Film Theory: END the Avatar Cycle! (Avatar the Last Airbender)

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I think the ‘failures’ of avatars is a philosophical point about human life. Each generation tries its best, and accomplishes so much, but the butterfly effects of their failures will have to be dealt with by their descendants.

“But when YouTube needed him most he vanished” hits different now 😭😭😭

Mattpatt hit the nail on the head when he talks about how Aangs success as the Avatar was because of his friends. Each of his friends became highly respected international leaders and the most powerful Benders in the world. The Best example of this is Zuko when Aang died Zuko retired from being Firelord and began traveling the world playing the same role as the Avatar solving political problems all around the world, defeating warlords, and stopping the Red Lotus.

This is exactly the dilemma faced by Korra. As the world modernized and more people became “atheist” towards her, people start to question whether she is still needed or not.

That intro hits different after his announced retirement

I like how Matpat pointed out Aang's trust in friends as a key factor to being successful in his Avatar duties because it was a lack a trust that screwed over a previous Avatar. I mean MatPat talked a lot about how Kururk was too busy dealing with angry spirits to handle the affairs of the material world, but he failed to mention that Kuruk never told anyone what he was doing. To the rest of the world, even his closest friends, Kururk was just an super-powered party boy just doing the bare minimum of his Avatar duty with no idea that he been protecting the world from angry Lovecraftian entities. If he trusted his friends and fill them in on his turmoils, Kuruk may had been not only be able to figure out a better with dealing with the Dark Spirits (beside just killing them), but could have been able to make time to deal with the problems of the material world; and maybe his friends would in turn be better prepared to handle things forwards after Kuruk's death.

I think It's good to note that the avatar is still a human, they will make mistakes. I can't even imagine the amount of pressure that they feel being basically the most important human on their planet.

I've recently started binge watching LOK again, and Toph touches on this when telling Korra to "get over yourself." Toph explained that as police chief, she worked hard to bring peace to Republic City, but realized that "the names change but the streets stay the same." This is also alluded to when Avatar Wan takes his final breath saying he failed to bring balance, only for Raava to tell him they will continue to bring balance in all of his lifetimes. I don't think the Avatars "bring" balance per se, the Avatars themselves ARE balance. Before Raava merged with Wan, she and Vaatu were entwined, wrestling for eternity. The Moon and Ocean spirits, represented by the Yin and Yang Koi fish, circle each other in an eternal dance of balance and harmony (push and pull). Therefore, balance is not 100% peace, nor is it what Zaheer preached (100% chaos), balance is the ebb and flow of order and chaos coming and going. Therefore ending the Avatar would be imbalanced, as the dance between order and chaos would end, just like when Wan separated Raava from Vaatu.... but also, just like if Raava or Vaatu are destroyed, one would grow within the other until the next harmonic convergence. So if the Avatar ends, something else would form to bring balance to the world.

"Controlling all the elements in this world is meaningless if you don't also control the element of friendship." Twilight Sparkle would be proud

I always liked that fact about the Avatar franchise. Keeping the world in balance is an impossible task, as long as there are humans, there will be conflicts. And no amount of godly power will allow a single individual to fix the entire world's problem, no matter how wise they are. The best each Avatar can do, is deal with it in the way they find suitable, and hope their successor will have an easier time.

"When youtube needed him the most he vanished" Ironic....

I think it's essential for us to remember that the Avatar, despite being the vessel for a powerful spirit, is still human and prone to making human mistakes. Roku not killing Sozin when he started showing signs of genocidal imperialism was a mistake, but you can still sympathize with his decision because they were childhood friends and he still loved him like a brother. I can't imagine how stressful it must be to have a major say in every decision that could change the world.

Aang succeeded the most in his case because his main circle of allies all represented important factors of the world. He was the last Airbender. Katara was the last Waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe. Toph was an Earthbending prodigy. Zuko was the crown prince of the Fire Nation who eventually turned away from his tyrannical father. And finally, we have Sokka and Suki. Non-benders who, despite being out of their depths, manage to bring skills and brains to the table, allowing them to contribute just as much as all the others. Aang's team managed to include all four nations, along with non-benders, all working together to stop the big bad that is Fire Lord Ozai. He might not have managed to bring perfect harmony, but he did accomplish a great feat which did bring prosperity. Not everlasting, but at the very least, a way better place than it was when the journey began.

As you touched on with Kyoshi a really important factor with Avatars is how theyre raised too. For example, Korra's biggest flaw throughout her series is her stubbornness and pride. This can easily be traced back to the fact that she discovered that she was the avatar way too young and was subsequently isolated a lot her life while she was trained. As a result while growing up she built her whole identity around being the Avatar and how great/important she is.

I like how he gives Aang a pass for being 12 but the 17 year old avatar doesn't get any slack at all, as if a teenager would be that much better at keeping the peace that a 12 year old.

In Aang’s defense, his life as an avatar was rebuilding the world since the 100 year war finally ended, a war he stopped. And he did do _some_ dabbling in the spirit world, but we never really see a problem with the spirit world during Aang’s time as avatar except a few outliers like the undead panda

In Escape from the Spirit World, Yangchen explains to Aang the reason why the Avatar is human is because if the avatar is to keep the peace between nations and protect mankind, he/she must experience human emotions and turmoil to understand what it means to be human and why, in spite of all their failures and mistakes, humanity is still worth saving. And it makes sense given that the spirits, being more detached from the physical world, look down on human struggles and affairs, and choose to remove themselves from such conflicts.

There is a theory going around that each avatar’s greatest regrets are corrected in the next avatar (eg. korok regretted his short life so kyoshi ended up over 200 years old when she died and aang regretted taking so long to master elements other than air so korra learned them very quickly)

Most of these "failings" of the avatar are caused by inaction rather than action. If the avatars were not there, I think things would only be worse