Zuko Meta - Tumblr Posts

Does the internet need more Season 1 Zuko meta? Yes? No? Doesn't matter, the internet is getting it anyway! Specifically, meta about Zuko's portrayal in The Storm - the first time we really get to dig into Zuko's backstory and start to see his potential to be more than just an antagonist. (Put under a read more to make it easier to skip for people who don't care/dislike Zuko/just don't want to read meta about him at the moment!)

Obviously, Zuko starts off The Storm looking like a selfish asshole who prioritizes his personal mission over the lives and safety of his crew. However, as the episode progresses we learn why he acts that way, and we see a glimpse by the end of the more compassionate person he still wants to be underneath his trauma.

There's a lot of obvious discussion already out there about how The Storm provides us with Zuko's tragic backstory and thus sets him up as a sympathetic villain. What I feel like I haven't seen a lot of is a discussion of just how directly relevant the story of Zuko's burning and banishment is to his behavior at the start of The Storm, and just how meaningful it is that Zuko chooses to turn back for the sake of his crew rather than continuing to pursue the Avatar in that moment by the end of The Storm.

We learn from Iroh that, at 13, Zuko wanted to be let into a War Meeting he wasn't supposed to be at, promised Iroh that he would be silent, and then broke that promise because a general suggested a plan to sacrifice a bunch of young and inexperienced soldiers for the sake of advancing the Fire Nation's war efforts in the Earth Kingdom. Zuko yells at the general for suggesting this plan to sacrifice loyal soldiers, and in the midst of his anger he characterizes the plan as a betrayal of those soldiers' loyalty. In response, his dad who is also the Fire Lord demands that he defend his honor in an Agni Kai.

Of course, we all know how that went for Zuko. He was effectively tricked into an Agni Kai with his father (he initially thought the Agni Kai would be against the general, not Ozai, and doesn't learn that his opponent is Ozai until he turns around in the arena), he was horrifically burned by his dad while crying and kneeling on the floor because he refused to fight, and then he was banished and tasked by the Fire Lord with capturing the Avatar as the only way to restore his honor.

So now, at the start of The Storm, we have a Zuko who is trying desperately to prove that he has learned the lesson that was literally branded onto his face - the lesson that the lives of individual soldiers matters less than successfully advancing the Fire Nation cause in the war. Zuko once tried to argue that the lives of individual soldiers should matter, and for that he got half his face seared off and was barred from returning home until he completed a quest that was at the time largely assumed to be impossible.

Yet here he is, the object of his supposedly impossible quest alive and potentially within his grasp against all reasonable expectation, and what is he told by the people around him? That he should prioritize the lives and safety of his crew over completing the task he was given by the Fire Lord - a task that moreover would significantly improve the Fire Nation's odds in the war. The crew are essentially repeating Zuko's 13-year-old self's priorities at him and telling him those priorities are right, while all Zuko has to do is look in a mirror to remind himself of what the Fire Lord, the Fire Nation's highest authority, would prioritize.

So Zuko, who is still clinging desperately to the idea that he can both do the right thing/be a good person and please his dad/"earn" his dad's love at the same time, stomps and shouts and demands that his crew sail into the oncoming storm against all reasonable safety advice.

And then, in spite of how desperately Zuko wants to be the man his father wants him to be, in spite of how desperately he wants to be capable of "earning" his father's love and going home, we see that Zuko hasn't managed to fully crush the compassion and care for his people that got him into this position in the first place. He risks his own life to save the life of a crew member who's safety harness breaks, even though that crew member probably doesn't much like or respect Zuko as a leader and even though Zuko gets injured in the process. Then he finally agrees to turn back - to prioritize the safety of his ship and his crew instead of the mission he was given by the Fire Lord - even after seeing the Avatar flying away as they pass through a temporary break in the clouds.

Ozai literally tried to burn Zuko's compassion for other people out of him when Zuko was 13, and he failed. When Zuko tries to be the man his father supposedly wants, he is a furious, stompy, raging disaster. Because underneath all the pain and rage grown from the traumas of his past, what Zuko really wants is just to be allowed to care about his people and to be loved by his family at the same time.

Deep down - very deep down, still, in Season 1 - Zuko knows that Ozai was wrong and he was right that day, when he prioritized compassion and lives over military conquest.

I am back with more Season 1 Zuko meta, to follow up on my Zuko meta from The Storm!

So in The Storm, Iroh and Zuko's crew argue that he should be prioritizing the crew's lives/safety over his mission to capture the Avatar - priorities that are in direct contradiction of those the Fire Lord made clear when he challenged Zuko to an Agni Kai and then burned him in front of a crowd after Zuko essentially argued for the same thing at 13, against a General who had suggested sacrificing a bunch of young and barely trained soldiers for the sake of winning more ground in the Earth Kingdom. After sailing into the storm nearly gets one crew member killed, gets Zuko injured while saving that crew member's life, and causes damage to the ship, Zuko finally agrees to turn back. He even sees Aang flying away on Appa during a brief break in the clouds, but he makes the choice to let Aang - a major target in the war effort and also the mission he's been desperately seeking to complete for the past three years - escape so that he can prioritize the crew's safety.

This is also the last time we see Zuko bring his crew along to help him complete his mission to capture Aang.

The next episode is the Blue Spirit episode, where it could be argued that Zuko has to act alone because he's technically committing treason in saving Aang from Zhao. Even the next attempt he makes after that, though, in the Bato episode, is just him and Iroh working together without the crew. In the Deserter, Zuko doesn't even show up - only Zhao tracks the Gaang to Jeong Jeong's camp, and Zuko isn't even in the episode.

The next time we see Zuko with his crew is in the second to last episode of Season 1, when Zhao interrupts Music Night to commandeer Zuko's crew, and Zuko refers to them as "traitors" for going with Zhao.

And now I'm just thinking about how betrayed Zuko must have felt in that episode. He listened to his crew and his Uncle. He stopped putting his crew in danger for the sake of his mission and started taking on more risky missions on his own or with only Iroh while the crew got to chill around in port having Music Nights... and when Zhao comes to take the crew away - the crew that Zuko has been trying to treat better and keep safer - they up and leave without a fight.

And then the pirates that Zhao hired to kill him even blow up his ship and almost succeed at blowing him up too.

After getting his crew stolen and almost getting blown up, Zuko sneaks onto Zhao's ship to follow Zhao to the North Pole and keep trying to complete his mission, even though he's still injured from Zhao's assassination attempt. Zhao, whom his father, the Fire Lord, promoted multiple times while failing to grant Zuko any additional resources or even recognition that he cared if his kid was still alive or not, in favor of promoting a slimy asshole who kept trying to steal the mission that he'd given to Zuko in the first place.

Finally they get to the North Pole, and Zhao's mission winds up getting just about all the Fire Nation soldiers that he brought with him - almost certainly including Zuko's old crew - killed, while Zhao manages to not even succeed at the mission he'd brought them all to the North Pole for in the first place.

And the Fire Lord's response? Is to blame Zuko and Iroh for the North Pole and send Azula to arrest them both as traitors.

Is it any wonder that Zuko starts off Season 2 incredibly depressed and struggling to see the value in doing the right thing?

Yet more Zuko meta

In which I tackle Season 2 Zuko! (My S1 Zuko meta can be found here and here, for those who are interested.) I'm starting S2 with another episode that's been subject to its fair share of meta by other people, because as usual I have Opinions about it that I want to share.

Season 2 - Zuko Alone: In which Zuko, having tried doing the right thing by his crew (keeping them safe) and losing them all to Zhao's plan and the Avatar/La's vengeance at the North; having tried doing the right thing by his father/Fire Lord (capturing the Avatar) and wound up not only with no Avatar, but also labeled a traitor by his father and hunted by Azula; having (kind of) tried to at least do right by his Uncle (stealing to provide for them, now that they are penniless refugees) and gotten only more lectures on who he's supposed to be couched in "questions" about who he wants to be (questions that always come with a clear "right" answer in Iroh's mind), has finally had enough and decides to set out on his own and find out for himself who he is, when he's lost everything that he used to think defined him.

(also, uh, this one got... long?)

We'll go ahead and get this out of the way first: Zuko starts off Season 2 in a pretty low place, and his behavior reflects that. He's rude and dismissive to Iroh while lacking much of the subtle fondness he used to bury under a gruff exterior, he displays some of his most verbally/outwardly entitled behavior, he steals shamelessly from anyone who has more than he does and takes things he and Iroh don't even need but which might make their lives a bit easier. One of his lowest points comes just before Zuko Alone, when he steals Song's ostrich horse right after she and her mother have offered medical aid, food, and shelter to Zuko.

Zuko has just had a series of harsh lessons on how little ability he has to care for "his" people - his crew were taken from him and now they're all likely dead, he feels like he dragged his Uncle down with him as a traitor after his Uncle already spent 3 years traveling with Zuko in his banishment when he likely didn't have to, and then Iroh poisons himself while trying to make tea and would have died without the help of a kind stranger. So when he gets that help from Song, and then gets further generosity from Song and her mother in the form of food and pleasant company that his Uncle clearly enjoys, he lashes out. In spite of the fact that she is also poor, in spite of the fact that she's been hurt by the Fire Nation already (Zuko's people, who hurt her even though she is kind and compassionate and good; Zuko's people, who hurt Zuko because he lost his honor and apparently does not deserve his father's compassion or care), Zuko adds to that harm by stealing her ostrich horse.

It's a low point for him, there's no denying that! Even Iroh gets frustrated by Zuko's behavior. It's selfish, it's reckless, it's disrespectful, and at points like with the ostrich horse it's outright cruel. Through the early episodes of Season 2, we also see a rift growing between Iroh and Zuko that hasn't really been there before. This rift eventually builds to the point where, in response to Iroh's growing frustration, Zuko chooses to part from his Uncle entirely and sets out on his own.

Ultimately, this parting does wind up being a healing and positive journey for Zuko, if not a very pleasant one for most of it.

Instead of stealing his way across the Earth Kingdom for most of Zuko Alone, he starts taking odd jobs from residents of the small towns he's passing through and begins to work his way across the Earth Kingdom to survive. Finally, he winds up in a small town that's been ravaged by the war and is, at the time Zuko shows up, being effectively run by Earth Kingdom army bullies. This town provides Zuko with an opportunity to reaffirm for himself who he is and what he values, though it winds up not being sufficient in the end to break him away from his goal to one day return home with Ozai's approval.

I see discussions sometimes that question why this journey was not enough for Zuko to choose the Avatar's side by the time he and Katara talk under Ba Sing Se. What I think is important, even if we don't really hear Zuko verbalize it until later in Season 3, is that Zuko still has years of propaganda to unlearn. Propaganda that was taught to him throughout his childhood, about the greatness of his nation and the honorable intentions of his people in the war. He has been taught that the Fire Nation is trying to help the other nations by spreading "civilization" to people who lack the same innovations and resources as the Fire Nation, spreading their "glory" to the hapless ignorant hoards that populate the rest of the world.

It's an ugly narrative for sure, and most viewers (with the benefit of narrative framing and other characters' stories that Zuko doesn't have) rightfully recognize it for the imperialist nonsense that it is. Zuko, however, is still fairly young and until very recently was still very immersed in the Fire Nation rhetoric. During the three years he spent on his ship, his crew consisted entirely of Fire Nation soldiers. Even when he would have stopped at ports, there is little evidence or reason to believe that he would not have chosen primarily neutral ports, colony ports, or other ports dominated by Fire Nation peoples.

At the start of Season 2, Zuko also very likely has very recent memories of watching the Avatar, while merged with La, slaughter a significant chunk of the Fire Nation navy in vengeance for what, to Zuko, would have looked like the plot of one corrupt naval officer. As he travels through the Earth Kingdom, he sees how the war has negatively affected these towns, but he also sees cruel, petty, and dishonorable behavior from Earth Kingdom soldiers (realistic behavior, given that the Earth Kingdom is itself a major world power initially built through imperialist conquest, and given that human nature has plenty of examples of people who get a bit of power over others and immediately proceed to abuse that power for their own self interest no matter where they are from), who choose to bully and steal from their own people.

Zuko's travels do help him heal from the trauma of losing his crew, losing his ship, and the latest rejection from Ozai in the form of being declared a traitor to his own people (plus, the likely additional heavy trauma of having to raft through who knows how many days worth of the bloating corpses of Fire Nation soldiers left behind by La's rampage, as he and his Uncle starved on their tiny raft while fleeing the North Pole massacre). Up to this point, Zuko's compassion and empathy has been largely buried - by the trauma from his father in his Agni Kai, by the stress and desperation and anger he used to fuel himself during his 3-year Avatar hunt, by the slaughter he witnessed at the North Pole and the further rejection Azula delivered on Ozai's behalf afterwards (just when he thought he and his Uncle had escaped the North and made it to safety).

His travels alone through the Earth Kingdom show Zuko certain limits to his own capacity for selfishness and cruelty, however, even when he is at one of his lowest points in the series. Choosing not to steal from the young, pregnant couple marks his first major turning point, where he realizes that even if he has nothing and is nothing (nothing but a traitor, expected to act without honor) in the eyes of the Fire Nation, he still desires to act with whatever honor he can when the choice belongs to him anyway.

It is after this point that Zuko stops stealing and starts finding jobs to earn money/food/shelter each day. By the time he reaches the last small town in the episode, he is able to interact fairly kindly (if not warmly, though Zuko is frequently shown to be awkward in social situations of any kind) with the young child of the family he finds work with, when the kid starts following him around and asking him questions and making it clear that he looks up to Zuko due to an act of kindness Zuko committed earlier on the kid's behalf. Zuko even gives the kid his knife, one of the few things he has left of his old life, and something he had treasured enough to take with him from home when he was originally banished.

Spending time with the Earth Kingdom family and interacting with this young kid helps Zuko heal enough to bring back forward his innate desire towards protecting and caring for those who could reasonably be seen as "his" to care for (the same drive, arguably, that lead him to save the crew member who nearly died during The Storm in S1, and ultimately lead him to temporarily give up chasing the Avatar and prioritize his crew's safety at the end of that episode; the same drive that got him challenged to an Agni Kai, burned, and banished at 13). When the kid is directly threatened by the Earth Kingdom soldiers who have been bullying the townspeople, Zuko's core of compassion trumps the more selfish front he'd been trying to put forward in order to protect himself up to that point. He turns back to the town, fights the Earth Kingdom soldiers to save the kid who had looked up to him, the child of the family who had given him work and shelter while he was there, and eventually he reveals his true name and title as he achieves victory against the soldiers with firebending, while remembering his mother's last words to him to never forget who he was.

It is, briefly, a moment of triumph for Zuko. He has objectively done the right thing, he has acted with compassion and used his strength to help those in need rather than to cause harm, and he has owned the truth of who he is without shame.

And very rapidly, his moment of triumph turns to yet another painful lesson on how other people see him, not for what he does but for who he is. It is understandable for the townspeople to reject Zuko here! He's just admitted that he's not merely a firebender, he is also the son of the man who is currently leading the nation that started the war and is still perpetuating atrocities against their people. He is the crown prince of the nation responsible for all the loved ones whom these townspeople have lost to the war. He could not have more clearly announced himself The Enemy if he'd tried!

For Zuko, however, it still means that he tried to find acceptance outside of his home, acceptance that was not dependent on his lying and hiding who he was, acceptance through doing something good for this town of mostly strangers, and he was told that he could not both be himself and also seek acceptance in another nation. Regardless of his father's rejection, he is a Prince of the Fire Nation, and that means in the eyes of the world that he bears at least some responsibility for his nations crimes. He is rejected, here, even by the very child whose life he had just saved. A rejection that is made clear and absolute when the child refuses even to keep Zuko's knife.

The message is clear: he is not wanted here; he does not belong.

His travels have brought him to a place where he wants to be accepted again, however. He wants to have a place where he belongs, a place where his contributions and his care are both accepted and appreciated, without having to pretend that he is someone he isn't.

And so, having been rejected by these Earth Kingdom townsfolk for revealing himself, Zuko returns to something he knows, a mission that he had already spent 3 years convincing himself would earn him a way back to the place and acceptance that he most desperately craves - he returns to hunting the Avatar and, with it, the dream that he can one day earn his father's approval and go home.

In today's Zuko meta, Zuko did one good thing and got a fever about it… after doing a lot more than one good thing over the course of Seasons 1&2, watching the life he desperately wanted continue to slip further and further out of his grasp anyway, and then facing the disappointment of a father figure whom he loves for his continued desire to please the father who burned and banished him at 13.

(Previous Zuko meta can be found here and here for S1, and here for S2)

First, a list of some positive things Zuko has done (or at least tried to do) in Seasons 1&2, along with the consequences of those actions for Zuko:

1) Zuko tries to do the right thing by his people at 13. He defends the lives and loyalty of a battalion of young soldiers that some older General wanted to sacrifice for the sake of taking more Earth Kingdom land. In response, his father demands he fight an Agni Kai for disrespect over the fact that Zuko yelled his objections to the unnecessary slaughter of their own soldiers during a war meeting that he hadn't been invited to.

2) Zuko tries to do the right thing as a loyal son when he realizes Ozai meant for Zuko to fight him. In response to Zuko begging for forgiveness instead of fighting in the Agni Kai, his father publicly sears off half his face and then banishes him with nothing but a fool's errand to pin any hopes on for "earning" his way back home.

3) Zuko actually finds the Avatar, commits a number of definitely not great and often harmful actions as he chases the Avatar for weeks/months, and then nearly gets challenged to another Agni Kai by his Lieutenant for demanding his ship sail into a dangerous storm in pursuit of the Avatar. When he nearly does get his crew killed and his ship destroyed by following the Avatar into the storm that everyone else on board was telling him to turn back from, he realizes they might have had a point. Zuko saves one crew member's life and then tries to do the right thing by his crew, in turning back and temporarily halting his Avatar chase in favor of prioritizing the crew's safety. After the storm, he no longer takes them into dangerous situations for the sake of capturing the Avatar. A few days/weeks after that, his whole crew gets commandeered by Zhao and likely all wind up killed by La at the North Pole.

4) Zuko gives up on trying to do the right thing for a while, because he has lost faith in himself after he and Iroh are labeled Fire Nation traitors in the wake of Zhao's failure at the North Pole. This leads to him losing even Iroh, as their frustration with each other grows to the point that Zuko finally parts from his Uncle and sets off to travel on his own. Eventually, however, his travels through the Earth Kingdom help him heal to the point that he starts wanting to care about other people again. He stops stealing and starts working to earn food/shelter through honest means, and he eventually finds himself in an Earth Kingdom town whose inhabitants are being bullied by members of their own army. He winds up with a young kid following him around and looking up to him, after he refuses to rat the kid out for throwing things at the bullies.

4) Zuko tries to do the right thing by going back to the town after the child's mother asks for his help with rescuing her kid from the army bullies, who have threatened to conscript the kid and get him sent off to die at the front. He returns to the town and saves the kid. Unfortunately he can't defeat the earthbenders without using his firebending, and he announces who he really is in the process, too. In response, the villagers, including the child he just saved, reject him and demand that he leave their town. Zuko leaves, and begins tracking the Avatar again.

5) Zuko finds the Avatar, only to discover that Azula has also found the Avatar. After Iroh and the rest of the Gaang all show up, Zuko sides with the Avatar and his Uncle against Azula. Azula wounds Iroh to the point that Iroh loses consciousness, and then she retreats. This leaves Zuko effectively alone (in a nation that hates him when they know who he is) with a group of people who, the last time he'd encountered them, had fought against him - for good reason, as he had been the antagonist in that situation - and then allied with the ocean spirit to wipe out half his country's navy - who had also initiated the aggression in that situation. Given that Zuko originally showed up in this town to fight against the Avatar, he understandably doesn't trust the Gaang's intentions when he's effectively alone and even more vulnerable than usual, what with having a downed Iroh to watch over as well as himself. Rather than letting Katara get close when she offers to help heal Iroh, he chases the group away with anger and showy firebending that doesn't actually burn anyone.

6) On the ferry to Ba Sing Se some time later, Zuko meets a guy who seems to like him, who encourages him to steal food from the ferry captain to distribute among the hungry refugees, and who wants Zuko to join the group of outcast kids that he leads - kids who have all been harmed in some way by the Fire Nation. Zuko agrees to steal food with Jet on the ferry, but when they arrive in Ba Sing Se he refuses an offer to join Jet's group. Zuko is, at the time, hiding his identity in a city where being a firebender at all is illegal, and he had already left his Uncle once and then nearly lost him to violence when they reconnected. Therefore, Zuko turns Jet down. Unfortunately, while Jet is trying to convince Zuko to join him in spite of Zuko's refusal, he spots Iroh firebending to heat a cup of tea. Jet proceeds to stalk Zuko and Iroh for days, until he finally bursts into their work place while they're working and tries to get them arrested. Zuko fights back to protect himself and his Uncle, and Jet gets arrested due to his own actions as the one who started that fight.

--

After all these experiences of trying to do what he feels is right, trying to do what other people tell him is right, trying to just do what he wants in the moment and screw the consequences, all of which end with Zuko losing or almost losing nearly everything he cares about and getting rejected by nearly everyone he tries to care for except Iroh, Zuko finds the Avatar's bison imprisoned under Ba Sing Se.

He is now faced with the choice between doing what his Uncle tells him is right, or continuing the quest that his father had given him three years before when all this started. (Ironically, Zuko has been quite verbally clear that he wants to restore his honor in his father's eyes and be allowed to go home every time Iroh asks him to think about what he wants, so the answer to Iroh's constant demands that Zuko consider, "What he wants," actually runs counter to what Iroh is hoping the answer will be.)

Zuko is at a crossroads of his own, here. He can keep persevering at the mission that he's centered nearly his whole life around since he was thirteen, keep the hope alive that one day he might be able to go home and be worthy of his father's pride, or he can finally give up on his hunt for the Avatar, and thus his hope of eventually going home, for good.

7) Though it clearly terrifies and angers him, Zuko chooses to give up on something that he has believed in fiercely and completely for three years, something to which he has dedicated countless hours of work and pain and struggle and grief and desperate aching hope. He symbolically lets go of the last shreds of that hope that he might one day go home, when he frees Appa instead of trying to find a way to use Appa against the Avatar.

Zuko gives up on something he believes in with his whole heart and soul for the sake of pleasing a father figure who has just been verbally disappointed in and angry with him, and he barely makes it home before he collapses. Honestly at that point, is it really so surprising that freeing Appa made Zuko literally sick with fear?

Every so often I see the argument that Zuko's journey through the Earth Kingdom was necessary in Season 2, because he had to learn empathy (or empathy for the Earth Kingdom, at least). I have to disagree with this argument.

Zuko didn't lack empathy, before or after being burned. He lacked:

Emotional intelligence (very much not helped by the fact that he was an abused kid who was slow at picking up social skills, and then a very traumatized kid tossed onto a tiny boat with a fresh burn, a crew of adults who didn't respect him, and an uncle who didn't know how to communicate with him, and given a quest that was meant to be impossible by the father who had burned him and claimed it was for his own good)

Acceptance that his father didn't love him, but this was not Zuko's fault nor his responsibility to 'correct' by fulfilling an impossible quest/making himself less compassionate/magically becoming a more powerful firebender/etc (I feel like this one should speak for itself)

Accurate understanding of how his nation was treating the rest of the world (very much due to growing up surrounded by propaganda about how great his country was, and then banished with a crew of Fire Nation soldiers who had grown up with the same propaganda, and his Uncle - the Fire Nation Prince and former General who had led armies in the Fire Nation's war - who seemed to communicate with Zuko primarily through vague philosophical ideas, proverbs that Zuko consistently made clear he did not understand, and questions about Zuko's motives - generally asked in such a way as to make it clear that Iroh thought he already knew the 'right' answer before he asked the question)

Zuko didn't need to learn empathy. He needed to learn that his country was the aggressor in a war against people who primarily wanted to defend their own homes and families from the violence brought by his nation, and he needed to learn that Ozai was wrong for treating empathy and compassion like bad things.

Yes, I think these are some really good points, too! As a child, Zuko is outright told by Ozai that he will learn through suffering, right before Ozai burns him in that sham of an Agni Kai. Zuko responds to this act of cruelty by spending the next three years desperately trying to please his father and become the sort of man his father apparently wants in a child, all so that he can return home to a man who abuses him. He has been told that the Fire Nation are the good guys who want what is best for the world, lead by his father the Fire Lord who wants what is best for his children, too. From the perspective of the Zuko who believes in this propaganda, he is doing everything in his power to "earn" the right to return to the Fire Nation. At the same time, the other nations are fighting against becoming a part of the Fire Nation. For the Zuko who believes that he brought Ozai's cruelty on himself through his bad behavior and can't imagine anything worse than never getting to go home, it would be baffling to see anyone else not just refusing to join the Fire Nation but outright fighting against being colonized by them.

Zuko had to unlearn the lie of his own accountability in the case of his father's cruelty towards him, before he could be ready to let himself learn what he and his nation should be held accountable for in perpetuating the war.

My thoughts on Iroh tend to be a bit fuzzier, in part because it did seem like the writers occasionally added new aspects to his character (such as the White Lotus involvement) without fully considering how those things might hang together with previous actions we'd seen from him. That makes it bit hard to get a fully coherent analysis of his character, and easier to read thoughtless or even outright sinister intent into some of his character beats. However, I do tend to lean towards agreeing with you, that Iroh was a complex character placed in a difficult situation in charge of a deeply traumatized teenage boy who still bought into his father's dangerous ideology, and that he did his best to love and support Zuko from within the boundaries of the situation and his own abilities as a teacher. I think he didn't always know how to connect with Zuko, but I also think he wanted that connection even when he wasn't sure how to say so in a way that Zuko might be able/willing to hear.

Every so often I see the argument that Zuko's journey through the Earth Kingdom was necessary in Season 2, because he had to learn empathy (or empathy for the Earth Kingdom, at least). I have to disagree with this argument.

Zuko didn't lack empathy, before or after being burned. He lacked:

Emotional intelligence (very much not helped by the fact that he was an abused kid who was slow at picking up social skills, and then a very traumatized kid tossed onto a tiny boat with a fresh burn, a crew of adults who didn't respect him, and an uncle who didn't know how to communicate with him, and given a quest that was meant to be impossible by the father who had burned him and claimed it was for his own good)

Acceptance that his father didn't love him, but this was not Zuko's fault nor his responsibility to 'correct' by fulfilling an impossible quest/making himself less compassionate/magically becoming a more powerful firebender/etc (I feel like this one should speak for itself)

Accurate understanding of how his nation was treating the rest of the world (very much due to growing up surrounded by propaganda about how great his country was, and then banished with a crew of Fire Nation soldiers who had grown up with the same propaganda, and his Uncle - the Fire Nation Prince and former General who had led armies in the Fire Nation's war - who seemed to communicate with Zuko primarily through vague philosophical ideas, proverbs that Zuko consistently made clear he did not understand, and questions about Zuko's motives - generally asked in such a way as to make it clear that Iroh thought he already knew the 'right' answer before he asked the question)

Zuko didn't need to learn empathy. He needed to learn that his country was the aggressor in a war against people who primarily wanted to defend their own homes and families from the violence brought by his nation, and he needed to learn that Ozai was wrong for treating empathy and compassion like bad things.

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.

Speaking of Zuko's scar and people having preconceived ideas about him because of it, Jee saying that he thought Zuko was in a training accident also might contribute to what he says about Zuko being a spoiled prince. Sure, Zuko WAS being a brat and deserved to be called out by Jee, but if Jee thinks that Zuko got his scar in a training accident, there's a certain assumption that Zuko was in the wrong which also might contribute to him having less respect for him as a military commander. Think about how we saw Zuko demand that Iroh teach him more advanced firebending that he wasn't ready for. Jee could have easily assumed that was how Zuko got burned, out of arrogance and overconfidence in his own skill, which of course would contribute to resenting being ordered around by this obnoxious teenager.

When Jee learns the truth, he learns that not only was it not an accident, but that it wasn't a reflection of Zuko's ability or arrogance or anything like that. Zuko didn't get the scar because he lost a fight he wasn't ready for, he got it because he refused to fight a battle he was tricked into fighting in the first place. That changes the whole story. It's more than just Jee feeling bad for Zuko, it changes the narrative from Zuko the arrogant brat who thinks he's better than he is, Zuko the prince who demands to be taught advanced firebending by Iroh - who Jee has great respect for, and no regular teenager would get the privilege of being taught by the Dragon of the West, who does Zuko think he is - to Zuko who spoke out for those that didn't have the privileges he had and paid the price for it.

I think there's another major aspect to Zuko's redemption that I rarely see explicitly recognized in meta or repeated in other works.

A lot of people talk about how the story of Zuko's scar engenders sympathy for Zuko in the audience early on. While this is true, it also serves another very important narrative purpose: the story of Zuko's scar explains how Zuko became the teenager we see in S1, obsessed with regaining his honor through a single-minded focus on capturing the Avatar (even to the point of technically committing treason by freeing Aang from Zhao, because it has to be Zuko who captures Aang); beyond that, however, the story also sets Zuko up as someone who is inherently compassionate.

The audience can root for Zuko even in S1, because we see that there is a compassionate kid buried under the hurt that his father caused, a kid who believed in plenty of propaganda but who ultimately wanted to do the right thing and who cared deeply about other people.

Well before Zuko is ever "redeemed" in the narrative, we are shown both how he came to be his S1 self and who he is capable of being when he is at his best. This means we know what Zuko values at his core, how those values got twisted into something selfish and cruel, and many pieces of what Zuko will need to learn/face in order to grow and realize the potential of becoming his best self.

Then throughout the rest of the show, we see Zuko learning and facing those things, culminating in Zuko's eventual decision to turn against Ozai and join the Gaang. Even then, we see that his journey isn't fully complete just because he has made the choice to be good. He still has to make apologies to the Gaang and show his willingness to do good, first through selflessly aiding the people he had hurt the most personally in completing their own individual quests, in order to complete his own redemption arc within the show.

When Zuko apologized to uncle Iroh in the tent cause he was so ashamed of his actions and what he’d done to the only person who unconditionally believed in his ability to do good >>>>>

I think, perhaps, what I actually dislike about Zuko's S3 fieldtrip episodes is that he doesn't get nearly enough credit for what he does in them. Zuko has spent three years struggling with shame, anger, and feelings of inadequacy over his bending. Yet in the three field trips, he becomes for the GAang the person he had needed during those three years. He surpasses his Uncle in a way, and he is able to give the GAang the help he had not been able to give himself back then.

1. Aang has been struggling with fire, because he tried to do something he wasn't ready for, tried to jump ahead in his lessons without fully recognizing the possible consequences of his actions. Because he lacked sufficient self control for the lessons he'd argued his way into with someone older and doubtful of his skills, an innocent person got burned for his recklessness. After getting an innocent person burned, Aang becomes afraid of fire and struggles with how to move forward from his own actions.

In S3, Zuko struggles with his fire, too, and then learns the true meaning of fire alongside Aang. Nevertheless, he is still also able to guide Aang, to provide knowledge and insight that expand upon the lesson from the dragons, and to teach Aang how to master the fire that he now better understands and is no longer afraid of.

2. Sokka has recently experienced a terrible military defeat. He blames himself for his people's capture and possible deaths, and he becomes impulsive and reckless due to his feelings of shame and his loss of confidence in his leadership skills. He even emotionally manipulates Zuko, claiming that he lost his honor to ensure that Zuko won't tell the others about his dangerous, impulsive, reckless plan to heroically accomplish an impossible task that will impress his father and thus give himself back the confidence he has lost in himself.

So Zuko helps him plan and execute this impossible, ridiculous task. Because of Zuko's help, not only does Sokka succeed at freeing his father, he also finds and frees Suki - getting Zuko found out and temporarily captured in the process. Finally, Zuko helps Sokka escape the prison they'd walked themselves into, even though Zuko had been discovered and captured, and Sokka even gets the chance to save Zuko's life after having gotten Zuko captured with his impulsive actions in the first place.

3. Lastly, there is Katara. Katara, who is angry and hurting and lost. Katara, who feels alone and like no one appreciates or understands her anger, like no one is taking her fear and frustrations seriously. Katara, who still struggled with the loss of her mom to powerful forces she couldn't fight when she was a child, and who pushed her fear and pain outwards as anger whenever her compassion was returned with unexpected pain. Katara, who felt betrayed by someone she had trusted (someone who the people around her have come to trust and believe in by TSR episode), and who as a consequence had lost the ability to trust in herself.

And Zuko validates her anger, gives her the chance to face the man who had caused her life's greatest tragedy, and validates her too when she finally chooses to value life and compassion again over her need for revenge.

Anyways, Zuko is an amazing character and his redemption arc is genuinely so well done.

Also, on Zuko’s anger, I’ve referenced this before, but anger is only considered an acceptable response to trauma if it makes the character look cool, and Zuko’s anger is largely ineffectual and made fun of by the narrative and the other characters, and his abusers also use it to invalidate his trauma, and that’s something that is incredibly realistic. Zuko doesn’t get to be cool and broody, and that’s a big part of his appeal as a character. It’s also what signals to the audience that he’s a kid in need of help and not the big bad villain that he’s trying to be.

I mean, look at the way the show contrasts him ordering men around on his ship to the way Azula does it. When Azula explodes in anger at being questioned for giving her men an irrational order, she’s seen as badass and threatening, both in-story and by the fandom. When Zuko does it, he gets rightly called out for being a brat.

Since the “bad boy” discourse about Zuko seems to be starting up again, I’d like to remind people that a large part of Zuko’s appeal as a character is his vulnerability. Seeing Zuko be helplessly angry at the people around him as a result of his trauma both has the effect of undermining him as a villain and making the audience sympathize with him. It adds a layer of complexity and realism to the character, and it’s laughable to see that reduced to “you just think he’s cool because he’s a broody angsty bad boy.”

On the idea that Zuko is somehow at fault for “blaming Azula for being better than him” or “thinking she didn’t suffer”:

Zuko believes this because the idea that Azula was better than him and got (and deserved) everything he did not is a lie Ozai and Azula made him believe.

Him thinking this is not him wrongfully blaming Azula, it is him internalizing self-blame for being the imperfect child, and another facet of Ozai’s and Azula’s abuse of him.

When he responds sarcastically that Azula is “so perfect,” he is responding to how she uses the idea that she is perfect and he is worthless to hurt him. She had previously told him that his trauma was a “sob story” and a “performance” and that she didn’t actually care about their mother - someone who Zuko did care about and whose loss is deeply felt by him. Of course it’s not true that she doesn’t care, but her pretending that she doesn’t is a way to assert her superiority over Zuko yet again and he is NOT wrong for being angry and hurt by that.

Azula does not want Zuko to see how she is imperfect and how she suffered, Azula wants Zuko to think that she’s inherently superior to him and that that’s the natural order of things, because it gives her power over him, as well as power over her own narrative, because Azula doesn’t think and doesn’t want to think that she was abused as well. She doesn’t want to think that it could happen to her because the distinctions their father made between her and Zuko and who was worthy of love and care and who was not are entirely arbitrary.

Of course, deep down, Azula does want to be seen as more than the perfect princess, and wants to be known on a human level, but she never admits that to her brother because she wants to maintain the abusive dynamic, because it benefits her. We see this in how she interacts with her friends, too, in that every time she admits vulnerability it is offset by an affirmation that she’s above it all. In the end, of course it’s not true, but it is not Zuko’s fault that he doesn’t see that, because this is what his abusers made him believe and another facet of his trauma.

To twist this into Zuko “blaming” Azula for being resentful of being constantly told by her of how much better she is than him is victim blaming.

Of course it’s all a lie, but it’s a lie Zuko believes because his abusers made him believe it.

And of course, people who blame Zuko for this also want to try and argue that he somehow took advantage of her in the last agni kai, precisely because this is the moment when he has stopped believing those lies. Zuko says that he can take Azula because she’s “slipping,” but it’s more than just that. It’s that he’s able to see her as vulnerable because he no longer internalizes the idea that she is perfect and he can never measure up.

To frame Zuko as taking advantage of someone who abused him because he no longer believes the lies she has used previously to maintain power over him is abuse apologism, and because abuse is about power, abusers are always going to paint you as the real abuser for evening the playing field. 

That’s why these conversations about how Zuko “needs to realize what Azula suffered” never include any suggestion that Azula should realize that her brother was ever hurt, despite Zuko being the only one of the two of them to realize that they were raised by an abuser and thus being more likely to come to that realization about his sister than she is about him.

So I did not expect this post to blow up the way it did! Since it's gotten so much attention and I see all the tags in my notes, though, I do want to clarify my position on something:

Zuko is both an awkward turtleduck and a bit of a shouty angry menace sometimes.

He's a precious cutie who just wants to do the right thing and be soft and loved. He is also very awkward in social situations, and part of his awkwardness comes from his strong instinct to get defensive and put his hackles up when he feels teased or belittled, because of how he was treated by his family members as a kid (including Azula, who pretty clearly used her position as their father's favorite to bully him when they were both kids).

Y'know what I've realized I'd like to see more often? Zuko befriending the Gaang while still dealing with the fact that his instinctive response to insecurity or fear is to get defensively angry and snappy. Less of Zuko being a quiet mouse who flinches away from any hint of aggression from the others, and more of Zuko who does his best to reign in his temper and then flinches away from his own defensively snappy remarks or the instinct to firebend out his frustrations. More of Zuko who has let go of the bulk of his anger and is doing his best to lean in to his mother's and his uncle's lessons on compassion and empathy, but who is also still in the process of unlearning his years of reliance on anger as his go-to method of covering up any insecurity or "weak" spot around other people.

I clarified this on the original post, too, but I wanted to make a separate post clarifying my desire for more defensively angry Zuko.

What I'd like to see more of is awkward turtleduck Zuko who also does the human equivalent of snapping at fingers when he feels threatened.

Zuko is both an awkward, precious sweetheart, and a defensive prickly cactus with a lot of childhood trauma that didn't lend itself to the development of great social skills.

Growing up, he was likely frequently teased and belittled by his sister and talked down to by his father, and then he was banished from home at 13 with a crew who didn't respect him and an uncle who found it difficult to talk to or relate to him, even if said uncle did genuinely also love him.

Awkward turtleduck Zuko and angry turtleduck Zuko are not mutually exclusive, and both of them deserve friendship and support once he joins the Gaang and makes it clear he's really on their side this time.

Does the internet need more Season 1 Zuko meta? Yes? No? Doesn't matter, the internet is getting it anyway! Specifically, meta about Zuko's portrayal in The Storm - the first time we really get to dig into Zuko's backstory and start to see his potential to be more than just an antagonist. (Put under a read more to make it easier to skip for people who don't care/dislike Zuko/just don't want to read meta about him at the moment!)

Obviously, Zuko starts off The Storm looking like a selfish asshole who prioritizes his personal mission over the lives and safety of his crew. However, as the episode progresses we learn why he acts that way, and we see a glimpse by the end of the more compassionate person he still wants to be underneath his trauma.

There's a lot of obvious discussion already out there about how The Storm provides us with Zuko's tragic backstory and thus sets him up as a sympathetic villain. What I feel like I haven't seen a lot of is a discussion of just how directly relevant the story of Zuko's burning and banishment is to his behavior at the start of The Storm, and just how meaningful it is that Zuko chooses to turn back for the sake of his crew rather than continuing to pursue the Avatar in that moment by the end of The Storm.

We learn from Iroh that, at 13, Zuko wanted to be let into a War Meeting he wasn't supposed to be at, promised Iroh that he would be silent, and then broke that promise because a general suggested a plan to sacrifice a bunch of young and inexperienced soldiers for the sake of advancing the Fire Nation's war efforts in the Earth Kingdom. Zuko yells at the general for suggesting this plan to sacrifice loyal soldiers, and in the midst of his anger he characterizes the plan as a betrayal of those soldiers' loyalty. In response, his dad who is also the Fire Lord demands that he defend his honor in an Agni Kai.

Of course, we all know how that went for Zuko. He was effectively tricked into an Agni Kai with his father (he initially thought the Agni Kai would be against the general, not Ozai, and doesn't learn that his opponent is Ozai until he turns around in the arena), he was horrifically burned by his dad while crying and kneeling on the floor because he refused to fight, and then he was banished and tasked by the Fire Lord with capturing the Avatar as the only way to restore his honor.

So now, at the start of The Storm, we have a Zuko who is trying desperately to prove that he has learned the lesson that was literally branded onto his face - the lesson that the lives of individual soldiers matters less than successfully advancing the Fire Nation cause in the war. Zuko once tried to argue that the lives of individual soldiers should matter, and for that he got half his face seared off and was barred from returning home until he completed a quest that was at the time largely assumed to be impossible.

Yet here he is, the object of his supposedly impossible quest alive and potentially within his grasp against all reasonable expectation, and what is he told by the people around him? That he should prioritize the lives and safety of his crew over completing the task he was given by the Fire Lord - a task that moreover would significantly improve the Fire Nation's odds in the war. The crew are essentially repeating Zuko's 13-year-old self's priorities at him and telling him those priorities are right, while all Zuko has to do is look in a mirror to remind himself of what the Fire Lord, the Fire Nation's highest authority, would prioritize.

So Zuko, who is still clinging desperately to the idea that he can both do the right thing/be a good person and please his dad/"earn" his dad's love at the same time, stomps and shouts and demands that his crew sail into the oncoming storm against all reasonable safety advice.

And then, in spite of how desperately Zuko wants to be the man his father wants him to be, in spite of how desperately he wants to be capable of "earning" his father's love and going home, we see that Zuko hasn't managed to fully crush the compassion and care for his people that got him into this position in the first place. He risks his own life to save the life of a crew member who's safety harness breaks, even though that crew member probably doesn't much like or respect Zuko as a leader and even though Zuko gets injured in the process. Then he finally agrees to turn back - to prioritize the safety of his ship and his crew instead of the mission he was given by the Fire Lord - even after seeing the Avatar flying away as they pass through a temporary break in the clouds.

Ozai literally tried to burn Zuko's compassion for other people out of him when Zuko was 13, and he failed. When Zuko tries to be the man his father supposedly wants, he is a furious, stompy, raging disaster. Because underneath all the pain and rage grown from the traumas of his past, what Zuko really wants is just to be allowed to care about his people and to be loved by his family at the same time.

Deep down - very deep down, still, in Season 1 - Zuko knows that Ozai was wrong and he was right that day, when he prioritized compassion and lives over military conquest.

In today's Zuko meta, Zuko did one good thing and got a fever about it… after doing a lot more than one good thing over the course of Seasons 1&2, watching the life he desperately wanted continue to slip further and further out of his grasp anyway, and then facing the disappointment of a father figure whom he loves for his continued desire to please the father who burned and banished him at 13.

(Previous Zuko meta can be found here and here for S1, and here for S2)

First, a list of some positive things Zuko has done (or at least tried to do) in Seasons 1&2, along with the consequences of those actions for Zuko:

1) Zuko tries to do the right thing by his people at 13. He defends the lives and loyalty of a battalion of young soldiers that some older General wanted to sacrifice for the sake of taking more Earth Kingdom land. In response, his father demands he fight an Agni Kai for disrespect over the fact that Zuko yelled his objections to the unnecessary slaughter of their own soldiers during a war meeting that he hadn't been invited to.

2) Zuko tries to do the right thing as a loyal son when he realizes Ozai meant for Zuko to fight him. In response to Zuko begging for forgiveness instead of fighting in the Agni Kai, his father publicly sears off half his face and then banishes him with nothing but a fool's errand to pin any hopes on for "earning" his way back home.

3) Zuko actually finds the Avatar, commits a number of definitely not great and often harmful actions as he chases the Avatar for weeks/months, and then nearly gets challenged to another Agni Kai by his Lieutenant for demanding his ship sail into a dangerous storm in pursuit of the Avatar. When he nearly does get his crew killed and his ship destroyed by following the Avatar into the storm that everyone else on board was telling him to turn back from, he realizes they might have had a point. Zuko saves one crew member's life and then tries to do the right thing by his crew, in turning back and temporarily halting his Avatar chase in favor of prioritizing the crew's safety. After the storm, he no longer takes them into dangerous situations for the sake of capturing the Avatar. A few days/weeks after that, his whole crew gets commandeered by Zhao and likely all wind up killed by La at the North Pole.

4) Zuko gives up on trying to do the right thing for a while, because he has lost faith in himself after he and Iroh are labeled Fire Nation traitors in the wake of Zhao's failure at the North Pole. This leads to him losing even Iroh, as their frustration with each other grows to the point that Zuko finally parts from his Uncle and sets off to travel on his own. Eventually, however, his travels through the Earth Kingdom help him heal to the point that he starts wanting to care about other people again. He stops stealing and starts working to earn food/shelter through honest means, and he eventually finds himself in an Earth Kingdom town whose inhabitants are being bullied by members of their own army. He winds up with a young kid following him around and looking up to him, after he refuses to rat the kid out for throwing things at the bullies.

4) Zuko tries to do the right thing by going back to the town after the child's mother asks for his help with rescuing her kid from the army bullies, who have threatened to conscript the kid and get him sent off to die at the front. He returns to the town and saves the kid. Unfortunately he can't defeat the earthbenders without using his firebending, and he announces who he really is in the process, too. In response, the villagers, including the child he just saved, reject him and demand that he leave their town. Zuko leaves, and begins tracking the Avatar again.

5) Zuko finds the Avatar, only to discover that Azula has also found the Avatar. After Iroh and the rest of the Gaang all show up, Zuko sides with the Avatar and his Uncle against Azula. Azula wounds Iroh to the point that Iroh loses consciousness, and then she retreats. This leaves Zuko effectively alone (in a nation that hates him when they know who he is) with a group of people who, the last time he'd encountered them, had fought against him - for good reason, as he had been the antagonist in that situation - and then allied with the ocean spirit to wipe out half his country's navy - who had also initiated the aggression in that situation. Given that Zuko originally showed up in this town to fight against the Avatar, he understandably doesn't trust the Gaang's intentions when he's effectively alone and even more vulnerable than usual, what with having a downed Iroh to watch over as well as himself. Rather than letting Katara get close when she offers to help heal Iroh, he chases the group away with anger and showy firebending that doesn't actually burn anyone.

6) On the ferry to Ba Sing Se some time later, Zuko meets a guy who seems to like him, who encourages him to steal food from the ferry captain to distribute among the hungry refugees, and who wants Zuko to join the group of outcast kids that he leads - kids who have all been harmed in some way by the Fire Nation. Zuko agrees to steal food with Jet on the ferry, but when they arrive in Ba Sing Se he refuses an offer to join Jet's group. Zuko is, at the time, hiding his identity in a city where being a firebender at all is illegal, and he had already left his Uncle once and then nearly lost him to violence when they reconnected. Therefore, Zuko turns Jet down. Unfortunately, while Jet is trying to convince Zuko to join him in spite of Zuko's refusal, he spots Iroh firebending to heat a cup of tea. Jet proceeds to stalk Zuko and Iroh for days, until he finally bursts into their work place while they're working and tries to get them arrested. Zuko fights back to protect himself and his Uncle, and Jet gets arrested due to his own actions as the one who started that fight.

--

After all these experiences of trying to do what he feels is right, trying to do what other people tell him is right, trying to just do what he wants in the moment and screw the consequences, all of which end with Zuko losing or almost losing nearly everything he cares about and getting rejected by nearly everyone he tries to care for except Iroh, Zuko finds the Avatar's bison imprisoned under Ba Sing Se.

He is now faced with the choice between doing what his Uncle tells him is right, or continuing the quest that his father had given him three years before when all this started. (Ironically, Zuko has been quite verbally clear that he wants to restore his honor in his father's eyes and be allowed to go home every time Iroh asks him to think about what he wants, so the answer to Iroh's constant demands that Zuko consider, "What he wants," actually runs counter to what Iroh is hoping the answer will be.)

Zuko is at a crossroads of his own, here. He can keep persevering at the mission that he's centered nearly his whole life around since he was thirteen, keep the hope alive that one day he might be able to go home and be worthy of his father's pride, or he can finally give up on his hunt for the Avatar, and thus his hope of eventually going home, for good.

7) Though it clearly terrifies and angers him, Zuko chooses to give up on something that he has believed in fiercely and completely for three years, something to which he has dedicated countless hours of work and pain and struggle and grief and desperate aching hope. He symbolically lets go of the last shreds of that hope that he might one day go home, when he frees Appa instead of trying to find a way to use Appa against the Avatar.

Zuko gives up on something he believes in with his whole heart and soul for the sake of pleasing a father figure who has just been verbally disappointed in and angry with him, and he barely makes it home before he collapses. Honestly at that point, is it really so surprising that freeing Appa made Zuko literally sick with fear?

I think, perhaps, what I actually dislike about Zuko's S3 fieldtrip episodes is that he doesn't get nearly enough credit for what he does in them. Zuko has spent three years struggling with shame, anger, and feelings of inadequacy over his bending. Yet in the three field trips, he becomes for the GAang the person he had needed during those three years. He surpasses his Uncle in a way, and he is able to give the GAang the help he had not been able to give himself back then.

1. Aang has been struggling with fire, because he tried to do something he wasn't ready for, tried to jump ahead in his lessons without fully recognizing the possible consequences of his actions. Because he lacked sufficient self control for the lessons he'd argued his way into with someone older and doubtful of his skills, an innocent person got burned for his recklessness. After getting an innocent person burned, Aang becomes afraid of fire and struggles with how to move forward from his own actions.

In S3, Zuko struggles with his fire, too, and then learns the true meaning of fire alongside Aang. Nevertheless, he is still also able to guide Aang, to provide knowledge and insight that expand upon the lesson from the dragons, and to teach Aang how to master the fire that he now better understands and is no longer afraid of.

2. Sokka has recently experienced a terrible military defeat. He blames himself for his people's capture and possible deaths, and he becomes impulsive and reckless due to his feelings of shame and his loss of confidence in his leadership skills. He even emotionally manipulates Zuko, claiming that he lost his honor to ensure that Zuko won't tell the others about his dangerous, impulsive, reckless plan to heroically accomplish an impossible task that will impress his father and thus give himself back the confidence he has lost in himself.

So Zuko helps him plan and execute this impossible, ridiculous task. Because of Zuko's help, not only does Sokka succeed at freeing his father, he also finds and frees Suki - getting Zuko found out and temporarily captured in the process. Finally, Zuko helps Sokka escape the prison they'd walked themselves into, even though Zuko had been discovered and captured, and Sokka even gets the chance to save Zuko's life after having gotten Zuko captured with his impulsive actions in the first place.

3. Lastly, there is Katara. Katara, who is angry and hurting and lost. Katara, who feels alone and like no one appreciates or understands her anger, like no one is taking her fear and frustrations seriously. Katara, who still struggled with the loss of her mom to powerful forces she couldn't fight when she was a child, and who pushed her fear and pain outwards as anger whenever her compassion was returned with unexpected pain. Katara, who felt betrayed by someone she had trusted (someone who the people around her have come to trust and believe in by TSR episode), and who as a consequence had lost the ability to trust in herself.

And Zuko validates her anger, gives her the chance to face the man who had caused her life's greatest tragedy, and validates her too when she finally chooses to value life and compassion again over her need for revenge.

Anyways, Zuko is an amazing character and his redemption arc is genuinely so well done.

people have pointed out before that zuko probably didn't actually know any of the gaang's names before joining their group. according to the data i've collected, it is unclear as to whether zuko knew any of their names before "the boiling rock," in which he addresses sokka by name multiple times. at no point in the show does he refer to toph, suki, or momo by name.

i find it particularly funny that zuko only seems to refer to katara by name after sokka says her name during their conversation in his tent; the transcript for "the southern raiders" reads as follows:

Sokka: So what's on your mind?

Zuko: Your sister. She hates me! And I don't know why, but I do care what she thinks of me.

Sokka: Nah, she doesn't hate you. Katara doesn't hate anyone. Except maybe some people in the Fire Nation. No, I mean, uh, not people who are good, but used to be bad. I mean, bad people. Fire Nation people who are still bad, who've never been good and probably won't be, ever!

Zuko: Stop. Okay, listen. I know this may seem out of nowhere, but I want you to tell me what happened to your mother.

Sokka: What? Why would you want to know that?

Zuko: Katara mentioned it before when we were imprisoned together in Ba Sing Se, and again just now when she was yelling at me.

we can thus assume that zuko went into this conversation knowing katara only as "[sokka's] sister," heard sokka refer to someone named "katara," and finally connected the dots.

i think the gaang according to zuko is just "the avatar, the avatar's bison, the avatar's.... little rat thing, sokka, sokka's sister, sokka's girlfriend, and, yknow, uhhhhh, the little green one."

Vague language and redemptions

An important thing about ATLA's treatment of Zuko that I think people miss is the way its characters talk about his past wrongdoings.

“I can understand why you wouldn't trust me. And I know I've made some mistakes in the past—”

“Like when you attacked our village?”

“Or when you stole my mother's necklace and used it to track us down and capture us?”

“Look, I admit I've done some awful things. I was wrong to try to capture you, and I'm sorry that I attacked the Water Tribe. And I never should've sent that Fire Nation assassin after you.”

“You weren't there when he had us attacked by pirates.”

“Or when he burned down Kyoshi Island.”

“Or when he tried to capture me at the Fire Temple.”

“Actually, we met a long time ago.”

“We did?”

“Yeah. You… kinda burned down my village.”

“This isn't fair. Everyone else seems to trust me now. What is it with you?”

“Oh, everyone trusts you now? I was the first person to trust you, remember? Back in Ba Sing Se. And you turned around and betrayed me! Betrayed all of us!”

Basically, they bring up specific events instead of limiting themselves to blanket statements that can mean anything from “was kinda rude” to “commited mass murder”. In fact, it almost seems deliberate — when Zuko tries for a vague “mistakes were made”, the others make sure to name exactly what mistakes.

Now let's take a look at the way SPoP talks about Catra:

“Look, I know this is gonna sound crazy and dangerous, and I know Catra was our enemy and she's done a lot of bad things and hurt a lot of people but—”

What bad things? What people? How did she hurt them?

This is precisely what I meant by “blanket statements”. The closest we get to a proper acknowledgement is Adora and Bow off-handedly mentioning that Catra tried to kill them before, but trying to kill the heroes is still very basic villain stuff. Even Scorpia and Entrapta did it (for Entrapta it was her bots, but she knew how they were being used) and they're nowhere near Catra's level.

The narrative never directly addresses things like:

Catra stabbing Entrapta in the back and sending her to die (vaguely alluded to but not outright said, stops being an issue altogether after a generic apology that could apply to anything)

Catra opening a Portal and indirectly killing Angella (Glimmer, whose entire character arc in Season 4 is driven by her mother's death, never bothers to broach the topic despite having literally nothing to do other than converse with Catra. nor does Angella's husband, sister-in-law…)

Catra brainwashing Adora into trying to murder her friends (which has not one, not two, but three different parallels, one of which takes place in Season 5, making it a perfect opportunity to touch upon this)

Catra torturing Adora with electricity (this is quite literally the last time they saw each other before the events of this season, and it somehow doesn't affect their interactions at all)

This is one of the biggest reasons why her redemption arc doesn't work. If even the writers aren't brave enough to fully embrace the things they made her do, how can Catra herself own up to them? How can she face the consequences of her actions if the universe is so insistent on pretending those actions never happened?

I've been thinking more and more lately about the idea that Azula is naturally so much better of a firebender than Zuko, in combination with the idea that Azula only lost their Agni Kai in the finale because she was in the midst of her breakdown, vs. the way that Zuko often fares poorly in comparison to Azula in past episodes where he is the one in the midst of emotional distress.

In the first season, Iroh is constantly trying to get Zuko to slow down and relax, while Zuko is meanwhile still failing to deal with the immense pain, fear, guilt, and anger he feels over the traumatic event three years prior in which his father publically humiliated him and burned off half his face in front of a bunch of the Fire Nation nobility and then banished him with nothing but an impossible quest to pin his hopes for "redemption" on. So Zuko starts S1 apparently still needing to work on his basics, according to Iroh, but he also starts S1 still deeply emotionally unbalanced by the loss and trauma that his father put him through three years earlier.

Yet even in S1 Zuko also wins an Agni Kai with Zhao, an adult firebending master who has recently been promoted by Ozai, because Zuko is able to get control of his emotions and put Zhao off balance with anger instead.

In S2, the first time Zuko faces Azula, she taunts him with emotional barbs and dodges his attacks until he's off-balanced enough by his rage that she can knock him down in a few hits. Azula, meanwhile, gives the appearance of being emotionally in control of herself, not least because she's the one with a whole ship full of loyal soldiers and her father's approval behind her.

The second time he faces off against Azula, it's in their 3-way fight against each other and Aang. In this fight, Zuko is just coming off several weeks of traveling alone, starving, nearly finding acceptance and saving a kid who'd been kind to him, and then getting rejected by the town he'd just helped when he reveals who he is. Aang, meanwhile, spends the encounter both fighting Azula and Zuko, and fighting several days of sleeplessness because of Azula chasing him in a tank with Mai and Ty Lee. Azula, meanwhile, has been able to take shifts with her friends and sleep just fine while chasing the Gaang, so she is once again the most put together person in the fight. When the rest of the Gaang and Iroh arrive, however, it's Iroh who she tries to strike down before fleeing - Iroh, the one person she so far hasn't been able to unbalance with exhaustion and/or emotional manipulation.

Finally, in Ba Sing Se, when Azula initially captures Zuko it is because he's stopped running away and tries to issue a challenge to an Agni Kai. Instead of accepting, Azula laughs at him and refuses his challenge. The next time they fight, they're on the same side fighting against Katara (who is emotionally compromised by her feelings of betrayal when Zuko joins on Azula's side of the fight) and Aang (who came into the fight already emotionally compromised by the conflict between his fear for Katara's safety, vs. the knowledge that he came into this fight without completing his work with Guru Pathik, and against the Guru's advice).

The closest thing we get, in canon, to a fight between the Fire Siblings on even emotional ground is probably the fight at the beginning of The Southern Raiders. Zuko is finally integrating into the Gaang, but there's still tension with Katara and his peace with Sokka is still very new. Azula on the other hand has just been betrayed by Mai and Ty Lee, but she still has a fleet of airships full of soldiers at her command and hasn't completely fallen apart, yet.

This is also, I suspect not at all coincidentally, the fight in which they seem most evenly matched in terms of their bending.

(Even in the flashbacks during Zuko Alone, the best direct comparison we see between Zuko and Azula's firebending skill is from Zuko's memory of Ozai showing off Azula to their grandfather. In that memory, there are fairly clear indications that Zuko and Azula are already aware, at least to some extent, that Ozai finds Zuko displeasing and considers Azula the inherently better child.

We see how Zuko's desire to prove that he's just as good as Azula and thus also "worthy" of his father's affection makes him impulsive and easily goaded by Azula, who pokes directly at this sore spot by telling him smugly that he'll never catch up to her so he really shouldn't even try. All together, this means that Zuko's attempt to replicate the kata Azula just showed off perfectly is doomed before it begins, because Zuko starts off in an emotionally volatile headspace, rather than calm and confident.)

And anyway I feel like there's a point in here, about how the question of whether Azula or Zuko is a "better bender" maybe has a lot less to do with natural talent and a lot more to do with which one is feeling more confident and in control of themselves in a given encounter, instead of the narrative of Azula's inherent superiority over Zuko which Ozai did his best to drill into his kids. A point, too, in how Azula's one major loss in a bending fight is often brushed off as a function of her unsettled emotional state at the time, while ignoring the way we see her consistently seek to undermine her opponent's emotional (and sometimes physical) balance before striking in every previous fight she's won.

(And, perhaps, a broader point about how constantly making a kid feel inferior to their peers might in fact lead to them performing worse in practice at tasks they are made to feel inferior in, while kids who feel confident in a given skillset and are praised for their progress might also find it easier to make progress more quickly.)

All this to say, I feel like there's a pretty solid chance that a fight between them on truly equal footing - if Azula were to get a redemption arc and they both went into the fight after taking some time post-canon to grow and heal, to a point where they both felt calm and confident in themselves and their bending - would be a very even fight and a total toss up over who would win on any given day.