ATLA Book One: Water
Chapter Seventeen: The Northern Air Temple
In Which Katara eats a bug, Sokka smells some rotten eggs, and Aang meets a hermit crab.
To begin, it is worth considering the structure of Book One of “The Last Airbender”, as “The Northern Air Temple” is a significant part of that structure. The entirety of book one has been framed by a single journey from South to North, a journey that spans the full length of the Avatar World. It is a journey that has encompassed detours to the fire nation and various parts of the Earth Kingdom, detours that demonstrate the show’s commitment to showing as much of the Four Nations as possible. Arguably the reason for the number of “Gaang Visits a village” episodes in Book One (of which “The Northern Air Temple” is the last): the season is attempting to build a strong sense of the Avatar World, showing the variety of locations it is made up of and the diverse cultures of people who live in it.
This variety says something about the nature of this season, which is less grounded in its titular nation than Books two and three, where most stories are set in the titular nation, whose respective element Aang spends the season learning. By contrast, only five episodes in “Book One: water”, at the opening and closing of the season, are set in the water tribes: the middle section of fifteen episodes are set in the other three nations as the Gaang slowly travels north, a structure that reflects the geographical nature of the four nations. The Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom are distinct land masses that allow for clear national boundaries. By contrast, the Air and Water Nations are spread out across the world, so it is harder for a Book focussing on the water nation to tell most of its stories in the setting of that nation. As a result, the water nation has to remain present in other ways, rather than spending all its time in the one nation. Instead, the Northern water tribe is a background presence established through the protagonists’ quest: the book is about the journey between the two water tribes, and Aang and Katara’s search for the Northern tribe and find a waterbending master.
In terms of layout, this setup gives the season a loosely mirrored episodic structure: the book starts with two episodes set in the south pole followed by one in the southern Air Temple, and ends with one episode set in the Northern Air Temple, followed by three in the Northern Water Tribe. The thirteen episodes in the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation are set in between these episodes. As a result, “The Northern Air Temple” marks the beginning of the final section of the season’s structure.
Notably, just as the episodic structure of the season’s
ending is almost a mirror image of its beginning, the thematic approach to the
location of the Northern Air Temple is to present it as a mirror image of its
southern counterpart. Both temples reflect the devastation of the Air Nation at
the start of the hundred year war, but this devastation was reflected by the
desolate, empty, nature of the Southern temple. The southern temple is defined
by the fact that it is littered with corpses and skeletons: it is a place of
death. The Northern Air temple, by contrast is packed full, and teeming with
life. But, from Aang’s point of view, it is packed with the wrong kind of life:
there are still no airbenders in the temples.
Teo is the character who mediates this disconnect for Aang, showing him around the air temple, explaining in gentle terms why he and his father had to move in with his village, why he had to change the temple, and taking Aang to a part of the temple he believes is unchanged. Notably, Teo is the first disabled character to star in Avatar, and he is a very positive example of disabled representation. His disability is acknowledged, with his use of the wheelchair and the glider forming part of his character background, and adding to the use of flight in the episode, but his disability is not all of his character, as his relationship with his father and his decision to stand up to the fire nation make up his main emotional arc in the episode.
However, Teo’s presence in the temple leads to the central tension of the episode: the technological village destroying the naturally and spiritually resonant air temple. The first half of the episode is filled with the theme of progress overriding tradition, with piping going through mural pictures, the unaffected area of the temple having a wall knocked down to build a bathhouse, and Aang discovering that the room he thought could only be accessed by airbending has become a place filled with Fire Nation weaponry. Once again, Katara supports Aang in the face of his culture being destroyed, offering him what comfort she can when she sees he is upset.
Ultimately, Aang comes to Accept Teo and the Earth Kingdom colonists on the terms Teo lays out with the hermit crab: like the animals that are the direct descendants of the ones that lived in the temple a hundred years ago, Teo’s village have found themselves a new home. Aang comes to accept that Teo takes on spirit of an airbender partly by embracing the freedom offered by that life, a freedom he cannot have on the ground, and that his village cannot enjoy outside the temple. Aang recognises the airbending spirit in the love of flight in Teo’s village and in the way they fight the Fire Nation: like the Air Nomads, the Engineer and Teo’s village are also victims of Fire Nation violence. “The Northern Air Temple” is a story where a homeless village hurt by war find a new place to live in the home of a nation lost to the world because of the same war.
But, as we learn over the course of the episode, that home has been corrupted by the Fire Nation. The Engineer’s betrayal of his son and his village is, in particular, a great insult to the Air Nation, a the home of a culture wiped out by the Fire Nation, is now being used a military weapons factory for the Fire Nation. It is particularly cruel that the home of a pacifistic culture is now essentially being used as a weapons factory.
However, the Engineer is redeemed by the end of the episode, as he chooses to fight back against the Fire Nation. Part of this redemption comes through his use as a foil for Sokka over the course of the story and the Engineer. They bond over a similar sense of humour, and their combined ingenuity helps save the day. The stink bombs used to fight the fire nation troops also demonstrates Sokka’s character development: he is doing the thing he sniffed at in “The Avatar Returns”, and is fighting the Fire Nation with fun.
Their control of the skies leads to a rather poetic victory for the air temple residents, but the grounded air balloon is a cause of lingering menace in terms of wider implications for the war. The episode closes on the image of the unfurling Fire Nation insignia, a sign of menace forming in the midst of hope for our heroes.
End of Part Sixteen.
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