When last we left our heroes, Sokka had teamed up with the massively-rewritten Professor Zei from Ba Sing Se University to locate the ancient Spirit Library, in which a map of the Fire Nation and information about how to defeat them might exist. Katara and Zuko, both in disguise, fought off Jet and his gang of thugs from beating up a bunch of innocent Fire Nation defectors. Toph had received word her mom was in town, and was blackmailed by a guy who knew her parents made weapons for the Fire Nation.
I already don’t like what’s happened with Jet’s story here: in the original, he has come to Ba Sing Se with honest intentions of starting over. This is seen in that even after seeing Iroh firebend, he doesn’t immediately take matters into his own hands. He calmly tells his friends, Smellberbee and Longshot, that he’s going to collect evidence and turn it over to the authorities because he believes these two are a danger to Ba Sing Se. Over the course of a week or so, he attempts to sabotage and trick them into firebending to no avail, with his friends trying to talk him out of it and telling him to move on. Sadly, he is unable to move on, and his hatred and rage take him down a road he had an opportunity to avoid that ends up getting him killed.
Jet is shown in Book 2 to be a parallel to Zuko – Zuko is handed the opportunity to live a simple life of honor in Ba Sing Se, as is Jet, if he can only let go of the past. Neither is able to, with disastrous results at the end of Book 2. In the broader scheme of things, Jet’s character exists to be a clear juxtaposition to Katara, another victim of the Fire Nation whose rage tries to consume her later in The Southern Raiders, and who makes a choice to not follow the same path. In fact, in that very episode in Book 3, Aang tells Katara plainly, “You sound like Jet.” It’s a poignant moment, and her decision to let go of her hatred shows that she has grown. Jet, due to his own immaturity, is not given that chance.
In this show, Jet is actually just a racist thug who shakes down people because it makes him feel big. If you remember, he actually fought Smellerbee back on the refugee ship about giving out the food they stole to the other starving people on board. Not because he wanted it for himself, but seemingly because he believed they didn’t earn it. It’s clear that his Robin Hood act in Season 1 was performative, and he has all along been a selfish man. Smellerbee and Longshot also just completely disappear from the show without a word, and Jet isn’t brainwashed or confused in this iteration – just malicious. I wouldn’t mind any of these changes if the show didn’t so desperately try to paint him as a good guy just before his death this episode. Later in the episode, he feeds Katara this very boring and dramatic sob story, which did absolutely nothing to move me. I think I disliked him more after it.
There’s been a lot of discussion in the past 20 years on whether Jet’s Malcolm X-influenced philosophy is the only way to affect real change, especially in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd riots and following focus on police brutality in the United States. We are all free to debate that, but the original show was clear on its stance: Jet was a bad man with good intentions who died performing a single heroic act, and whether that counts as redemption or not is up to interpretation. The Netflix show stumbles towards a different take on it, because I cannot come up with a single good reason that Katara would ever work with Jet after seeing him beating innocent civilians in a hate crime. The show’s excuse is “he knows the Lower Ring” and therefore can help them find the entrance to the spirit world. This is not a good reason to team up with this version of Jet, and I’m shocked the show slid by it so quickly.
So I must ask, what is the point of Jet in this show? Is it okay that he decided to kill hundreds of innocent villagers and now will beat half to death dozens more due to racial profiling? The fact that he had a horrible childhood excuse the xenophobic thug he has grown to become? No. It is an explanation, not an excuse, but the Netflix show doesn’t understand that. They are trying and failing to show that even the worst humans are still human, and there is a reason they are the way they are. That’s fine! It is a good lesson to remember that our real-life oppressors are humans too, and can therefore be defeated. It makes no sense with this character as presented in this show, though.
Jet does indeed help the Gaang find the “Spirit Scar”, a thing from last season that the Netflix show created, where anyone can enter the spirit world by meditating. So the library is in Ba Sing Se’s Lower Ring instead of out in the desert, or rather the ruins are in an abandoned neighborhood there. Jet enters the spirit world with the Gaang while Toph stays outside with Appa, and fans can pretty much figure out what happens next. The highlights of new scenes in this episode were Toph’s conversation with Avatar Kyoshi’s spirit and Aang’s encounter with Avatar Yangchen. The Great Owl Won Shi-Tong is way less impressive and scary now, as we have already seen him in Season 1 for some reason, but events play out mostly the same. The big twist is that Professor Zei, who has been a friend to Sokka and knows that his actions will cause everyone’s deaths, rats out the Gaang for using the library’s knowledge for war. This seemingly happens for no reason, and results in Zei getting eaten first, again for no reason.
Outside the library, Zuko has an opportunity to capture Aang while he’s meditating and finds that he can’t bring himself to do it. Long Feng then captures Appa while Toph must hold the library up from sinking, which makes even less sense since it’s a spirit world portal. What would happen if she let it sink? Couldn’t she just dig down underground and make a tunnel to the door? Or else would the portal open up on the surface even absent the ruins? I complain only because all of these changes make the stakes so much lower than the original while also presenting a much less compelling climax. The episode ends with Jet choosing to sacrifice himself, distracting the Owl and, true to the cartoon, dying offscreen. To what end? Redemption? I don’t think so. I felt nothing when this Jet died, and despite actor Sebastian Amoruso’s excellent performance, I couldn’t even manage a shrug at the moment of his epic sacrifice. Sadly, this is the first episode of Season 2 that I felt was outright bad, with almost every change being definitively worse than the original story. So long, Jet, don’t let the spirit door hit you on the way out.
