interesting that iroh says this to zuko in an episode that deals explicitly with authority brainwashing. also interesting that i’m depressed now!
also interesting that this is the angriest we’ve seen iroh yet, and the closest we’ve come to him calling his brother out.
i mean, sure, some of the anger is obviously him being afraid that his second son nephew will literally stubborn himself to death. but the crux of the argument, the emotional heart, is him pretty much explicitly telling zuko “your father did not do well by you, and it hurt you in the past, and it’s still hurting you now.”
iroh is fucking furious with his brother and at this point he’s barely even hiding it
wait god this makes it so much better when zuko asks if iroh thinks he should try to get along with azula because she’s family and iroh is like “uh no she’s the worst.” it’s like
zuko: you’re gonna tell me that family’s important and i have to love her because she’s my sister, right?
iroh, who is trying to gently help zuko realize that his brother is an absolute moral chemical fire of a human being & doesn’t deserve zuko’s devotion:
Hello! And yeah, it’s really telling because it was written this way just so Azula definitely wouldn’t have the same place in the narrative as the other 3 at the time of the beach episode and for the rest of the series, which is why her issues were foreshadowed then but not addressed before the last episodes.
Mai and Ty Lee were foreshadowed since their very first introduction to be potential traitors to Azula’s side, because Azula always ruled them with using fear. As for Zuko, I don’t even think I need to say anything. xD
However I don’t agree about Azula missing the chance to face her problems, if just because her mindset made it impossible and that’s why it took her two “friends” betraying her to admit that she even had issues in the first place and anyway all of Azula’s mindset during ATLA is 98% Ozai’s fault.
I mean, looking at this episode in particular, it’s the only time that Azula is presented as this young lady who wouldn’t mind having the opportunity to enjoy things besides fighting, ruling and being a tyrant once in a while (when even in Zuko’s flashback she always was a pest who enjoyed destruction) and I’m ready to bet that it’s because this side of her truly exists too. That’s why she tried so hard to flirt with Chan, why she went from one kiss to ruling the world with him and why she even admitted to Ty Lee that she was jealous of her natural with people (aka men in the context of that scene).
So Azula was built as a multi-layered character and that’s why the beach scene only foreshadowed a part of her personal issues, but as a main villain, she couldn’t get an outburst at the same time as the other “good” characters. In a way, the beach episode showed similarity between Zuko, Mai and Ty Lee in that aspect and, well, they all ended up betraying Azula, didn’t they?
TL;DR read this post if you haven’t, it’s amazing. 😉
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and have a nice day Anon!
One of the many reasons i love “The Beach” episode in AtLA is it really shows us how political dysfunction/ imperialist expansion filters down into the interpersonal, like you can’t be part of an imperialist national mechanism without that shit fucking you over on a personal level: there’s Zuko and Azula with their problematic family, there’s Mai and then Ty Lee who was tired of being a carbon copy I mean these are all kids that are stifling under the narrow roles ascribed to them (which is what happens in highly industrialized, capitalist nations which prioritize efficiency, compliance and utility rather than creative expression and interconnectedness). Ofc the Gaang has family issues too – Toph and her parents, Katara and Sokka’s early loss of a parent figure etc – but you don’t get the same sense of dysfunction and trauma and pain that you do with Mai/Ty Lee/Azula/ Zuko, or at least it feels different. And I really wanna know more about these four FN kids in their childhood and how they found each other and formed these bonds through and in spite of their dysfunction and ugh feels about kids growing up during war i mean this is really one of the strongest things about the show: war and militarization affects everyone in some way, not just in terms of losing land and resources but also in how fully we can engage our own humanity
Azula is one of the most fascinating and complex villains in children’s media, or indeed in any media. She is both abuser and victim, both deeply cruel and deeply afraid. Often, discussion of her breaks into two camps, either she was born the way she is, or that she was abused, and she was made into the character we see onscreen by that abuse. Either she is a “psychopath” (an outdated term that has been widely misunderstood and keeps shifting in meaning), and she was born the way she is, and she either wasn’t abused, or abuse didn’t affect her, or she was abused, and how she was raised made her into who she is. I don’t think either of those positions are correct. There is no code that says that predators don’t abuse other predators, and there is nothing in the world that makes abuse magically not damaging. I have spent a great deal of time figuring out what makes this character tick, and what made her stop ticking at the end. So how did nurture and nature come together to make Azula? Bear with me, it’s a bit of a story.
Sibling rivalry is often a trite story of one sibling hating the other out of jealousy. On the surface, the Zuko and Azula may look that way. They have no problem blasting fire and lightning at each other and both of their parents had a favorite. But there’s so much more to it.
First of all, I would argue that in spite of many near-fatal encounters, they don’t necessarily hate each other. It’s far more complicated than that. How they view each other is closely tied to how they view themselves.
For most of Zuko’s life, Azula is the standard he’s held to. She’s ambitious, ruthless, and a prodigy. No matter what he does, he can’t earn their father’s approval like she can. And she rubs it in his face constantly. When Azula is cruel to Zuko, Ozai affirms that she’s not wrong to do so. Zuko rarely argues with her because he’s been conditioned to believe she’s right. Zuko has internalized the blame for how his father treats him rather than project it onto Azula, and accepts how she treats him as normal. He has plenty of bitter feeling toward her, but none quite as clear as hate.
Azula’s view of Zuko is even more convoluted. The first time we see Azula, she’s smiling because their father is about to burn him. The next time they meet, she berates him for being a failure of a son. It looks like she enjoys watching him suffer.
But when Zuko helps “kill” the Avatar in Ba Sing Se, we get to see them in a new context. In the rare moments that they aren’t pitted against each other by the ever looming presence of their father… they actually get along fine.
Every time Azula appeared happy to see Zuko suffering, it was at the hands of their father. It wasn’t just that Ozai hurt Zuko, it what that Ozai hurt Zuko and not her. Every time Ozai insulted or injured her brother, it cemented Azula’s position as the favorite child. And she had to stay the favorite child because she’s seen what would happen to her if she wasn’t. Deep down, she knows just how conditional her father’s positive regard is. When Ozai leaves her in the Fire Nation while invading the Earth Kingdom, the first words out of her mouth are “You can’t treat me like Zuko”. Being better than Zuko is part of her identity.
When Zuko defects from the Fire Nation and begins to succeed without meeting, or even trying to meet, the standards set by their father, it throws her priorities into doubt. In her mind, Zuko is supposed to fail. But she isn’t truly unnerved until she’s betrayed by Mai and Ty Li.
She is incapable of understanding why Mai would chose Zuko, and this drags to the surface her inability to understand why her mother preferred Zuko. She believed her mother loved Zuko and not her. Now Mai, her closest friend, loves Zuko and not her.
This conflicts with her entire view of the world. She sees the worth of a person as equal to their quantifiable skills and accomplishments. She has been admired, respected, and feared, but as far as Azula believes, no one has ever loved her. She was a prodigy who did everything right, while Zuko was the family screw up. Yet people loved him and not her.
For years, being better than Zuko was how Azula measured herself. Ozai said Zuko was lucky to be born. That he was worthless, weak, disrespectful, and both his children believed him. When Zuko left, he finally saw that Ozai was wrong about him. When Zuko returns during Sozin’s comet, Azula too is forced to see that her perception is wrong.
Zuko has become the embodiment of everything she lacks. She thought he was weak, but he’s not afraid enough to fight her fairly as an equal. She thought he was dishonorable, but really he was independent enough to break away from their father’s control. She thought he was worthless, but he’s found people who care about him in spite of his flaws.
Azula isn’t just trying to kill him, but everything he represents. And when she can’t, she breaks. Zuko is still standing. She has nothing left.
Word of God (Bryke) confirmed that at the end of the Agni Kai, Zuko felt pity rather than hate for his sister. This continues into the comics as he genuinely tries to help her. He knows that while she may not have been overtly abused like he was, she was raised in the same web of lies, agendas, and violence.
Their past left them both unable to trust people. Azula controlled everyone around her with fear. Zuko shut other people out and tried to do everything on his own. It isn’t until Zuko has left his old life behind that he slowly begins to let people in.
While Azula hangs onto the beliefs of Ozai and the Fire Nation, Zuko can see their situation from the outside. He sees two screwed up teenagers who spent their lives fighting their father’s war, manipulated into a conflict that isn’t their fault, forced to kill each other over choices made a century before they were born. It took Zuko years to figure out the hell that was his home life wasn’t his fault, but only a few minutes to see that it wasn’t Azula’s either.
everyone always talks about how great zuko’s redemption arc was in atla but tbh i’m really disappointed that no one ever mentions how azula had without a doubt the most epic and realistic downfall of any antagonist in any fictional work i’ve ever seen. like years later i am still completely shook
midnight-in-town 