With Aang and the Gaang back from the Spirit Library, Jet dead, and Appa taken, things are bleak for Team Avatar. Fans will know that because things played out so differently in the Netflix show, with Long Feng directly kidnapping Appa and putting him directly in Lake Laogai, there is no Appa’s Lost Days anymore. This episode of the original show won Mike and Bryan a Humane Society Genesis Award for its depiction of animal cruelty is nowhere to be seen! I must be honest, though, in my rewatches I usually skip over this episode because I literally can’t handle it, and it costs way too much to animate Appa in CGI for him to have a whole adventure like that. So, my disappointment is minimal and expected.
Zuko enters his fever dream state as his body fails due to his decision not to capture Aang while he was meditating. This is one of the best scenes in the episode, as Zuko’s dream has been expanded upon and plays out a bunraku (Japanese puppet show) scene telling the titular Parable of the Two Dragons. In the original show, Zuko was being influenced by both a red dragon voiced by Iroh and a blue dragon voiced by Azula, one on each shoulder, representing the turmoil inside himself. This segment was a delight to watch, and will likely introduce a lot of Westerners to the art of bunraku. Zuko awakes from this dream a changed man (for now), agrees to work at the tea shop with Iroh, and goes on his infamous date with Jin. However, in this version, he does not do any secret firebending for her.
Here’s another major change – Iroh goes to speak with Jeong Jeong and is invited to join the secret society, the White Lotus. In the cartoon, Iroh has long been part of the White Lotus and is actually one of its leaders, a Grand Lotus. I think this is because in the original show his redemption happened years before the start of the show, offscreen. The Netflix show is interested in showing that happen during the events of the show, so I suppose it makes sense in some fashion for him to join this organization now whose membership transcends the boundaries of the nations. During all this, Azula has teamed up with Long Feng by giving him the names of a dozen Earth Kingdom officials who are not loyal to him.
General Sung, a new character, sympathizes with Aang’s plight and decides to help get them to the Earth King inside the palace. They sneak in and eventually make their way to him, getting a good amount of time to speak to him before Long Feng intervenes. Much like the nobles in the Upper Ring, in this iteration the Earth King knows there is a war going on, but believes it to be far away from his lands and none of his concern. When the group tells him the Fire Nation is camped out right outside the walls, he changes his tone – but of course Long Feng shows up to interrupt. He systematically discredits each of the Gaang members, with the Earth King deciding to believe him and dismissing the group. This, again, is a lot less exciting than what happened in the cartoon. The Earth King has gone from a sheltered scholar with a good heart to a ruler who doesn’t care about mass murder so long as he’s not affected.
The Gaang has their mandatory end-of-the-second-act “we’re not friends anymore!” fight, hashing out all their issues that have been building up. This is so unnecessary, and Hollywood loves it because it’s an easy shorthand to move the plot to the climax without actually coming up with any more ideas. It’s not exclusive to this show; it happens in almost all big movies nowadays, but it’s always boring and always feels forced. Toph stomps out and leaves to go meet her mother, who has arrived in the city, and the group falls into despair. We also see Azula take full control of the Dai Li by murdering a dozen Earth Kingdom officials in front of Long Feng and him submitting to her, but we are not treated to her iconic line, “Don’t flatter yourself. You were never even a player.”
Earlier in the episode, we did get a much-needed flashback to when Appa and Aang meet as children. The show has not shown them together much, due to cost reasons, so this expanded scene was really needed to drive home the severity of Appa’s kidnapping. Appa is not Aang’s pet – he is his Spirit Guide. Going all the way back to the first Avatar, Wan, each Avatar has a Spirit Guide who shares their soul. They are truly soul-bonded, in a way that he is unable to describe to the others, and one cannot exist fully without the other. The touching scene where six-year-old Aang gives baby Aapa an apple, and their souls bond, and Aang says to Aapa, “I guess this means we’ll always be together!” did actually pull a tear from me. Every time I get to that scene in the cartoon, I think of my cat Ellie, and I weep. I suppose you can give credit to this live-action show for pulling some real emotion from me, but it also may have been a case of it more reminding me of how much I loved the original show.
Using his earthbending training, Aang listens carefully and hears Appa screaming for help through the ground and teams up with Iroh to unlock an “Avatar Door”, another new thing Netflix invented, where all four elements must be bent at once to open it. In this story, Avatar Kyoshi created Lake Laogai as a prison, so I suppose it’s plausible enough. The pair makes it in while Sokka, Zuko, and Katara are separately arrested by the Dai Li and thrown into prisons down there as well. Appa is reunited with Aang in a happy moment, but again it made me remember how iconic the original show is when Zuko chooses to set Appa free after Iroh’s “Who are you? And what do YOU want?” speech.
Overall this episode was fine, and again if I hadn’t seen the original show I’d be pretty pleased with it. It doesn’t really ruin anything, like I felt it did with Jet in the last episode, but it’s also just continuing to be a worse version of the thing we already have. Regardless, the highlights like the Air Temple flashback and the bunraku theater scene really stand out leading up to the finale. It’s the Crossroads of Destiny, baby!
