to the real world process of adding ethanethiol to otherwise odorless LPG to make it detectable for humans. The storyteller at the beginning of the episode bears a striking resemblance to the famous Hong Kong movie director/actor/fight choreographer/ Hung Gar style kung fu master, Lau Kar Leung. He wears an outfit similar to the one Lau Kar Leung wears in the kung fu movie classic, Drunken Fist 2, starring Jackie Chan. Master Leung is well known for the large mole on the right side of his face.

The Waterbending Master

Goofs

Edit When Sokka gets up after he falls into the canal after asking Yue on a date, his legs are a few inches above water, but when the frame switches to above his head, the water is up to his heels. On Zuko's ship when the broadswords are first seen from a long shot there is a sheath hanging under them. After Zhao picks one up the sheath is not seen. When Sokka first lays eyes on Yue, the man ferrying her has brown hair. In the next shot, his hair is gray. When Team Avatar first enters the Northern Water Tribe, there are two boats waiting to greet them in the river behind the giant wall of ice, but in the next scene those two boats turn in to one single boat. If Master Pakku was engaged to Kanna at the marrying age of sixteen but she ran

away to the Southern Tribe, then, in episode one, the fire navy ship that attacked the Southern Water Tribe couldn't have haunted Kanna "since she was a little girl" as she would've been at least sixteen.

knees, and then a scene later, she was sitting in an Indian-style position.

When Sokka and Yue meet on a bridge, the moon can be seen in the background at a crescent phase. However, only several days later, a full moon gives advantage to Waterbenders during the Siege of the North.

When Aang jumps off Appa to attack the Fire Navy ships, his staff momentarily turns orange. When Katara goes to comfort Aang after his battle with the Fire Navy, her braid is missing. While riding on Appa, Aang's staff is on Appa's neck but in the next scene, Aang is holding it. When Sokka attacked Hahn, he had front bangs for one scene. When Katara and Yue are talking while Aang meditates, the bottom of their outfits become gray. When the camera pans up to show the full armada, a different design is on the flag atop the ship Aang stopped. When Sokka looks back at Yue after receiving his warrior's marks, the marks are gone. After closing up on Yue's face, the marks are back on his forehead. When Katara tells Yue that Aang is crossing into the Spirit World, her necklace symbol is missing.

Trivia

Edit The song played by Iroh is titled "The Four Seasons". Its melody is used in many places in this episode and the two-part season finale for dramatic music including Princess Yue's boat scene. According to the DVD commentary for this episode, Master Pakku's Waterbending trick of trapping Katara in a cage of icicles was inspired from a scene in House of Flying Daggers. Towards the end of the battle with Katara, Pakku bends water up in the air and converts it into a stream of icicles, trapping Katara, thus preventing her from Waterbending. Later, Katara uses a similar technique against Combustion Man.[1] This episode features the most predominant use of any one of the bending disciplines than any other episode. Aside from the opening sequence, Appa's Airbending and Zuko's fire shield, the only bending seen in this episode is Waterbending. It is hinted by Iroh that Zuko is capable of playing the tsungi horn.

Trivia

Edit The commentary involving Sangok's performance and a sea sponge is a subtle reference to Spongebob Squarepants, another Nickelodeon cartoon, while in the German translation Pakku refers to a starfish. This is fitting as SpongeBob's best friend is a starfish. While fighting in the ocean, some of the Waterbenders stop a Fire Nation battleship the same way the shipwreck seen in "The Boy in the Iceberg" is encased. The way the Southern Waterbenders stopped this ship is shown in "The Puppetmaster". While fighting Sangok, Katara is seen wearing a Northern Tribe parka instead of her Southern one; it has long thin sleeves near the forearms. In the dialogue between Hahn and Sokka, Hahn pronounces Sokka's name incorrectly by elongating the "O," which is the Asian pronunciation and how they pronounce it the film, The Last Airbender. This was probably another factor that fueled Sokka's distaste of Hahn. While Zuko was getting into the Northern Water Tribe by swimming underwater, he would've gotten hypothermia. Being in cold water for that long can rapidly drop a person's body temperature. However, being a Firebender, Zuko could have warmed himself to avoid a decrease in body temperature.

The Siege of the North, Part 1

Goofs

Edit When Iroh is talking with Zhao on the boat, the pin on his cloak is a gold and red emblem of the Fire Nation, but in the next episode the pin is black and red on the same cloak. After Arnook tells the rest of the tribe about the arrival of the Fire Nation, Yue's betrothal necklace wasn't around her neck. It seems unlikely that Chief Arnook would make Sokka Yue's bodyguard rather than her fiance, Hahn, as it was an arranged marriage and therefore he obviously trusts Hahn with Yue. In addition, Sokka knows a lot more about the enemy, so it would be wiser to put him in charge of the personal attack to Zhao rather than Hahn. While Chief Arnook was talking about the impending attack, Yue was sitting on her

This two part episode is Michael DiMartino's first favorite episode out of three, as he described it as being an awesome way to end the first book. When talking about asking the spirits for help, Aang jokingly suggests that the spirits will "unleash a crazy amazing spirit attack on the Fire Nation". This is exactly what ends the siege in the second part, as the Ocean Spirit devastates the Fire Navy through a spiritual link-up with Aang. The marks on the foreheads of the Northern Water Tribe warriors are the same marks Bato gave Aang, Katara and Sokka in "Bato of the Water Tribe". Whilst at the Spirit Oasis, the two fish - one black with a white spot, one white with a black spot - circling each other look like the Chinese Yin Yang symbol, which represents balance. During a brief part where Sokka is marked to join the mission, an instrumental version of Iroh's song "four stations" plays in the background.

previous episode the pin is gold and red on the same cloak.

When Aang is in the Spirit World, he jumps onto Hei Bai's back by Airbending; when in "Winter Solstice Part 1: The Spirit World", it was established that you can't bend in the Spirit World. When Zhao puts the fish in the bag, the moon turns red and the sky turns black. However, after the commercial break, the sky was red and the moon was pink. When Hahn tries to kill Zhao and is thrown from the platform, he should have landed on the deck of the ship below, but a splash is heard. Koh the Face Stealer claims that Avatar Kuruk tried to kill him "nearly eight or ninehundred years ago". Kuruk died about four hundred years ago, meaning that, if Koh's statement were true, Kuruk was at least five hundred or four hundred years old. The oldest confirmed age an Avatar has lived is 230, the age of Avatar Kyoshi, at death. During Yue's flashback as a baby, her mother is seen with Yue's father after finding out Yue was going to die. In "Avatar Extras", it said that was the only scene where we see Yue's mother. However, she is seen again later in the flashback at the Spirit Oasis, when Yue is cured. After Iroh defeats Zhao's team of Firebenders, the four troops instantly disappear; however, at one point, when Iroh is holding the moon spirit, the four guards are seen tied to the left side of the wooden gate-like structure. The next time the view zooms out, the troops are no longer there. When Aang's spirit returns to his body, Katara watches it fly over head and points to it. However, in "Winter Solstice Part 1: The Spirit World", in a similar scenario, Katara could not see him, only Iroh could. At the end of the episode, Fire Lord Ozai is seen telling Azula that Iroh is a traitor and Zuko is a failure. However the only other Firebenders that witnessed what happened at the oasis, were four soldiers and Zhao. Zhao was killed, and the four Firebenders were tied up and presumably captured. The Fire Lord should not have known that Zuko was even there, or that Iroh attacked Zhao.

The Siege of the North, Part 2

Series continuity

Edit

This episode features the second time that Aang has saved Zuko while he is unconscious, the first time being in "The Blue Spirit", when Zuko is knocked out by an arrow. This is the second time when Aang meets Hei Bai. The first time was in "Winter Solstice Part 1: The Spirit World". The library Admiral Zhao visits is later visited by Team Avatar in "The Library". It is discovered then that after visiting, Zhao burned down the wing with any information on the Fire Nation. After Zuko was reluctant to take Zhao's life after their Agni Kai in "The Southern Air Temple", he warns Zhao that next time he won't hold back. However, Zuko offers to help Zhao when he gets attacked by La. Iroh would later berate Zuko for never thinking his plans through in "Lake Laogai", citing his capture of Aang and subsequent near freezing in the North Pole in this episode.

Trivia

Edit Aang and the Ocean Spirit's merged form strongly resembles the Nightwalker from Hayao Miyazaki's movie Princess Mononoke. The series' creators have professed their fandom of Hayao Miyazaki in many interviews. When the Moon Spirit was killed, everything turned gray, but Yue's eyes remained visibly

Edit

Goofs

When Iroh is talking with Zhao on the boat, the pin on his cloak is a black and red emblem of the Fire Nation, but in the

blue, showing that some of Tui's life was present in her.

When La and Aang begin moving towards the Fire Navy fleet, the Biblical story of Passover is invoked. When the Water Tribe submitted to La, they were not attacked by him; the Fire Nation soldiers who did not bow were killed. More spirits appear in this episode than any other. They are the odd spirit, Koh, Roku, Hei Bai, La, and Tui. The ending scene with Team Avatar is similar to the ending scene of Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back. Team Avatar is looking out at the moon after their victory over the Fire Nation. In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, R2D2 and C3PO are looking out at the Rishi Maze, a dwarf satellite galaxy that orbits the series' main one, after the Millenium Falcon just left. Near the very end of the episode, Iroh tells Zuko, "A man needs his rest." Iroh also told Zuko this in the first episode and in a flashback showing Iroh and Zuko soon after Zuko's banishment. This is the second and last episode where Zhao lashes out after defeat. The animal after which the Face Stealer is modeled is a centipede, not-as many people assume-a scorpion or spider. The Face Stealer also briefly takes on the bright-bluecheeked face of a mandrill, which, including its remarkable fire-engine-red buttocks, is the largest and heaviest of all monkeys. When Koh says, "Oh, something about stealing the face of someone you loved." Avatar Kuruk's fiance's face is shown. We later see this image told by Kuruk himself in "Sozin's Comet, Part 2: The Old Masters". Iroh suggests that Zuko rests at the end of this episode and Zuko agrees. "Avatar Extras" claims that this is the first time Zuko has taken his uncle's advice. This is wrong, however, as back in the "The Southern Air Temple" when Zuko fought Zhao, Iroh told Zuko to 'break his roots' which he ends up doing and results in Zuko's victory.

The significance of the dagger Zuko and Iroh use to cut off their topknots is examined in detail in "Zuko Alone". The line of Avatars that disappear while Roku is warning Aang reappear, in reverse of how they disappear in this episode, in "Sozin's Comet, Part 4: Avatar Aang" when the final chakra is finally unblocked and Aang masters the Avatar State. Lightning generation is first introduced, as is Azula's blue Firebending. This is the second time that Aang has been getting nightmares, the first being in "The Storm". This is the first time that Aang entered the Spirit World without meditating. This is the first known time that an Avatar went into the Spirit World while in the Avatar State. This is the first time Avatars Kuruk and Yangchen are shown. This is the first time Sokka is seen with his hair down. Iroh is seen redirecting lightning for the second and final time. He would later teach the skill to Zuko in "Bitter Work", who in turn, would teach it to Aang in "Sozin's Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King".

Goofs

Edit At the time Sokka tries to get on top of a ostrich horse, its saddle appears to be a simple seat on its back with the area under it exposed and showing its fur color. For a split-second, however, it turns green implying the saddle fits around its entire body. It soon changes back to the original brown. In Aang's dream, while fighting Zuko, Aang is in the Avatar State, but toward the end of the dream, his tattoos and eyes aren't glowing like they should be. During the ritual to trigger the Avatar State, the oracle threw in one of the torches in the background into the bowl. After the scene returns to the oracle, the torch was back in place. As the captain asks if they are ready to go, the red spike on the front of his helmet turns gray in a few frames. When the captain tries to plead with Azula, after revealing the set-up, his mouth isn't moving. When Azula and Zuko are fighting, Azula hits Zuko on his head and three scratches appear on Zuko's right temple, but when you look at Zuko in the next scene, he no longer has the scratches on his head. When Azula grabs Zuko's hand during her and Zuko's fight, she has no Fire Nation hair

Book two: earth

The Avatar State

Series continuity

Edit

clip. The clip then reappears in the same scene.

While Aang is dreaming at the start of the episode, one can see that his shadow has a faint arrow tattoo on its head, the same Aang has to represent mastery over Airbending. When Aang is in the Avatar State and crashes to the ground to destroy everything around him, Katara doesn't get thrown out of the way like everything else. This could be due to the fact that Katara is the only person that can face Aang and calm him down while in the Avatar State. When Katara is talking to Aang about what happened when they went to the Southern Air Temple and saw Monk Gyatso's skeleton, it cuts to a close-up of her face. During the close-up, the Water Tribe insignia on her necklace is missing, though it could be due to the lighting. When Zuko cuts his top-knot, part of the red cloth still remains. In the next shot, it is gone. When Aang, Katara and Sokka are in the General's quarters for the first time, there are only two guards on either side of the door. When the camera zooms in on Aang, there are about ten soldiers behind him. This happens every time the camera zooms in or out. When Zuko's top-knot flows down the river the bottom of the ponytail holder flickers on and off.

In the beginning of the episode, Pakku is wearing different clothing due to a warmer climate. The statues that Avatar Kyoshi Earthbends are similar to the statues used by the Earth King's Royal Guards against Aang and his friends when they were trying to infiltrate the Earth Kingdom Royal Palace. o The statues are also identical to those seen in the ruins of Taku in "The Blue Spirit". This is the second of three episodes which contains "The Avatar" in its title. The Avatar Returns and The Avatar and the Fire Lord are the other two

The Cave of Two Lovers

Series continuity

Edit

It is possible that the Fire Nation captain with the eye patch seen at the start of this episode is also the one ambushed by the Freedom Fighters in the episode "Jet". This episode shows Omashu under Fire Nation control, whereas it remained untouched in "The King of Omashu".

Translations Edit Main article: Writing in the World of Avatar

Trivia

Edit Goofs Edit The writers named the red berries that Iroh finds "maka'ole berries" because they thought "maka'ole" meant "without eyes" in the Hawaiian language, when in reality it means "eye tooth". Chong sings "Don't Let the Cave In Get You Down, Sokka" to cheer Sokka up. When he starts out on Sokka's right he is wearing two white bracelets on his right wrist, but when he reappears on Sokka's left side, the bracelets are gone. This happens several times throughout the episode. When Aang says, "We're going to lose the light any second now," there is still about a quarter or so of the torch left. Each torch lasts about two hours, so that bit should have lasted at least twenty more minutes, but it didn't. Sokka and the nomads wave goodbye to the badgermoles even though the badgermoles are blind, although it could be a reflex action. When Zuko comes back from fishing and Iroh tells him he ate the flower in front of This is the first episode where Sokka's shirt is sleeveless. This is the first episode where Aang is seen Earthbending, albeit in the Avatar State. In this episode, Aang performs a similar move with Airbending that he used to raise himself with Waterbending in "The Avatar Returns". In "The Avatar State" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, it was pointed out that four writers worked on this episode, more than any other episode had, until "Tales of Ba Sing Se". In "The Avatar State" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, it was confirmed that Katara had mastered Waterbending in the short time they were at the North Pole. In "The Avatar State" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, in the scene where Zuko and Iroh are boarding Azula's ship, the creators had originally planned on Azula vaporizing the Captain on the spot, but decided that was too mean.

him, he is wearing the outfit he was wearing before Zuko left. But when he turns to show that he has a rash from the plant he is wearing the kimono he wore during their dinner with Song and her mother. Then after he gets up and is scratching, he is back in the other outfit.

Goofs

Edit The gang enters the secret passage in this order: Aang first, followed by Sokka and then Katara, but in the next shot it shows them in the passage with Katara in front of Sokka. When the gang climbs into the secret passage, it's presumably the afternoon. When they emerge from the sewer pipe, however, it's late at night. In reality, it should have been either afternoon or early evening. When Sokka tells the people they need to act sick, there's no one beside him. After the old man's demonstration, there is another person right next to him. When Azula is talking to Ty Lee after her show, the band on Ty Lee's headdress disappears and reappears. When Aang is attempting to free King Bumi, he spends several minutes blowing on a segment of chain until it freezes. Then he breaks the chain in the wrong place, on a non-frozen part. In the scene above, Aang and Bumi are suspended high above the floor where Katara fights Mai and Ty Lee. When the chain is broken, Aang and Bumi fall onto a mail chute; they should have fallen through the wooden floor. When Azula gets into one of the earth mail boxes to chase Aang and King Bumi, her two bangs are missing. When Azula and Ty Lee approach Mai for the first time, right before Mai gives Ty Lee a hug, her fingernails are shown short and non-colored, but in the next scene when Mai hugs Ty Lee her nails are shown much longer and painted. When Azula is chasing Aang via the Omashu delivery system, she is shown entering a "tunnel" of overhead beams, after Aang destroys those beams she is seen entering them again.

Trivia

Edit This episode begins with the "Leaves From the Vine" melody. There are no "previously on Avatar" clips at the beginning of the episode. At one point Chong says, "The tunnels, they're a-changin'!" This is a reference to Bob Dylan's song The Times They Are aChangin', which was a hit in the 1960s, a time period affiliated with hippies. The song that is played during the story of the two lovers is called "Kataang". The story of the two lovers is similar to that of Romeo and Juliet, a famous play by William Shakespeare, and its musical adaptation. The story of the two lovers, Oma and Shu, is similar to the story in the play, "West Side Story". In "West Side Story", there are two rival gangs who are consistently fighting. Two people, Tony and Maria, each a member of a different gang, fall in love with each other and must keep their love a secret because of the rivalry. However, after a brutal fight, Tony is killed. Although devastated, his death prompts Maria to unite the two gangs ending the rivalry. The rash on Iroh's left leg, which he received from the White Jade plant, is very similar to the burn Song showed Zuko. This is the first episode in which badgermoles are actually seen. When Aang and Katara entered Oma and Shu's tomb, the pictures that tell their story are referencing Egyptian culture with its hieroglyphics. The educator John McBon helped with his knowledge about this type of writing. This is the first time that Katara is seen in her bathing suit. A sequel to this episode, "Love Potion 8", was released as a book in 2008.

Trivia

Edit In the unaired Avatar Series Pilot, Aang fought Zuko on a scaffolding much like the one he and Azula fight on in this episode. In "Return to Omashu" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, it was mentioned that the Fire Nation's plan was to make the entire city of Omashu Earthbending proof. To this extent they began covering the entire city in metal. The Earth Kingdom Resistance, which is mentioned throughout the series, is a

Return to Omashu

Series continuity

Edit

Katara and Sokka were wearing the same cloaks to hide in disguise when they went to the Fire Nation Festival.[1]

reference to the Guerrilla Resistance in the Philippines during World War II.

When the "infected" crowd is first seen, they move and sound much like classic horrormovie zombies. King Bumi told Aang that they would meet again, but the two of them are never shown together again in the series. This episode features a segment of music that is identical to the opening music from "The Southern Air Temple". When Katara's chi is blocked by Ty Lee, she can't Waterbend, but every other time Ty Lee blocks someone's chi, they are temporarily paralyzed implying that she has a certain degree of control over the damage she inflicts or certain pressure points cause different reactions.

Goofs

Edit When Katara and Sokka first see Kyoshi's boots on Kyoshi Island, they're brown. Yet when Aang is wearing them at Chin Village during his trial, they're black. When attacked by the Rough Rhinos, Sokka, Aang and Katara all forget to take something of theirs. Katara claims to have forgotten her Waterbending scrolls, even though they were given to Aang in "The Avatar State" by Master Pakku. When the merchant ask Team Avatar if they are going to the festival, Sokka is seen crying. The white part of his eyes are the same color as his skin. Even though Sokka had left his boomerang behind, when Aang is first shown in prison, Sokka is pictured having it on his back. Avatar Kyoshi took out one of her fans to Airbend at Chin the Conqueror, but before she split the peninsula to create Kyoshi Island, both of her fans were in her belt. When the wheel of punishment landed on boiled in oil, the image to the right appears to be someone lying on a bed of nails. When the mayor moves the wheel one space to the right later, the picture is community service. Then, when Aang is going to face the Rough Rhinos, the order is back to boiled in oil, nails and then community service. When the Rough Rhinos came to attack the village, one of them was already right by the statue of Chin. There were no sight of him coming down as well. When he cut down the statue, the statue didn't go down with the cut at all either. When Zuko left on the ostrich horse, in the first scene the tail was white, but in the next scene the tail was brown. One of the town's pieces of evidence was a footprint that was later shown to be Chin the Conqueror's. However, aside from the fact that the print has survived for 370 years, when Chin fell off the cliff, a large segment, including the portion with the footprint, fell off with him, so the footprint shouldn't still be there. However, it could have been a footprint left from when he walked up to that point. In the beginning, when Zuko disguised as the Blue Spirit takes food from two people, some food is left on the ground, but when the Blue Spirit disappears, the ground is shown having no food. Zuko is never shown scooping it up. If you pause Sokka is when he is making a sweeping motion with his hand, the glove will be solid, no slit for his first two fingers. When Aang spun the Wheel of Punishment, The Pen of Pins was between Boiled by Oil and Community Service. When the village

The Swamp Avatar Day

Series continuity

Edit

Sokka foreshadows events in Season 3 as he relates to his losing his boomerang, Aang losing his arrow and Katara losing her hair loopies. These things come to occur over the course of the third season. Sokka loses his boomerang in the finale, it's unknown whether he found it, or his sword again, Katara stops wearing her "loopies" as to not look Water Tribe while undercover in the Fire Nation and Aang is forced to grow hair and cover his arrow during the same period. o However, Aang's headband and uniform resemble the arrow tattoos each article of clothing is covering up. i.e. the headband points down, like Aang's forehead tattoo. There is no recap to this episode. The other two episodes to have no recap are "The Boy in the Iceberg" and "The Swamp". The man who foams at the mouth then faints after Katara and Sokka land on Kyoshi Island was first featured in "The Warriors of Kyoshi". This is the first episode in which Avatar Kyoshi is seen bending elements other than earth. Sokka's exclamation, "Airbending slice!", is made again in "Sozin's Comet, Part 3: Into the Inferno", giving him an idea how to stop the airships.

leader cocked the Boiled of Oil to Community Service, there was no Pen of Pins.

Trivia

Edit When gathering evidence, Sokka wears a goofy-looking hat and pipe. This is likely a reference to the detective Sherlock Holmes, a character in a popular book series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. That peculiar hat was first worn by the Calm man in "The Fortuneteller ". Even though she confesses, in the flashback, it shows that Kyoshi did not actually kill Chin the Conqueror. Rather, she merely caused the conditions which led to him falling off the cliff. Though later in the finale of the show, when Aang comments on how, technically, Kyoshi did not kill Chin, she blankly responds: "Personally I don't see the difference, but I assure you I would've done whatever it took to stop Chin." This is the last episode prior to Toph's introduction. Zuko mentions capturing the Avatar for the first time in the second book. The bailiff keeps referring to Aang as "it", either unsure whether it's Kyoshi, a female, or Aang, a male, that's up for trial, or in an effort to further humiliate the Avatar, denying him humanity even in the pronoun used to address him. Aang's fellow prisoners give him the advice that he has an advantage as the Avatar with the ladies. This is similar to what Roku said to Aang during Roku's wedding-flashback in "The Avatar and the Fire Lord". This is the only episode in Book 2 where the kids didn't mention the search for an Earthbending teacher. This is the first time hair loopies are mentioned by their name. In the scene wherein Aang sees several impersonators of himself, the second from the left is based on Bryan Konietzko's halloween costume.[2]

When Fire Nation man is defeated by The Boulder and collides into the bleachers, Sokka is seen cheering directly next to Aang and Katara. In the next frame, however, he is seen standing at least several feet away from the rest of his team. During dinner with the Bei Fongs, Aang uses Airbending to cool Toph's soup for her. In the next frame, the bowl of soup is gone and, instead, replaced by a plate of vegetables, then reappears again. The Boulder refers to himself in the first person twice when he says, "I'm telling you, The Boulder was standing right there. I saw the kid strike." In the rest of his dialogue in the series, he only refers to himself in third person. Whilst discussing her blindness to Aang, Toph is wearing trousers, though it keeps changing from trousers to dress for the rest of the episode, often trousers when walking or Earthbending and a dress when standing still. However, the trousers could simply look like a dress because they are baggy. After Toph is freed from the cage, the wrestlers appear in the ring. When The Hippo appears. he crushes a rock, and his mouth can be seen moving, even though he doesn't say anything or make a sound. As Katara asked Toph, who was leaving, to help them get Aang back, Sokka wasn't wearing his bag or belt. As Toph battled the three remaining wrestlers, when she wiggled her ear to hear the wrestler coming from behind her, her headband was green instead of yellow. During the battle, Xin Fu first attacks by bending rocks at Toph. The rocks are pulled from the ground, leaving no craters. Moments later, there are a few, small craters. When Sokka is debating on whether or not he should get the bag, Aang's face is blank, meaning no eyes, nose, anything. But in the next scene when Katara and Aang are leaving Sokka to the bag, his face returns to normal. In the scene where Aang and Toph are kidnapped, Headhunter is not seen with the other Earth Rumble fighters.

The Blind Bandit"

Trivia

Edit This was the first episode to use the "Previously on Avatar ..." teaser heard in all subsequent episodes. The song that plays during Master Yu's first conversation with Lao Bei Fong is "The Jasmine Flower", a traditional Chinese folk song. It is used later in the show as a theme for the Bei Fong family.

Goofs Edit

When encountering the two obnoxious boys for the second time, Sokka's new bag switches from his right side, to his left and then back to his right.

Toph calling Aang "The fancy dancer" foreshadows Aang's dancing skills seen in "The Headband". In this episode, Toph calls Aang "Twinkle Toes". This later becomes her nickname for Aang. One of the boys that Katara beats up has the same hair style as The Hippo. In the DVD commentary, the creators say this is because he is a fan. In "The Blind Bandit" with "Avatar Extras" bonus commentary, it was said that the Bei Fongs are the richest people in the southern Earth Kingdom. The square design seen on Master Yu's hairpiece is also present on the outfits his students wear. According to the DVD commentary, Master Yu's academy is a reference to the sort of shady strip mall dojo that gives martial arts schools a bad name. This particular episode is also titled as "The Earthbending Tournament", not to be confused with the title, especially when downloading through the iTunes music store. "Earth Rumble VI" is a parody of professional wrestling match called the Royal Rumble and includes parodies of many professional wrestlers and wrestling conventions. References include: o The Boulder can be assumed to refer to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, since he is dark-skinned and refers to himself in the third person; ironically, he is voiced by Mick "Mankind" Foley, one of the Rock's biggest rivals and closest friends in wrestling. In Avatar Extras for The Blind Bandit, it was said that the show's creators tried to get the former wrestler to be The Boulder, though the exact details were not explained. Fire Nation man is a reference to wrestling's tradition of ersatz "bad guys" (referred to in professional wrestling slang as "Heels"). During the Cold War, many of these "bad guys" were supposedly from Russia, but were actually Americans putting on accents. Fire Nation man's accent was notably Russian. Sokka's behavior during the match is a reference to the stereotypical pro wrestling fan. The Earth Rumble Championship Belt is similar to the WWE Ultimate Championship Belt. The raised fist logo for Earth Rumble VI, while very similar to a

Socialist emblem, is also a more subtle reference to the steel fist that used to be the iconic piece in the stage set of WWE SmackDown for a number of years. Zuko Alone

Series continuity

Edit

Zuko's dagger was first seen in "The Avatar State" when Zuko and Iroh cut off their topknots. Zuko's mother is seen for the first time. The pregnant woman and her husband, whom Zuko decides not to rob, would later be escorted to Ba Sing Se by Aang and friends in "The Serpent's Pass". This is the first and only episode in which Team Avatar does not appear. Zuko is shown fighting without using his Firebending for the second time, the first time being in "The Blue Spirit".

Goofs

Edit When Ursa tells Azula "it's time for a talk", Ursa grabs Azula's right arm with her left hand. When they move past Zuko her right hand is grabbing Azula's right arm. When Sela asks for Zuko's help to get her son back, Zuko's swords disappear in several frames. o Also the hat that Zuko wears is lying on his chest when Sela approaches him. When the frame switches, he is wearing the hat with it tied around his chin. However, after he tells her he'll get Lee back, the straps are not tied, made obvious by the straps blowing in the wind. In this episode it states that Azulon ruled for 23 years; however, for this to be correct, Sozin would have had to remain Fire Lord for roughly 70 years after his death at the age of 102, according to nick.com. Ursa's name was not mentioned in the ceremony yet Zuko, Azula and Ilah were mentioned. However, this could be explained as they likely did not want to mention a traitor's name at the ceremony. o On the other hand, Iroh's wife, Lu Ten's mother, wasn't mentioned either, so it's possible that only direct relatives of Azulon were mentioned, i.e. his wife, children and grandchildren, not in-law relatives.

o o o

When Zuko beats the Earthbender and reveals his identity, a man in the crowd shouted that Zuko's own father burned him. However, in The Storm, it was implied that this fact was not public, as Zuko's own crew, who'd been traveling with him for nearly three years, was under the assumption that he got his scar in a training accident.

The Art of War. Sun Tzu is regarded as the best military strategist in history.

This is the first episode to show the good in Zuko and further on in season two Zuko becomes more peaceful, although he eventually joins Azula in the last episode. The fact that the dagger says "Made in Earth Kingdom" is probably a reference to how most modern day products have "Made in China" somewhere on them as the Earth Kingdom is largely based on China. At the pond, Ursa explains to young Zuko, "If you mess with [a mother's] babies, they'll bite you back." This foreshadows the "vicious, treasonous things" she does to save Zuko's life, as we later learn in "The Day of Black Sun, Part 2: The Eclipse". Before "The Awakening", this episode provided the closest and clearest glimpse of Fire Lord Ozai's face, albeit at a distance and not very visible. The aforementioned episode was the first time a close-up of Ozai's full face was observed.

Trivia

Edit "Avatar Extras" states that this episode is the series' equivalent to a western, being similar in many ways to the 1949 Western Novel, Shane and the 1953 film adaptation, Shane. The doll given to Azula has the same hairstyle and headband as Toph. This is also the first episode that revolves entirely around Zuko and his history. This is the only episode in which Aang, Sokka, and Katara are not seen, or even mentioned. When Zuko demonstrates his Firebending to Fire Lord Azulon, he doesn't succeed. While Azula looks on mockingly, Ursa praises his effort, stating that that's who he is; someone who keeps fighting even though it's hard. The knife Iroh sent him in the flashback, the same one he gives away to Lee for a time in present-day, contains the inscription, "Never give up without a fight." This is exactly what Zuko was talking about to Aang during "The Siege of the North, Part 2", "I've always had to struggle and fight and that's made me strong. It's made me who I am." The knife Zuko temporarily gave to Lee was the same knife used to sever his and his uncle Iroh's ponytails in "The Avatar State", to signify their abandonment of the Fire Nation. This is the only episode in which Zuko uses his swords to Firebend. When Zuko explains to Lee that the dual swords are but two parts of one whole, he holds them up in front of his face, visually dividing it in two. Though he is talking about the dual swords, it is also a subtle commentary on his own division and his inner conflict. The concept of the two sides of Zuko symbolized by the scarred and unscarred sides of his face is used again in "The Crossroads of Destiny". The title has a double meaning. On one level, Zuko is traveling alone, without Iroh or any of the other named characters in the series. On a second level, Zuko is going through an emotionally difficult time and feels very emotionally alone. The name of Lee's older brother is Sensu, pronounced similarly to Sun Tzu, who was a Chinese war general and author of the book

The Chase

Series continuity

Edit

Katara and Toph's quarrel is echoed in a later episode, "The Runaway". Toph and Iroh's friendship is revealed to the gang in "The Crossroads of Destiny", when Iroh approaches them for help. This is the second incident where Appa uses his tail to blow Mai and Ty Lee away from Sokka and Katara. The first was in "Return to Omashu". This is the second episode in which Aang makes himself a mustache out of Appa's fur. The first time was in "The King of Omashu". Azula's escape is mentioned in "The Boy in the Iceberg play" that Team Avatar attends in Book 3. o This is the second time a character escapes with this technique, the first being Jeong Jeong in the episode "The Deserter". This is the first episode to feature all six of the regular stars.

Goofs

Edit In Avatar Extras, one of the commentary bubbles says "Toph isn't the first character to chew on wheat. Anybody remember Jet?" However, the only episode Jet had been in at that point was "Jet", in which he only chews on a twig. He doesn't chew on wheat

until "The Serpent's Pass", four chapters later.

When Toph makes her earth tent, she bends it over her. In the next frame, she is seen sitting in front of it. When everyone gets off of Appa, Toph is noticeably taller being able to see at least eye to eye with Aang. Later in the episode she returns to her normal height. When Toph is first seen standing in Appa's fur, her shadow is in front of her and the rest of the fur in sunlight. But when the angle changes everything is in shadow because of Appa. When Aang sits down in the ghost town, he is in the center of the street with buildings in front and behind him, but in the next frame he is sitting at the end of the street with no buildings behind him. When Zuko is riding following the machine on his ostrich-horse, in the first shot he is in between the two indentations of the wheels. In the next, he is to the left of both of them. When Ty Lee tries to chi-block Sokka, he drops his club and his boomerang on the ground next to his feet. The view then moves to Ty Lee, holding her hand in pain after hitting Sokka in the head by accident and then back to Sokka, with no boomerang on the ground. When Aang holds his staff ready during the stand-off with Zuko and Azula, it's warped so that the diamond pieces where the glider's stored are longer than in any other frame. When Azula is cornered Aang is on Katara's left, but after Azula disappears Aang is on Katara's right. After Azula almost loses her balance in the ruined house, Aang exits the building nearly burnt by Azula's fireball, yet the angle it travels, perpendicular to the ground, suggests that Azula was on the first floor, which can't be possible, since a second fireball is shot almost immediately from the ground. The buildings that Aang jumped to and from each other changed appearance in the next shot. While the sun is rising, Sokka says he didn't sleep through the whole night. However, the second time Team Avatar has to leave because of the mysterious machine, he is shown sleeping on Appa. Toph is seen in a tent made of earth in one frame, then in the next frame it shows Toph in a cloth tent.

target. The other time this occurs is in the episode "Sozin's Comet, Part 4: Avatar Aang" when Aang, in the Avatar State, attempts to kill Fire Lord Ozai.

The scene where Azula mysteriously vanishes after being cornered is replicated in the play "The Boy in the Iceberg", performed by the Ember Island Players. In the play, Azula tricks them by pointing to the sky and exclaiming "What's that? I think it's your honor!" As the others look at the sky, Azula escapes simply via a door, causing everyone to wonder how she vanished. According to Avatar Extras, an earlier storyboard had other animals around Team Avatar's campsites. But the writers decided not to put it in the episode. When Katara first talks to Toph about helping out, Toph is chewing on a piece of wheat, a well known component of Jet's character. Another characteristic shared between Toph and Jet is that they both have rebellious natures. "Avatar Extras" states that the fight sequence between Aang, Zuko, and Azula, was meant to resemble a "Mexican Standoff", more commonly used to refer to a three way duel, and was modeled after multiple Westerns. It was also noted that the battle was challenging for the shows creators, due to the fact that they had to coordinate each of their movements, and show all three of them fighting each other at the same time. When Sokka is playing with some of Appa's shed hair and makes a wig out of it, the wig resembles Marge's hairdo from The Simpsons. Azula's smile when she finds Aang at the abandoned village mirrors that of Ozai's smile in "Zuko Alone", when he is watching Azula Firebending. According to Avatar Extras, the name of the abandoned town was Tu Zin. It was also stated that it was a mining town and after all of the minerals were gone, the people literally left overnight. A lot of scenes during the chase closely resemble the chase in the 1969 western film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. An example being: after robbing a train, another train pulls up from behind with only one boxcar and it opens up with the cavalry chasing after them like Azula's tank train in this episode.

Bitter Work

Trivia

Edit This is the first time in the series that all four elements are shown attacking the same

Series continuity

Edit

Roku refers to his training in the element opposite to his own as "bitter work",[1]

though the phrase is never actually uttered in this episode, despite its title.

Prior to this episode, Iroh had used his lightning-redirection technique twice before on screen: once to defend Zuko's ship from an actual lightning bolt[2] and again to block a lightning attack Azula aimed at Zuko.[3] In the episode "The Day of Black Sun, Part 2: The Eclipse", Zuko finally gets to use the lightning-redirection technique he learns here. This is the episode where Zuko first learns how to redirect lightning, which he later teaches to Aang in "Sozin's Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King". As of this episode, Aang has consciously bent all four elements. Iroh warns Zuko that allowing the lightning to pass through your heart can be deadly. In "Sozin's Comet, Part 3: Into the Inferno", Azula fires lightning at Katara and Zuko gets in the way. Zuko attempts to redirect the lightning, but it passes through his heart and he falls to the ground. This is the first episode in which Iroh is actually seen generating his lightning himself. Prior to this episode he was only seen redirecting it. Iroh's lightning will be seen one more time, generated offscreen, in "The Crossroads of Destiny" to break down a wall while trying to escape the Dai Li. He has never been seen using it in combat.

When Toph is yelling at Aang and Katara offers to work on Waterbending with him, her wristband disappears for one shot. When Aang finds Sokka stuck in the ground, Sokka's club and boomerang are to his left, but after Aang drives the saber-tooth moose-lion away, both are missing. After Aang Earthbends, Sokka, who was previously standing next to Katara, suddenly disappears and is replaced by Toph. When Sokka was talking to Katara he was next to her however after Aang Earthbent, Sokka is a few feet away.

Trivia

Edit In an Avatar Spirit interview, Sifu Kisu refers to martial arts training in the old-school Chinese tradition as "bitter work." This is the first time Aang Earthbends outside of the Avatar State. When Toph was using Aang's staff as a nut cracker to get him to fight back, Aang claimed that it was a "delicate instrument" and an "antique handcrafted by the Monks". Despite this, Aang has been seen using his staff for much more demanding tasks, such as when he used it to break a metal chain he had frozen in ice.[4] This is the third episode in which Zuko cries. While talking about Airbenders, Iroh says "Also apparently they had pretty good senses of humor." This is shown by Gyatso who is seen pulling pranks on others twice; first in "The Southern Air Temple" when Gyatso and Aang shot cakes at meditating Air Nomads, and second in "The Storm" when Gyatso Airbended Aang's hood over his eyes and swaps the places of Pai Sho pieces during their game. The title refers to both Aang training with Earthbending, and Zuko training with lightning. Due to their natures, it is very hard for both of them. The term Si fu or shi fu used by Aang to greet Toph and later Katara, is a Cantonese word meaning teacher or master.

Goofs Edit When Toph shoots Sokka into the air using Earthbending, the rock she uses is right under him, but in the next frame it's missing, though this could have just been because she bent it back into the ground. When Toph is lecturing Aang about thinking like an Airbender, she pushes him to the ground away from Katara, but in the next frame, when Toph breaks the rock with her head, Aang is standing next to Katara. While Aang is tossing a rock up and down, he is shown barefoot. In the next frame, Aang has his boots on. When Toph was forming her rock suit to charge at Aang, the hair covering her face disappears for a panel. Also when forming the rock suit, Toph leaves her eyes uncovered despite her blindness. When Aang is using Sokka's club for his Earthbending training, he uses his belt as a blindfold, but there was another belt on his waist. In the next frame it's gone. The same thing happens when Toph rolls a rock downhill at Aang.

The Library

Series continuity

Edit

When Katara tries to use Waterbending against Wan Shi Tong, he states he has studied all types of Waterbending, including Foggy Swamp Style. This is the style used by the Foggy Swamp Tribe as seen in "The Swamp".

During this episode, Aang comes across a book which depicts the meeting of a human and a lion turtle, foreshadowing his own encounter with one during the series finale. When Sokka talks about invading the Fire Nation he sarcastically says, "Should we just head west until we hit the Fire Lord's house? Knock Knock. Hello Fire Lord? Anybody home?" Ironically, during the eclipse, Aang goes there and asks if anybody's home. As revealed in "The Siege of the North, Part 2", Zhao visited an "underground library". Here, Wan Shi Tong mentions him as a Firebender who came a few years back. The wanted poster that Aang gives to Wan Shi Tong is believed to be the same wanted poster he took off the message board in "The Deserter". The Waterbending scroll Katara gives to Wan Shi Tong is the same one she stole from the pirates in the episode "The Waterbending Scroll". The scrolls Sokka steals from the library help Katara navigate in "The Desert," and are referenced in "The Serpent's Pass." This is the first time Admiral Zhao has been seen or mentioned since his death during the Siege of the North.

Trivia

Edit Along with the following episode, "The Desert", this episode aired as the one-hour special, Avatar: The Fury of Aang. The building of the library looks like like a mix of Turkey's Hagia Sophia and India's Taj Mahal. Wan Shi Tong represents himself as a barn owl. This is a reference to the symbol for Athena, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, whose symbolic animal is an owl. The pictures on the dial are the Chinese Zodiac, which is for choosing the year. Although an owl is a traditional symbol of wisdom, and viewed as an animal that may harbor mysteries or secrets, the owl is, in actuality, not a very intelligent bird.

The Desert

Series continuity

Edit

Goofs Edit Sokka is seen to be the first to enter the library through the window. However, he is the second to last person to climb down the rope when they reach the floor of the library. When Katara, Aang, Sokka and Professor Zei are climbing down the rope into the library, Momo is missing in a few frames. After Katara tells Aang he was left-handed in a past life, Sokka reaches for a scroll on the bookshelf and his boomerang is missing. In the next frame it is back. When Sokka decides to check the planetarium to discover the date of the eclipse, Momo's fur becomes black. When Aang is playing the Flute, his fingers move despite playing only one pitch. When flautists uncover and cover holes with their fingers across the instrument, the velocity of the air changes, thus creating different pitches. This is not proper for only holding a single pitch. When Aang and the others enter, the bridges are "+" shaped, offering four paths of access. Yet near the end of the episode when Wan Shi Tong is chasing the group, the bridges now only go one way across.

The mysteriously buried Sandbender's ship that Aang and Katara dig out of the sand is shown in a flashback in "Appa's Lost Days". It became covered with sand after Appa sneezed it into a dune. The maps used by Team Avatar to navigate their way through the desert are the same ones Sokka took from Wan Shi Tong's library in The Library. This is the second episode in which Aang tries to find Appa. The first was "The Swamp". The Fire Nation troops that attack Zuko and Iroh are the same that assaulted Chin Village in "Avatar Day".

Translations

Edit

For a translation of Iroh and Zuko's wanted poster, see "The Avatar State" translation section in Writing in the World of Avatar. For a translation of the four other posters (Chey, Jeong Jeong, the Blue Spirit and Aang) please refer to The Deserter section in Writing in the World of Avatar.

Connections

Edit

Although there is a popular myth that cacti store water which can be extracted to the benefit of the thirsty desert traveler, in

reality many cacti are poisonous or contain hallucinogens such as mescalineas Sokka and Momo discovered. Mescaline has properties which induce a psychedelic experience very similar to LSD. Sokka's exclamation at seeing the large mushroom cloud caused by Aang could also be interpreted as an allusion to psychedelic mushrooms, which makes sense given Sokka's state of mind at that time.

Trivia

Edit This episode aired along with "The Library" as part of the one-hour special, Avatar: The Fury of Aang. Sokka's voice actor, Jack DeSena, once stated that this was his favorite episode due to Sokka being "stoned" on cactus juice. The scene has become famous in the fanbase. Various fan-made videos have even been made on YouTube to pay tribute to this (in)famous scene. Although Toph claims to have heard the son say, "Put a muzzle on him [Appa]," we do not actually hear this during the time Appa is being taken in the episode "The Library". Instead, we hear it in the episode "Appa's Lost Days". This is one of the very few episodes in the series when Aang is angrier than the other protagonists. This is the first time the Order of the White Lotus was mentioned in the Avatar Series. When Katara gave Sokka and Toph some water, Sokka tells her that it's swamp water and Toph agrees, but Toph wasn't with the group in "The Swamp" to even know what the taste of swamp water is. Although, it's possible that Toph is simply familiar with swamps or, given how terrible the water tastes, she simply agreed to it tasting "swampy". Jeong Jeong and Chey are referenced in the Fire Nation wanted posters being looked at by Yu and Xin Fu. This is the middle episode of the series, as there are 30 episodes before and 30 after it. The five wanted posters in this episode all have been seen earlier. This is the first and only episode where Aang kills another living being. This is Toph's first and only time witnessing Aang in the Avatar State. It is unknown why there are Fire Nation wanted posters in the middle of the Si Wong Desert which is in the Earth Kingdom.

The mushroom cloud created by the furious Aang is also present in the real world, usually when a nuclear weapon is detonated. An example would be the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

Goofs

Edit When Aang flies off to find Appa, the group is shown standing in a crater left by the sunken library, but in the scene before they were all standing on relatively even ground. After Momo falls to the ground from drinking the cactus juice, Katara picks him up and exits the frame with Toph. When she runs back to get Sokka, Momo isn't in her arms. When Sokka denies stealing anything from the library and blames Momo for ratting him out, his boomerang is missing in a few frames. When Iroh spots Fung in the Misty Palms Oasis, the gambits on the Pai Sho board are white but in the next shot they are dark brown. After Aang enters the Avatar State and begins rising into the air, Katara grabs his arm. In the first frame she uses her right hand, but in the next she's using her left. Some cable TV providers, such as Comcast, list this episode as "The Deserters" instead of "The Desert". When Katara takes the chart of the stars that Sokka got from the library, the stars in the background suddenly fade from being very bold to dim. When Aang goes into the Avatar State, Aangs tattoos start to glow, but only Aang's arrow, eyes and mouth glows, while the tattoos on the Aang's hand don't during that frame. When Zuko stood next to the flowerpot stand with a flowerpot while Iroh went into the meeting place, in the next shot Zuko is infront of the flowerstand but the flower is gone.

The Serpent's Pass

Series continuity

Edit

The pregnant Earth Kingdom refugee and her husband are the same couple that Zuko decided not to rob during the beginning of "Zuko Alone". They later appeared very briefly during the Fire Nation Victory of Ba Sing Se in "The Awakening" and briefly in "The Drill".

Suki remarks there is a rumor that the Fire Nation has been working on "something big" on the far side of the western lake. That "something big" probably refers to the Fire Nation drill which appears at the end of the episode and is central plot point of the following. The person Sokka keeps referring that he didn't protect is Yue, though he never mentions her name in front of Suki. This is the second time Sokka has thought of Momo as food. The first time was in "The Southern Air Temple."

you're still complaining," is credited to Katara, but it's actually Toph that says the line.

The difficult ticketmaster refuses to transfer the tickets from Team Avatar to anybody else; however, just before they leave Full Moon Bay for the Serpent's Pass, Sokka states that they gave their tickets away. If this were the case, it seems unlikely that Team Avatar would give their tickets to strangers rather than Tahn and Ying. Before Zuko and the Freedom Fighters steel food from the ship, the wheel of the boat is seen rotating the opposite direction. When Team Avatar is talking to Suki in Full Moon Bay, they are interrupted by Tahn and Ying who say, "Avatar Aang, you have to help us. Someone took all of our belongings. Our passports, our tickets, everything's gone." But it is clearly visible that they still have two backpacks. During the scene in the beginning, when they use a map to show that they just came out of the desert, the desert and water are colored the same. When Hope is born, her mouth was opened. Inside she already has teeth. Babies don't get teeth until about six months old.

Goofs

Edit After Katara's cannonball into the pool, Aang is not seen being thrown out of the water. When the water begins to rain down, Aang crashes down in his ice encasement. When Katara splashes Sokka's maps with water, Sokka does not get wet even though he is right next to the maps. As Team Avatar departs Full Moon Bay to escort Tahn, Ying and Tahn's sister to Ba Sing Se via the Serpent's Pass, Suki expresses her interest to join them. At first, she doesn't appear to be carrying anything. When she comes face to face with Sokka, however, a rolled sleeping mat suddenly appears on her back. When Ying and Tahn inform Aang that all of their belongings have been taken, they are still in possession of a large bag. When crossing the Serpent's Pass, they do not have this bag. When Zuko and the Freedom Fighters are stealing the captain's food, they zip line down a rope tied to an arrow shot by Longshot, which is then yanked out of the railing. This couldn't be possible, because if it were weak enough to be yanked out, it couldn't have supported the weight of three people and two sacks of food. And if it were strong enough to support that much weight, it would have been impossible to pull out of the railing. When Suki jumps in the water to save Toph from drowning, her makeup is still fully intact and not even smudged. This could be because of the type of makeup she and the other Kyoshi warriors use, but it is never explained. When Zuko and Jet looked out the window, there are sixteen bowls. By the time they entered, there were twelve bowls left. When Zuko and Jet are talking on the dock, Jet is a few feet away from Zuko, but in the next shot he is right next to him. When the group is leaving to go though Serpent's Pass, there is a mistake in the captions, where the line, "I can't believe

Trivia

Edit This episode aired alongside "The Drill" as the one-hour special, Avatar: Secret of the Fire Nation. Until Sozin's Comet aired, this special was the highest-rated among viewers, with 4.4 million viewers. Full Moon Bay pokes fun at the atmosphere of a modern day airport, strict security, stolen luggage, difficult employees, etc. There is a Judeo-Christian reference to Katara's parting of the waters, which is similar to Moses parting the Red Sea. This is the first time we see Jet again and he's chewing on a piece of wheat rather than a twig, as he did in "Jet". As Aang and the others reach the gate to the Serpent's Pass, they noticed the words "abandon hope" carved on the gate. This could be a reference to the words that appear above the gates of hell in Dante's The Divine Comedy, which read: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." The woman tells the cabbage merchant that one cabbage slug could destroy the entire ecosystem of Ba Sing Se. If you look closely when the pieces of cabbage are flying away after being eaten by the platypus bear, you can actually see a cabbage slug among the pieces. When Jet and Zuko are talking, Zuko says, "I've realized lately, that being on your own

isn't always the best path," he is referring to the events that took place in "Zuko Alone".

Sokka kisses Suki twice: once to silence her, then again to confirm he loves her.

When Ty Lee becomes stuck in the slurry, rocks either go right through her arm or hit her arm without having any effect on her. In one shot, when the group is standing on the Outer Wall, the low wall in front of them is taller to both sides, in the next shot it is lowered to both sides. After Sokka says to bend the slurry and when he get knocked over and sits back up to look at Toph, his back isn't all covered in slurry. When Sokka is in disgust and trying to get the slurry off himself, he puts his hands in the slurry, and the come out clean.

The Drill

Series continuity Edit

In "The Guru", Toph develops Metalbending, a skill Aang wishes he had when trying to slice into the Fire Nation drill. Sokka has the books he "borrowed" from Wan Shi Tong's Library in his bag. The blue prints for the Fire Nation drill were seen in the Mechanist's laboratory in "The Northern Air Temple". This is the second episode Iroh has gotten into trouble due to tea. The first time being when he accidentally poisoned himself in the "The Cave of Two Lovers". The drill becomes proof later in the season as Team Avatar attempts to the Earth King that the war is real. This is the second time Toph has tried to slow something down that Aang, Katara, and Sokka were in. The first time was in "The Library", when the library was sinking. This is the first time the name "Team Avatar" is used. This is the second time in the series they use Waterbending to cut through metal, the first being when Koizilla attacked the Fire Navy ships in the Siege of the North.

Trivia

Edit This episode reveals that, while Katara can heal wounds, she can't heal someone whose chi has been blocked. This episode marks the first time an actual person has defeated Ty Lee. Appa was the first/only animal to defeat her. This episode and "The Serpent's Pass" aired together as the one-hour special, Avatar: Secret of the Fire Nation. With 4.4 million viewers, this special is the second-highest rated among viewers, behind Sozin's Comet. One of the writers was JJ Abrams, the creator of Lost, Alias, Star Trek and Fringe. For unknown reasons, he was uncredited along with several others. The events pertaining to this episode would be referenced in "The Ember Island Players". When the scene cuts to the audience, many people are either nodding off or asleep, alluding to the lukewarm reception this episode had with the fan base. It is interesting to note that, based on the apparent hydraulic components of the drill, simply sabotaging the hydraulic system by busting the numerous pipes and valves might have brought the drill to a halt much faster than the wildly inefficient strategy the team employs. At the end of the episode Sokka comes up with several clever nicknames in this order: "Team Avatar." Note the irony that Katara said "No matter how many times you say it, it's not going to catch on," while that seems to be the favorite reference of most fans; "The Boomeraang Squad" ; "The Aang Gang" and "The Fearsome Foursome." Mai's refusal to follow Ty Lee into the slurry, saying, "Azula can shoot all the lightning she wants at me..." foreshadows her eventual betrayal of Azula in the episode "The Boiling Rock, Part 2". Katara calls Ty Lee "circus freak" even though she had no way of knowing that Ty Lee was ever in a circus.

Goofs

Edit When Aang and Toph are moving the group up the side of the Outer Wall, Aang's staff is missing. When Katara questions Sokka when he comes up with the idea to take down the drill from the inside, her necklace disappears in mid-frame. At the end of the episode, the sun is pointing the wrong way based on the shadows of the characters. After Aang is slammed into the wall of Ba Sing Se and falls down unconscious, his left hand is under his head; in the next frame, however, his right hand is under his head. When Katara and Toph were bending the slurry Ty Lee was in, Ty Lee likely would have drowned or been beat to death by the rocks in the slurry. On top of that, the engineers wouldn't have lived either when the slurry flooded the inside of the drill they were in.

City of Walls and Secrets

Series continuity

Edit

he stops bending, rather than moving into containers or dropping, the spheres of colored liquid simply shrink and disappear. It could be possible that Aang evaporated them.

This is the fourth time an unhybiridized animal has been featured in the Avatar series: a bear. While the gang and Joo Dee are passing through the lower ring of Ba Sing Se, they see many refugees, robbers and peasants. Among these is a robber that later attempts to mug Iroh in the episode, "Tales of Ba Sing Se." In the beginning, Toph asks Sokka if "[he's] been hitting the cactus juice again", referencing the episode "The Desert" in which Sokka trips out on cactus juice. This is the second time Aang is seen blushing towards Katara when she has a new look about her.

Avatar Extras states that Toph can detect earth even when it's not in contact with the ground. If this was the case, she would have been able to detect the rock gloves the Dai Li fired at her during the party and blocked them before they hit her. However, she was completely unaware of the fact that they were heading toward her. Although, it is possible that she doesn't see earth when it isn't in contact with the ground when she is concentrating on something else, unlike objects which are on the ground, as a similar incident happens later in the battle under Lake Laogai. When Joo Dee is first shown at the train station, she is shown on the platform opposite Team Avatar's, divided by train tracks with no possible way to get across. When she greets Team Avatar, she appears on the platform Team Avatar is standing on without having crossed the tracks in the first place.

Goofs

Edit When Zuko and Iroh first arrive at the tea shop, Iroh asks for a larger apron because he can't tie the strings, so the owner leaves to get extra string. When Iroh throws out the bad tea before the owner returns, however, his apron is already tied. Zuko doesn't drink the tea given to him, however when he lowers his cup while Iroh is lecturing him his cup is empty. When Sokka asks Joo Dee if they could see the King any sooner, there's a flower pot on the table to the right of Aang, but when Aang says they should spend their time looking for Appa, Momo is on the table. It isn't visible if Momo is sitting next to the flower pot. At the end of the first fight scene between Zuko and Jet, Zuko's sword blades land on Jets hands. This should have injured him, but it didn't. In the second scene of Zuko and Jet's sword fight, Zuko is seen wearing an apron. In the third and final sword fight scene, Zuko is wearing just his robe. When the university student is scrambling away, Joo Dee waves. Her mouth moves as if she's saying something, but no sound comes out. When the guards at the tea shop told the Dai Li about the fight between Zuko and Jet, Jet's sword was in his left hand, but when the Dai Li arrested him, his sword was in his right hand instead. As the Earth King is arriving at the party, Aang concludes a brief show of Waterbending using colored liquids. When

Trivia

Edit When the gang finds a notice for the King's pet bear's party, they ask Katara if she means platypus bear, skunk bear, armadillo bear or gopher bear. When Katara says "Just bear.", Toph replies "This place is weird." This exchange highlights the fact that most animals in the Avatar world are chimeras, or hybrids of two or more real-world animals, and non-hybridized animals are uncommon. However, in "The Waterbending Master", Sokka gives Princess Yue a carved fish which she mistakes for a bear. The fact that she mistook it for a bear and there was no dialogue to suggest that a bear might be something unheard of or out of the ordinary in the avatar world is at odds with the group's reaction in Ba Sing Se. While Katara and Toph were getting dressed for the party, Aang and Sokka were playing a game similar to jan-ken-pon or rock-paperscissors. At the Earth King's party, Katara calls herself "Kwa-Mai" and calls Toph "Dung" at which Toph angrily pulls on Katara's headdress. This may be because "Dung" translates into which means "stew pot," however the more likely reason is because dung is another word for animal feces. At the Earth King's party, the background music is the famous Chinese song, Mo Li Hua, meaning The Jasmine Flower. It is also heard faintly in the background at the Bei Fong Estate in "The Blind Bandit" and serves as a sort of theme for the Bei Fong family.

In Long Feng's office, the fire behind him is a bright green, instead of the usual red. This is most likely due to the crystals burning as fuel. When Jet and Zuko begin their fight in the tea shop, Zuko grabbed one of the guards from the ferry station's dual swords instead of his own. This could be because he left his back at the apartment where he and Iroh live. Some satellite and services, such as DirecTV and Time Warner Cable, will list this episode as "Secrets of Ba Sing Se". When Team Avatar and Joo Dee were at Ba Sing Se University, the student told him to go see Professor Zei, who happened to be trapped in Wan Shi Tong's Library. The episode's plot is slightly similar to the movie "Robots" and contains elements from George Orwell's "1984". Aangs apparent dislike of the social segregation of Ba Sing Se hints to an idea that the monks either do not segregate themselves due to riches or treat each other as equals. When Long Feng goes into details as to the Earth Kings role in Ba Sing Se, Toph reacts with anger believing the Earth King to be a mere puppet. Her angry outburst is likely due to her being constantly controlled by her parents and thus having a dislike for those who manipulate and bend others to their will.

Trivia

Edit An uncredited Greg Baldwin provides a solitary line of dialogue for Iroh during the character's tale. When Iroh sings to the crying boy to calm him down, the boy's doll is an Earth Kingdom soldier. "The Tale of Iroh" was dedicated to the late Mako, who passed away due to esophageal cancer. The hill where Iroh sets the altar for his son is identical to the hill shown in a flashback at the beginning of the episode "Bitter Work." The man who lived inside the house whose window was destroyed by the kids in "The Tale of Iroh" seemed gigantic, as he appeared to be larger than the window into where the ball flew. This is the last episode featuring the Cabbage Merchant, but he is mentioned in "The Ember Island Players". This is the only episode in which Sokka is seen with facial hair, aside from the few times he wears the fake "Wang Fire" beard in season three. This is the first time Aang is seen shaving his head. He shaves it again in "The Day of Black Sun, Part 1: The Invasion". Sokka's final haiku ("pronounced with an 'okka' ") is a reference to the song "Humpty Dance" by the hip-hop group Digital Underground. The key pin that kept Momo in the cage looks like a skull. "The Tale of Momo" is the only tale in this episode about an animal. "The Tale of Toph and Katara" is the only tale in the episode which focuses on two characters. Each of the writers is a regular crew member, but, with one exception, has only this episode as a writing credit. o Joann Estoesta has 18 credits as production coordinator o Lisa Wahlander has 4 credits as production assistant, 13 as martial arts coordinator, some with videographer as well. o Andrew Huebner has 16 credits as production manager. o Lauren MacMullan has 8 credits as director, 3 as storyboard, 1 as character designer, 1 as historian. o Gary Scheppke has 9 credits as production assistant. o Katie Mattila has 8 credits as production assistant, 7 as production coordinator, and an

The Tales of Ba Sing Se

Goofs

Edit When Toph and Katara visit the spa, Toph reads the spa sign. Even if she had used her seismic sense, Toph wouldn't have been able to read the sign, although it's possible Katara had read it to her earlier. When Iroh disarms the mugger, the dagger is blade up in Iroh's hand, but in the close up, it is blade down. Then, before the mugger hits the ground, it's blade up again. In the final frame, it is blade down before Iroh skillfully spins it blade up. The baby rabbiroo's eyes change from yellow as they reveal themselves to black in the close up. As Zuko slams the doors to his room a crack near the left handle disappears. When he opens it to speak to Iroh, the doors turn white. As Sokka counts the number of syllables in his last haiku, his left eye is in front as his finger passes by.

o o

additional writing credit for "The Beach". Justin Ridge has 11 credits as storyboard artist Giancarlo Volpe has 18 credits as director, 5 as storyboard artist, and 1 as assistant director. IMDb also has him as an uncredited writer for "The Serpent's Pass and "The Drill".

sitting partner is a somewhat similarlooking, black-haired younger man . Finally during the scene where he is laughing frivolously at Appa's antics, no one is sitting on his right side at all.

Appa's Lost Days

When Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors fight Azula, Mai and Ty Lee, Suki draws a katana and shield to fight Azula. When she lunges with the katana she uses both hands and has no shield; in the next shot she has one again. When Suki is following the trail of fur to where Appa was hiding, she clearly isn't holding anything, but when she confronts Appa just a few moments later, she already has an apple and several berries in her hand, although she could have been keeping the food in her clothes. When Guru Pathik comments on Appa's well restedness you can see that Appa has "bed hair." However, in the scene just before that when Appa wakes up, he does not have bed head. When Appa smells the honey, he enters the cave-like hive to try and find it. However, Appa has a fear of caves and usually can't be convinced at all to go in one. It is possible that Appa's hunger was so great that it overshadowed his fear.

Edit

Series continuity

The Sandbender catamaran that Appa accidentally blows into a sandbank is the same one Aang and Katara discover later.[1] The parasol given to Team Avatar in "The Fortuneteller" makes a reappearance in this episode. The way Guru Pathik read Appa's energy in order to find Aang mirrors how Aang found Appa and Momo by reading the energy of the banyan-grove tree.[2] This is the only episode of the series besides "Zuko Alone" in which Katara and Sokka have no dialogue. The circus that Appa was sold to is the same circus that Ty Lee was a part of.[3] The Kyoshi Warriors appear in full costume for the first time since "The Warriors of Kyoshi". The footprint Appa made right before he was captured by Long Feng is the same one seen in "Tales of Ba Sing Se".

Trivia

Edit On March 27, 2007, this episode received a Genesis Award from the Humane Society of the United States in the category "Outstanding Children's Programming," which the HSUS Genesis Award press release described as "...a mythical tale about animals held captive for human entertainment that resonates with the way animals are used in circuses today." This episode spans over the longest period of time in the World of Avatar; it spans for four weeks. According to "Avatar Extras", a battle between Appa and a boarcupine under normal circumstances wouldn't have lasted very long, but Appa was tired and his legs were shackled.[4] In the scene right after Aang meets Appa, a lion turtle statue can be seen in the background. The young Kyoshi Warrior who speaks after Suki is done explaining Appa's ordeal sounds very much like Ty Lee. Appa is one of the few characters on the show to bleed; the first was Zuko[5] during his battle with Azula.[6]

Goofs

Edit

When the Sandbenders capture Appa, they throw a muzzle over his mouth, which he breaks. As they drag Appa away, the muzzle is seen back around his mouth. Then when Ghashiun says, "Who knows what treasures are stashed in there," it is gone again. In the next shot it reappears. Ghashuin says in this episode to muzzle Appa, a statement Toph makes mention of in "The Desert", but he never actually said it in "The Library". Although Sokka's club is seen being discarded by the Sandbenders, he is seen using it in later episodes. The young, Aang-like boy at the circus who was friendly to Appa has different sitting partners. His father is always on his left side, but the person on the other side changes twice for no apparent reason. When he first sits down, the person on his right is a gray-haired old man. Later, his

Lake Laogai


Series continuity Edit

Jet's death is depicted in the play in "The Ember Island Players" by having a hollow boulder prop land on top of him. When Zuko asks if Jet died, Sokka replies that "it was really unclear"a reference to Internet fan discussions of the unclear nature of Jet's fate in this episode, but later confirmed during the San Diego Comic-Con. When Jet is brainwashed and ordered to fight Aang by Long Feng, this is the second time they have fought. The first occurred in "Jet" when Aang fought Jet to get his glider back. This is the episode where Appa bites Long Feng, which they later use as proof to Earth King Kuei in the episode "The Earth King" that Long Feng lied about never seeing Appa before. This is the last time we see Jet, Longshot, or Smellerbee. This is the last time Zuko is seen as the Blue Spirit, as he throws the mask into Lake Laogai. This is the first time Zuko speaks while in the Blue Spirit guise. This is the only episode in which Longshot speaks.

When Team Avatar discovers Jet, everyone's mouths drop in surprise, including Toph's. Yet, it's evident Toph doesn't know who Jet is. Toph joined the group long after their encounter with Jet and even asked Katara who he was along their search for Appa. When Jet says, "Katara, I've changed," his swords are missing. When Katara was attacking Jet in one scene the hooks of his sword are on the hilt. Jet throws his swords on the ground to show Katara he doesn't want to fight, but after she pins him to the wall and the rest of Team Avatar shows up, his swords are missing. When Old Sweepy is complaining about his lack of vacations, Aang's staff can't be seen, but when Sokka says, "Let's get moving," Aang's staff is perpendicular to the ground. Toph was able to tell that Katara was lying about Jet being her boyfriend or at least harbor feeling for him but when Old Sweepy said Appa was there and had been taken away Toph did not detect that he was lying. When Jet is dealt his fatal blow, his swords fall to his sides, but after the rest of the group finds him, his swords are gone. While Jet saved Toph from a rock glove one of the Dai Li fired, Toph was behind; Longshot shoots an arrow at the rock glove and Toph was behind Jet. When he attacks with his swords for upcoming Earthbending attacks Toph wasn't there. When Aang and Jet go after Long Feng, Toph was back where she was. When Long Feng said to Joo Dee "The Earth King has invited you to lake Laogai" she said "I am honored to accept his invitation" and just sat there in a trance then she had to be told to "Now go await further orders" but when Long Feng said it to Jet he started to attack Aang straight away After Long Feng brutally strikes Jet, he is seen Earthbending up into a pipe. When the group enters the room, the rock pillar that Long Feng made has disappeared. When the kids are on Appa in their final scene, Momo is missing. When Aang and Jet chased Long Feng into a room, he is in front of a door, but when he commands Jet to fight Aang he is on the other side of the room. When Longshot readies his bow for any approaching Dai Li agents, a door is there, but when Long Feng left shortly before it wasn't.

Awards

Edit "Lake Laogai" won the Primetime Emmy Award for Individual Achievement Award.

Goofs

Edit When Iroh serves the noble tea, there is only one other man with him. Then when he stands to compliment him on the brew, there are two men with him. However, it is possible that the second man was outside the parameters of the screen. When Toph says, "Why, because you think I can't put up posters on my own?" she takes Sokka's brush and wipes a long streak of glue across the wall, but when she says, "It's upside down, isn't it?" the streak is gone. When Zuko and his uncle enter their apartment for the first time in the episode, Zuko unties his strings on his robe to pull out the missing Appa flier, but after the screen looks away from Zuko and shows Iroh talking, you can see that those same two strings are tied.

Trivia

Edit This is the only episode in which Longshot speaks.

The two questions Uncle Iroh asks Zuko to ask himself, "Who are you" and "What do you want" are prominent philosophical questions from the sci-fi series "Babylon 5" designed to represent order and chaos respectively. The basic plot of this episode is similar to "X-Men 2". There was a government conspiracy, the Dai Li's leader is secretly controlling the Earth Kingdom, that both the "good guys", Team Avatar, and "bad guys", Freedom Fighters, agreed was bad, and thus teamed up to infiltrate a secret government base hidden under Lake Laogai, which they found the location of by probing a brainwashed friend's mind. One of the characters, Jet, dies, and the bad guys, Iroh and Zuko, escape. When Sokka tries to convince Katara to kiss Jet to remember his memories, Aang thinks it's a bad idea: this shows Aang's jealousy. This is the only episode in which Uncle Iroh shouts at Zuko. This is the first time Zuko speaks while in the Blue Spirit disguise. While trying to regaining his memory, Jet has a flashback to childhood in which it is revealed that the Rough Rhinos were responsible for the destruction of his hometown and the murder of his parents.

When Aang mentions that Long Feng kidnapped Appa to blackmail him, Long Feng states that he thought that Sky Bison were extinct. However, this is an error since he is trying to convince the Earth King that there is no war. So, if the war doesn't exist, the Airbenders should still be alive and the Sky Bison shouldn't be extinct. Although the Earth King could have been lied to previously and told of a non-war related extinction of Sky Bison and Airbenders. When Sokka is apologizing to all the guards sliding down the palace steps, he has both his machete and his club, but when they come face to face with the Earth King Sokka only has his machete. Although, it is possible that he dropped his club when Aang blasted him through the door. When the Earth King admits that there is a war going on while on top of the outer wall, Aang is holding his staff, but at Lake Laogai Aang didn't have his staff. He also didn't have it while flying from Lake Laogai to the outer wall. When Zuko and Iroh enter their apartment, Zuko is holding his swords and sheath in his right hand, but when he walks into the room there is another sheath on the floor as well. Later, as Zuko slumps to the ground, the swords and sheath on the ground are gone. The swords he was holding before replace the other swords in the exact same position. Azula does not have a nose in the closeup at the end of the episode. When the kids showed the Earth King about the drill, there's a difference between the one in the "The Drill" and in this episode. In this episode, the drill is curved and buckled and there is less slurry covering it. This may however, be part of a Dai Li plan to get rid of it, since it was surrounded by a smaller wall, which may have been used to prevent people from getting access to it. When Team Avatar and the Earth King arrive at Lake Laogai, Toph uses Earthbending to raise what had previously been a hidden entrance to the secret headquarters, only to find that the entrance has been destroyed. She then expresses surprise at its destruction, despite the fact that her seismic sense should have allowed her to tell what had happened before she raised the platform. Although it is possible that this sense was dulled due to the structure being underwater.

The Earth King

Series continuity

Edit

This is the first time in the series a battle takes place in the beginning of a chapter. This also happens in "The Awakening" and "The Southern Raiders". The Earthbending move that Aang makes in the beginning of the episode where he pushes the ground up in small square pillars under the King's Guards was the same one that he used in "The Avatar State." It is also a move that can be used by an Earthbender player in the nick.com game, Avatar: Legends of the Arena. The headband that Azula wore to go along with her disguise as a Kyoshi Warrior is the same one that Suki wore before she was defeated by Azula.

Goofs

Edit When Aang first attacks the royal guards, he uses a rock wave. In the next frame, the lifted earth columns are still there, but the area around Aang is flat. Then when the picture cuts back to Aang, the ground is crumbled and cracked again.

Trivia

Edit Sokka's line about surface-to-air rocks is a pun on real world surface-to-air missiles or SAM's. This means the palace would be prepared for an attack by Fire Nation airships.

When Zuko has his dream of being Fire Lord, he has a full head of long hair, similar to his father's, and no scar. The two dragons, the blue and red dragons, could be a reference to the last-living dragons, Ran and Shaw. The blue dragon, who has Azula's voice, could also be a reference to her blue Firebending

Goofs

Edit When Zuko enters the kitchen, Iroh is tasting the jook with a spoon. However, when Zuko asks for some, the spoon suddenly becomes a ladle. When Zuko sits down on the floor with his bowl of jook, he sits at the end of the table closest to Iroh, but in the next frame when he says, "Things are looking up, Uncle," he is sitting at the end furthest away from Iroh. The part in Sokka's hair switches from side to side and disappears completely many times throughout the episode. In the shot where Mai complains about wearing the Kyoshi Warrior disguise, her long bangs are clearly behind her head, but in the next shot of the front of her, her bangs are in their usual place hanging over her shoulders. When Sokka hugs his father, his clothes turn from their normal blue to a black/gray, though this could be due to the lighting. After receiving a scroll from General How that was supposed to be taken to the Earth King, Katara goes to the Jasmine Dragon with Momo. However, the scroll in her hand is visibly different than the one the general gave to her. When Aang first meets Guru Pathik, he hands him a bowl of banana and onion juice from behind his back. Before Aang lands, there is a shot of the Guru from behind, showing his back, with no bowl behind him. He is sitting in the middle of open ground with no bowl near him and he does not move until Aang arrives, so there is no way he could've gotten the bowl.

The Guru

Series continuity

Edit

In "Sozin's Comet, Part 2: The Old Masters", Aang mentions Pathik's advice when he talks to Avatar Yangchen. Hakoda's method of sinking Fire Nation ship, the Stink 'n' Sink, mirrors what the Mechanist says: "Never underestimate the power of stink". This is the second time in the series where Aang says the phrase "Everything is connected". The first time he said it was in "The Swamp". This is the fifth time where Zuko is not bent on capturing the Avatar. The first time was in "Winter Solstice Part 1: The Spirit World", when Zuko opposed chasing Appa in favor of finding his uncle. The second time was in "The Storm" when Zuko decides that the safety of the crew is more valuable than capturing the Avatar. The third time was in "The Siege of the North, Part 2", when he and Iroh sail away from the Northern Water Tribe. Iroh asks Zuko about capturing the Avatar to which Zuko just says he is tired. The fourth time is in "The Chase" when he's more concerned about his injured uncle than Aang. Guru Pathik tells Aang that the division between the four elements is an illusion, strongly foreshadowing what the Lion Turtle tells Aang later in the series; that before the four bending disciplines were refined, people bent the raw energy of the universe, which is a reference to Energybending. In "The Day of Black Sun, Part 2: The Eclipse", Azula says she has known about the invasion for months. She learns of it from the Earth King in this episode. While Aang is unlocking the Sound Chakra, a vision can be seen of him overlooking mountains that is taken directly from the Opening Sequence; the angle switches to a previously unseen view of his determined face.

Trivia

Edit It is most interesting that Pathik informs Aang that once the process begins it must be completed, and that if he leaves prematurely it will be impossible for him to go into the Avatar State at all. Aang proves this concept wrong by re-entering the Avatar State of his own accord in the Crystal Catacombs. The scene between Aang and Pathik is reminiscent of one of the Dagobah scenes of Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back', in which Luke (Aang) leaves Yoda (Pathik) after seeing a vision of Leia (Katara) and the others in trouble despite Yoda telling him that this Jedi training must be finished before he leaves. Also, in an interview, Dave Filoni hinted that Aang received very Jedi-like training. Some satellite services, such as DirecTV, as well as Netflix, and in Canada; Telus, list this

and the following episode together as one episode, under the title "The Guru; The Crossroads of Destiny".

The Crossroads of Destiny"

Azula's line, "It's terrible when you can't trust the people who are closest to you", which she says to the Earth King, refers overtly to the fact that she, Ty Lee and Mai are imitating the Kyoshi Warriors, in whom the Earth King places great trust. It also, considering that she is flanked by Ty Lee and Mai when she says it, references her own betrayal by the pair in "The Boiling Rock, Part 2". This is the first time Metalbending has been introduced to the series. How Xin Fu and Master Yu got out of the metal cage, or even if they got out at all, is unknown. Iroh's tea shop's name, Jasmine Dragon, could be related to the fact that his own nickname is 'The Dragon of the West'. This episode makes one of three references in the entire series that the Earth Kingdom has any formal navy. The other references are made in "The Southern Air Temple", and seen in "The Earth King", when the Earth Kingdom navy is searching for Team Avatar. The colors of Aang's visions for each of his chakras mirror the colors traditionally associated with the corresponding chakras: Red for the first (lowest), orange for the second (second lowest), yellow for the third (third lowest), through to purple, which coincidentally is the same order in which they arranged in the visible spectrum; red having the lowest wavelength, orange the second lowest, yellow, the third, through to violet, having the highest. This is the first time Aang openly admits his love for Katara. Though Aang visits all four Air Temples in the series, this is the only episode not to be named after the temple. He visits the Eastern Air Temple in this episode which is the first time he does since he was freed from the iceberg. When Katara is going to the Jasmine Dragon tea shop, Madame Macmu-Ling, leader of the 5-7-5 Society can be seen slightly in the background. When Katara visits the tea shop, she asks for a table for two, a spot for her and a spot for Momo. The two Dai Li agents that bring Azula to Long Feng are the same ones that arrested him in the previous episode, "The Earth King". The scene where Ty Lee disables Katara's ability to Waterbend mirrors the onslaught of Cammy White on Minister Albert Sellers in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. The changing hand positions used by Aang while opening the chakras are actual positions used in real life, called mudrs, to open the chakras while meditating.

Series continuity

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In this episode the first part of Zuko's dream, shown in "The Earth King", is fulfilled when Zuko has to choose between following his Uncle Iroh's path or Azula's. The argument bore great similarities to the dream argument between the Red and Blue Dragons. The way Katara holds Aang at the end of the episode mirrors the way she held him in "The Boy in the Iceberg" after freeing him. Aang smiling at her can also be connected with when he gasped after seeing her for the first time, as well as her smiling at him thankful that he's alive mirroring her reaction from seeing him for the first time. Zuko mentions his mother to someone for the first time in the series. This episode shows the witness of Iroh's betrayal to the Fire Nation, the same thing happened in "The Siege of the North, Part 2". The praying mantis style of Earthbending is shown a lot in this episode. For example, when Aang and Iroh are in the tunnel Aang flicks his wrists inward. Toph does the same when she creates the hole. When Aang, Sokka and Toph return to the apartment, the damage Toph did to the house is still being repaired. Iroh is generating lightning (offscreen) for the second time in the series, to break down a wall while trying to escape the Dai Li. The first time was a demonstration in "Bitter Work". He has never been seen using it in combat.

Goofs

Edit When Aang emerges from the crater while Zuko and Katara are fighting, his clothes are fairly clean, but when Aang faces Azula his clothes are suddenly tattered and blatantly dirty, though this may be because Zuko's attack was so powerful his clothes ripped and got dirty from landing hard in the crater. When Aang rises from the crystal shell in the Avatar State his belt is missing in the first frame. At the end, when Azula explains to Zuko that he had restored his own honor, Zuko stands beside Azula sitting on the throne and you can see Zuko's mouth moving as well as Azula's as Azula speaks. However he may be talking to himself.

When Aang enters the Avatar State and rises up in the air, the back of his head isn't glowing. When Long Feng confronts Azula, there are only two Dai Li agents with him, none behind him, where as in the next scene, there are at least five rows of agents. When Aang Earthbends into the catacombs with Iroh, Katara is seen charging toward him with her amulet in her right hand. In the very next scene, the amulet has disappeared entirely and is in neither hand. When Katara was fighting Azula her entire body except her head was covered in water and then when she caught Azula's arm and leg, only her arms are covered in water. This could possibly be that Katara didn't have enough water to grab Azula so she used the water that covered the rest of her body. When Katara trapped Azula using her Waterbending, Azula's bangs were shown to be sliced by the attack. In the next few frames, they are her regular length. At the start of the fight, after Azula blocks the wave that Katara summons, a far out shot is shown of water under and around Katara but when it shows a close up shot of Aang and Katara, there is no water under or near Katara. During the fight, when Zuko and Azula attacked Katara together and sent her flying into a gem, the water that Katara was bending dissapears from the ground. When Aang sees Katara fighting the Dai Li before he enters the Avatar state, she is shown fighting them with an octopus form. However, they aren't fighting at all and are not even in any combat stance. In the part where Aang is about to go with Iroh to find Zuko and Katara, the green squares on Iroh's sleeves are missing.

During Katara and Azula's fight, Katara entangles Azula's arm and leg. Zuko then saves Azula with the Firebending move she does in the opening credits. The way Katara holds Aang after he is struck down by Azula's lightning greatly resembles La Pieta, a famous sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus after he is brought down from the crucifix. The best known version is by Michelangelo. This also emphasizes how Aang's near-fatal injury by Azula and subsequent revival by Katara directly parallel Christ's death and resurrection. While riding on Appa's back to Ba Sing Se, Aang lied to Toph and Sokka about mastering the Avatar State. Toph would've sensed him lying and his Sound Chakra would've locked also. However, this was not a lie that he told himself. He knew that he had not mastered the Avatar State, but was lying to Toph and Sokka, not to himself. It's possible Toph did not sense Aang's lie because she was not on earth at the time. This is the first time Aang uses the Avatar State without bending any element. When Katara was using the octopus form against the Dai Li, her appearance is closely like Hama when she was in prison. The Dai Li Agent with the scar on the right side of his face, which Azula stops to face during her speech to mention how she will fix any disloyalty, is the same agent that is questioned by Iroh, Sokka, Toph and Aang. This possibly suggests that as Azula being a "people person", she knew that particular Dai Li Agent would be a problem. Katara becomes the first person to touch Zuko's scar other than Zuko himself. Mai is the second. This is the first time anyone of Team Avatar calls Iroh by his name.

Trivia

Edit Even though Azula says the Earth King and the five generals must be taken out simultaneously, Sokka and Toph reach the Earth King after seeing the coup take place, meaning that the coup wasn't at the same time, as the Earth King was taken much later than the five generals. Katara uses the octopus fighting form in battle for the first time. Katara manages to overcome Azula, the Firebending prodigy, twice in the series: here in "The Crossroads of Destiny" and again in the series finale. Some satellite services, such as DirecTV, will list this and the preceding episode in the guide as 'The Guru; The Crossroads of Destiny'.