Part Twenty One
ATLA Book Two: Earth
Chapter Three: Return to Omashu
In which Bumi
snort-laughs, Ty Lee does a hand stand, and Mai is bored.
The title of this episode is particularly interesting, and
worth a little discussion. “Return to Omashu”, after all, literally represents
the first time The Last Airbender has revisited a location from a previous
episode. Book One devoted most of its time to introducing the audience to new
parts of the Avatar world, and really taking us through as much of the world’s
geographical space as possible. Book Two will continue to do this, but it will
do so while also showing us how the parts of the world we have already been
introduced to have developed as the war goes on. It is telling that in a part
of the season that is redefining the show for its second book we revisit Omashu
to find it dramatically changed from the first book.
Picking up from the previous episode’s cliffhanger, the
Gaang discover Omashu has been overrun and occupied by the Fire Nation. This
occupation is indicative of the differences between the Earth Kingdom’s battles
with the Fire Nation compared to the Water Tribe’s. The attacks are suitable to
the differing Geography of the two surviving nations still fighting the Fire
Nation. The Water Tribe is made up of two isolated settlements in remote ends
of the world, so the attacks on them come in the form of repeated sieges. By
contrast, The Earth Kingdom is a vast expanse of land made up of multiple
settlements of varying sizes, so the Fire Nation slowly taking over the Earth
Kingdom by invading and occupying a variety of settlements, a grimly tactical
approach compared to the Brute force used against the Water Tribes and Air
Nomads. Also fascinating are Katara and Sokka’s attempts to dissuade Aang from
going into Omashu to rescue Bumi, with their suggestion Bumi may have been
killed by the Fire Nation invaders providing one of the darkest commentaries of
the nature of the hundred year war in the show to date. The war isn’t just a
scar on the memories of the characters and the world: characters the audience
have met and liked are in very real mortal danger.
The genuine danger of the war is reflected in the episode’s
ongoing theme of picking the right battles. It is a theme demonstrated when the
Gaang persuade the citizens of Omashu to evacuate the city and regroup to fight
another day, and links in to Bumi’s advice about waiting and listening being a
key part of Earthbending. The leader of the resistance could even be seen as a
counterpoint to Bumi’s approach to Earthbending: he is clearly a strong
Earthbender, but he is not a master of neutral or negative jing, only seeking
to attack and fight for his home when evacuating the citizens of Omashu is
clearly the more sensible option. The citizens of Omashu choose to adopt an
approach to war that is more in line with Bumi’s: they regroup in order to wait
for the right moment to reclaim their home.
Even as he teaches the citizens of Omashu the episode’s key
lesson, Aang has to have that lesson clarified for himself by Bumi. The episode
sees Bumi become last traditional master Aang tries and fails to recruit, and unlike
Paku and Jeong Jeong, Bumi would be the perfect master for Aang. He is a good friend of Aang’s, so Aang would
probably be more responsive to his style than Paku’s, and unlike Paku, who
loathes and fears his own firebending, Bumi is wholly in tune with the nature
of his element. He is only unable to teach Aang because of this understanding
of Earthbending: Bumi knows he has to wait and listen to understand his true
role in the war, a role that doesn’t involve teaching Aang. So Aang’s task is
to find someone like Bumi, but in many ways an Earthbending master with
qualities like Bumi’s would be just as hard to find as a waterbending master,
in spite of the comparative proliferation of Earthbenders around the Avatar
world. Aang’s new challenge is one of finding the right teacher, instead of
just finding a teacher.
The A pot and Blot of the episode also join together neatly
in our introduction to Mai and Ty Lee. This part of the episode sees Azula
assembling her elite team, rejecting Book One’s Naval Officer role, and setting
up the look and feel of the main antagonists for Book Two. We see more of
Azula’s attitudes towards leading with fear: while she manipulated the boat
captain with threats in “The Avatar State”, here we see her manipulating people
who are at least on a superficial level presented as and treated like her
friends. This manipulation is very explicit with Ty Lee, who is clearly coerced
into working with her through a thinly veiled threat, but it is also seen
through the moment of tension with Mai when she declares Tom Tom’s life is
worth less than Bumi’s, and Mai, after a brief hesitation, agrees with her. Both
girls are in tension with Azula from the very moment their group is formed: the
opportunity for Mai and Ty Lee to be redeemed exists from the beginning of
their time on the show.
The part of the plot also gives us Azula’s first
confrontation with the Gaang, and notably, it is a confrontation that comes
about far quicker than the first meeting between the Gaang and Zhao, the main
villain of Book One: Azula is a far more immediate threat than her predecessor.
However, the conflict only comes about after her team has been fully assembled,
and it is only here that she fully takes on Zuko’s mission from book one, as
she decides to make taking out Aang as well as catching Zuko part of her
mission. As a result, she quickly moves from being a character occupying the
same narrative space as Zuko to a character operating mostly in the same
plotline as the Gaang.
Also interesting are Mai’s family and the accidental kidnap
of Tom Tom. The Kidnap sets up a moral dilemma for the Gaang, as they are
thrust into the morally ambiguous space of holding a child to ransom to try and
save their friend. The moral ambiguity of the situation is expanded upon in the
scene where Katara claims that Tom Tom couldn’t possibly be a killer, a moment
that foreshadows the central dilemma of the finale, a dilemma partly
demonstrated through the reminder that Ozai was once a child seemingly like any
other boy. Again, this complicates image of Fire Nation, as Tom Tom is a complete
innocent in the war, and his family are almost sympathetic through their grief
at losing him, and the way their behaviour around Azula suggests they are
tacitly intimidated and coerced by the Royal family. However, it is still worth
acknowledging that they are invading and ruling over another village, as this
accepting this fact means the episode highlights the mundane and ordinary side
of a nation that are doing terrible things. It is a reminder of an idea
expressed throughout The Last Airbender, that evil isn’t simplistic or an
inherent trait. Here, it comes in the form of a wealthy family who clearly love
one another but are still oppressing innocent people out of fear. Nonetheless,
Tom Tom deserves to be treated well, and the episode holds to this fact
throughout, with his return to his family giving the story a genuinely warm
ending. The empathy Aang shows by returning Tom Tom could well be the key to
ending the war and rebuilding a better Fire Nation.
End of Part Twenty One.
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