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I keep struggling to write up Zuko meta around the Crossroads of Destiny and after, mainly because I don't want to start up a bunch of arguments about Katara vs. Zuko and who was more wrong. And I still very much don't want that. (I love a good faith debate about fictional stories, but those good faith and fictional stories bits are key.)

There is one piece I need to toss out into the void to get it out of my head, though, because I see it all the time and disagree with it so completely.

Zuko didn't betray Katara in Ba Sing Se.

Betrayal is a violation of someone's trust, and yes Katara had started to trust Zuko. However! Zuko never promised Katara anything. Her tentative trust was based on her own lack of understanding of Zuko's situation.

Katara yells at Zuko and accuses him of working with Azula. She tells him that he's the Fire Lord's son, so "spreading violence and hatred is in [his] blood." Zuko tells her that she doesn't know what she's talking about, to which she responds by telling him that the Fire Nation had taken her mother. Zuko reaches out to Katara and shares how he lost his mother, too.

Katara apologizes to him for yelling, and then talks about how she used to picture his face as the face of the enemy. Zuko assumes that she's talking about his scar, to which she clarifies that's not what she meant. Even so, Zuko shares with her that for a long time he viewed his scar as, "the mark of the banished prince, cursed to chase the Avatar forever. But lately, I've realized I'm free to determine my own destiny, even if I'll never be free of my mark."

Some important things here, from Zuko's side. This is Zuko saying that he's growing to accept his scar, and to accept that it doesn't control him. He has not said that he's chosen a new side in the war, or even that he knows what destiny he will choose now that he feels free to choose.

At this point, Katara still doesn't know the whole story of Zuko's scar. What she does know, is that he saw it as the mark that cursed him to chase Aang forever. Zuko is already realizing that his scar doesn't have to control him, but it does still weigh on him. So Katara offers to heal it, thus "freeing" him of the destiny of chasing Aang.

And Zuko doesn't take her up on it immediately. He is clearly considering it, but he hasn't agreed or promised Katara anything when they are interrupted by Aang and Iroh's arrival. When Aang shows up, the moment between Katara and Zuko is shattered and Katara runs over to hug Aang in relief, while Aang glares at Zuko in distrust over her shoulder.

Katara may have thought that she was, "giving Zuko a chance," and that he betrayed her trust, but Zuko has already lampshaded the truth for us with his first line to Katara - she doesn't know him, she doesn't know the full context of his situation or motivations, and she doesn't get to tell him who he is or how he feels about the world. She has made a lot of assumptions, some kind and some less so, but the first genuine question she asks is what Zuko would do if she healed his scar. That is a question Zuko never gets to answer before they're interrupted, and thus Katara only had her assumption of what his answer would have been and what it would have meant.

(Which is in character for Katara! She's a young girl who has very strong opinions and morals and is willing to stand up for what she believes is right, but who is still in many ways lacking experience with the wider world (yes, she's traveled a lot with Aang, now, but S3 shows us that she still has things to learn, especially about the Fire Nation, and about herself and the kind of person she wants to be when she has the power to choose). She is also very compassionate, and she clearly wants people she feels any kind of sympathy for to be on her side. The flip side of those things is that she also tends to assume things about other people without confirming the truth, and then act as though her assumptions are facts.)

Katara's assumptions being wrong, however, does not constitute a betrayal on Zuko's part.

Absolutely it was not wrong for Katara to feel betrayed by Zuko's actions! My main quibble is with the idea that valid feelings must be based on accurate logic.

As another example - Zuko felt betrayed by his crew when Zhao commandeered them for his attack on the North Pole in Season 1, and they all left. I wrote in another meta about why Zuko's feeling of betrayal is valid, from his point of view.

However, I would not actually say that the crew betrayed him in that episode. The crew was following a more highly ranked naval officer who had the right, according to Fire Nation law, to overrule Zuko's command and order them elsewhere. It also doesn't seem like Zuko had made many attempts to integrate into his crew during his banishment (quite the opposite, though who deserves blame for that would be a different post that isn't the subject of this meta). He had stopped putting them directly in danger during his attempts to capture Aang after The Storm, but even that hadn't necessarily been made clear to the crew and wouldn't have obligated their loyalty beyond what was demanded of them by Fire Nation law anyway.

While the situation between Katara and Zuko in CoD is different in most details, there is a similarity in that Katara's feelings of betrayal were based on her own assumptions and the hurt she felt over having tried to do right by someone she did have to help, only to see him not choose her when it came down to a question of picking sides. (Likely, those feelings of betrayal were heavily exacerbated by Aang's near-death at Azula's hand, too.)

Just like I would not say that Zuko's crew actually betrayed him when they were commandeered by Zhao, though, I would also not say that Zuko betrayed Katara in CoD.

Feelings can be valid, even when the logic behind them is flawed.

I do wish the show had allowed Zuko to engage in mutual conversations with the Gaang in Season 3, including with Katara. Relevant to this meta, Katara (and the intended audience of kids, who often benefit from more blunt/straightforward messaging in their media) could have benefited from a conversation with Zuko, post Southern Raiders, about misplaced anger. There are a lot of parallels between her anger with Zuko in S3, and Zuko's behavior in S1.

In S1 (and S2/first half of S3 to a lesser extent), Zuko is angry because he knows at some level that the way his father burned and banished him was cruel and unjust. However, he directs his anger at Iroh, his crew, and later at the Gaang, because he does not feel like he is allowed to be angry at his father, especially when his father is also the Fire Lord. S3 Katara does a similar thing with her anger over her mother's death. Katara has held onto that anger for years, but she directs it at more convenient targets, such as Zuko or the Fire Nation at large, because she doesn't have access to the person who actually killed her mother.

Thus, while Katara has many valid reasons to be angry with and suspicious of Zuko when he finally switches sides, the anger she is really holding onto and the excuse she gives Zuko for it, that she was the first person to give him a chance (also not true, that was Aang in S1, arguably twice if we're going to count "showing him compassion" as "giving him a chance") and that he betrayed her under Ba Sing Se, is actually misdirected anger over her mother's death - an event that Zuko had nothing to do with.

Zuko didn't actually betray Katara, but it's easier for her to hold onto that excuse and that anger, especially when Zuko's choice to side with Azula in CoD helped her almost kill Aang, because the narrative she has built up about Zuko's betrayal gives Katara a sense of control and agency that she lacks in the memories of her mother's death.

I think you brought up some great points in your last paragraph, though! I've already rambled on a lot and don't have much to add there, but I like that perspective!

I keep struggling to write up Zuko meta around the Crossroads of Destiny and after, mainly because I don't want to start up a bunch of arguments about Katara vs. Zuko and who was more wrong. And I still very much don't want that. (I love a good faith debate about fictional stories, but those good faith and fictional stories bits are key.)

There is one piece I need to toss out into the void to get it out of my head, though, because I see it all the time and disagree with it so completely.

Zuko didn't betray Katara in Ba Sing Se.

Betrayal is a violation of someone's trust, and yes Katara had started to trust Zuko. However! Zuko never promised Katara anything. Her tentative trust was based on her own lack of understanding of Zuko's situation.

Katara yells at Zuko and accuses him of working with Azula. She tells him that he's the Fire Lord's son, so "spreading violence and hatred is in [his] blood." Zuko tells her that she doesn't know what she's talking about, to which she responds by telling him that the Fire Nation had taken her mother. Zuko reaches out to Katara and shares how he lost his mother, too.

Katara apologizes to him for yelling, and then talks about how she used to picture his face as the face of the enemy. Zuko assumes that she's talking about his scar, to which she clarifies that's not what she meant. Even so, Zuko shares with her that for a long time he viewed his scar as, "the mark of the banished prince, cursed to chase the Avatar forever. But lately, I've realized I'm free to determine my own destiny, even if I'll never be free of my mark."

Some important things here, from Zuko's side. This is Zuko saying that he's growing to accept his scar, and to accept that it doesn't control him. He has not said that he's chosen a new side in the war, or even that he knows what destiny he will choose now that he feels free to choose.

At this point, Katara still doesn't know the whole story of Zuko's scar. What she does know, is that he saw it as the mark that cursed him to chase Aang forever. Zuko is already realizing that his scar doesn't have to control him, but it does still weigh on him. So Katara offers to heal it, thus "freeing" him of the destiny of chasing Aang.

And Zuko doesn't take her up on it immediately. He is clearly considering it, but he hasn't agreed or promised Katara anything when they are interrupted by Aang and Iroh's arrival. When Aang shows up, the moment between Katara and Zuko is shattered and Katara runs over to hug Aang in relief, while Aang glares at Zuko in distrust over her shoulder.

Katara may have thought that she was, "giving Zuko a chance," and that he betrayed her trust, but Zuko has already lampshaded the truth for us with his first line to Katara - she doesn't know him, she doesn't know the full context of his situation or motivations, and she doesn't get to tell him who he is or how he feels about the world. She has made a lot of assumptions, some kind and some less so, but the first genuine question she asks is what Zuko would do if she healed his scar. That is a question Zuko never gets to answer before they're interrupted, and thus Katara only had her assumption of what his answer would have been and what it would have meant.

(Which is in character for Katara! She's a young girl who has very strong opinions and morals and is willing to stand up for what she believes is right, but who is still in many ways lacking experience with the wider world (yes, she's traveled a lot with Aang, now, but S3 shows us that she still has things to learn, especially about the Fire Nation, and about herself and the kind of person she wants to be when she has the power to choose). She is also very compassionate, and she clearly wants people she feels any kind of sympathy for to be on her side. The flip side of those things is that she also tends to assume things about other people without confirming the truth, and then act as though her assumptions are facts.)

Katara's assumptions being wrong, however, does not constitute a betrayal on Zuko's part.

I think these are all really accurate points! Katara's word choice is fairly telling. She tells Zuko that, "spreading war and violence and hatred is in your blood," because he's "the Fire Lord's son." When he protests that she doesn't know what she's talking about, she tells him what the war has put her, personally, through - "The Fire Nation took my mother away from me."

She has conflated the Fire Lord, Zuko, and the Fire Nation all into one unified, othered Enemy. So when Zuko apologizes and replies with, "That's something we have in common," I don't blame Katara for misreading that confession. She says, "the Fire Nation," rather than, "a soldier," or, "a raiding group," or anything else more specific, because for Katara, her mother's death is tied intrinsically to the war, and in the war the Fire Nation are the aggressors and the clear Bad Guys, with the Fire Lord and his family at the top directing it all.

Zuko doesn't contest her word choice, but I would agree that for him part of it is that he's not yet ready to accept that it was likely Ozai who is primarily responsible for his mother's disappearance, just as he's not yet fully ready to acknowledge that it is Ozai who bears sole blame for his scarring and banishment, rather than his 13-year-old self. So Zuko leaves the blame vague because he hasn't yet reached a point where he feels capable of overtly directing anger at Ozai, while Katara left the blame for her mother's death vague because it is still easier for her at that point in time to blame the whole Fire Nation than to recognize that the Fire Nation is full of individuals who all have their own lives and stories and are not all equally to blame for the atrocities that have happened in the war.

It might also be worth noting that Zuko was clearly feeling sullen and angry up until that point. He's been curled up, hunched over with his back to Katara, scowling and trying to ignore all of her barbed words, until he realizes that her anger is really coming from a place of pain and grief - something that he would have a lot of experience with and had been starting to work on accepting prior to his capture by Azula. So when her anger breaks and he recognizes the grief underneath, his face softens, he turns towards her, and his whole body language opens up with his apology. So Zuko both doesn't contest Katara's word choice and visibly aligns himself with her while claiming shared trauma at the hands of, "the Fire Nation."

All that to say, I agree that Katara likely took Zuko's words as an indication that he, too, was starting to see the Fire Nation as the Enemy, just like she did.

I would still disagree that Zuko thinks he betrayed her, or comes to agree with that view later on. When he asks her in The Southern Raiders why she hasn't forgiven him yet, it's true that he doesn't contest her claim that she was the first person to give him a chance and he betrayed her. I would also agree that he is remorseful, by then, for having caused her pain, regardless of his own reasons. However, he doesn't try to apologize for "betraying" her. Instead, he recognizes that once again, Katara is likely holding onto anger as a mask for grief (and a defense against further grief, given how the last time she let that mask slip in Zuko's presence, Aang nearly died at Azula's hands not long after).

Not only is Zuko able to recognize that Katara is once again using misdirected anger to mask grief from a traumatic past event which can never be undone, he has also fairly recently gained the courage and opportunity to stand up to Ozai, the source of much of his own past anger that he had frequently directed at other people when he didn't feel capable of directing it at Ozai. That's why he goes to Sokka to ask about what happened to their mother, and why he offers up to Katara the chance to face the actual person who killed Kya. He wants to give her the chance that he got during the eclipse, the chance to face the person who caused her unforgivable harm, so that she can move forward and start healing - something that Zuko is also trying very hard to do.

When it comes to betrayal, though, Iroh is the only one Zuko acknowledges betraying, because Iroh is the only one that had enough of a genuine bond with Zuko to be specifically betrayed. Zuko knows he made the wrong choice (a lot of wrong choices throughout his time chasing Aang, in fact), he regrets hurting Katara, and he doesn't want to minimize the reality of her pain and anger, regardless of their source. But I don't think he ever feels like he really did betray Katara with that choice.

I also think that when Zuko told Katara that the Fire Nation took his mother away too, she thought that that meant that he was just as angry at the Fire Nation as she was. But she doesn't know the story behind Zuko's mother, she doesn't know that he can't direct that anger at the person responsible, she's not confused aout her feelings over her mother's loss the way Zuko is. I think on some level she does understand having to compartmentalize those emotions to function, and Zuko and Katara are similar in that way in how they process that trauma, although it's for very different reasons. They both share feeling responsible for their mother's loss, but for Katara, it's still less personal because the Fire Nation is an impersonal enemy. For Zuko, they're his family, and however badly they treat him, it's all he's ever known.

When Katara tells people about her mother, usually it's to emphasize how bad the Fire Nation is. That wasn't what Zuko was saying, but I think Katara thought it was, so that's another reason why she might have thought he was saying he was no longer loyal to them.

But for Zuko it's more like a thing that happened that he's carried around with him that he's had to accept in order to cope with his father's abuse. Katara doesn't know what's it's like to have the person responsible for that pain also be your parent. It's not a pain that he can escape, and it's the reason why he couldn't truly empathize with Song or Jet when they tried to empathize with him. Zuko can't hate the Fire Nation for taking his mother because he also loves his father. He has to reconcile that within himself, has to choose to leave his father before he can actually make a choice about which side he wants to be on.

So maybe this was obvious, but it only occurred to me today that there's a really nice parallel structure to Zuko's arc in Zuko Alone vs. his Crossroads of Destiny arc.

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In Zuko Alone, he starts off at one of his lowest points: he's completely alone and starving as a fugitive hiding in a foreign land; he decides to stop stealing to feed himself when he rejects the idea of attacking a pregnant couple he encounters on the road, but this means he has to start taking on odd jobs for strangers whom he would have looked down on for their poverty and "small" lives not so long ago.

Over the course of the episode, he starts to remember the kind of person he wants to be - the kind of person his mother thought he could be. By the end of the episode he is able to choose compassion for a town and kid he had bonded with over his own self-interests, when he returns to the town to fight of bullies who used their military strength to oppress the townspeople. He triumphantly casts off the lies he'd been hiding under, declares his true name and title to the whole village, and defeats the bullies as himself.

After owning the truth of who he is, Zuko is summarily rejected for this truth by the whole town.

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In contrast, Zuko starts off the Crossroads of Destiny arc in a pretty good place. He and Iroh have been reasonably safe in Ba Sing Se for a while now, Iroh has just opened a fancy new tea shop, and Zuko is finally started the process of learning how to be happy with this smaller but perfectly good and reasonable life. Then their cover is blown when Katara recognizes them, Azula sets up a trap to con them out of hiding, and Zuko gets captured and thrown into a dungeon alone with Katara.

At first, Katara hates him because she knows exactly who he is - the firebender who has been chasing her and her friends across the world, the prince of the nation that killed her mother, the descendant of the men who have been destroying the world for the past 100 years. They argue at first, but Katara begins to accept Zuko after learning about their shared trauma over the loss of their mothers. Their moment of understanding is broken first with the arrival of Aang and Iroh, and then further upset with Azula's arrival.

It's an inverted mirror to his arc in Zuko Alone: Zuko starts off being rejected for his identity as a Prince of the Fire Nation and the harm he personally has caused in the past, he is offered sympathy and understanding by a former enemy after they both open up about a similar past trauma, and then he is presented with a choice between aiding Azula and the Dai Li (the bullies who use military might to get and maintain control over others), or aiding Katara and Aang (the people who threaten the strength/control of those at the top).

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In both arcs, Zuko seeks acceptance based on who he is and the skills he brings in to help the ones he chose to side with.

In Zuko Alone, he makes the right choice to help the townspeople against the militarized bullies using their strength to put others down. He owns the truth of his identity, and he gets rejected for it.

He does the right thing, he tells the truth, and he winds up once more alone and hiding.

In the Crossroads of Destiny, he makes the wrong choice to side with the militarized bullies against the people they're trying to oppress and destroy in service to their own power. He thinks that he is owning the truth of who he is, that he is seeking acceptance based not on sympathy for his past but on the merits of his own strength. And as we learn at the start of S3, he is accepted back home not based on the truth, but based on Azula's lie.

He does the wrong thing, he is ostensibly accepted back into his home and his family, and he learns that the acceptance is based on a lie.

At the end of both arcs, Zuko winds up back in hiding, maintaining a lie about who he is or what he's done, to keep himself safe.