Avatar: The Last Airbender was my favorite childhood show growing up. It had so many heartfelt characters, an amazing plot, and witty humor. I’ve rewatched the show a few times, and I was at a time in my life where I felt like it was time to watch it again. As I’ve been rewatching, I’ve realized just how big of an impact the show made on me as a person including my values and morals, and its cultural relevance today. I definitely took a lesson from each character which I’ll briefly discuss (sadly I only have room for a few) in addition to overarching lessons from the show itself.
Before I go into any individual character I want to say that I loved each and every one. I believe every character was relevant and thought out, down to the Cabbage Man, and there were no flat characters. Every single one had a story, values, and lives that changed throughout the show, these are just the ones who had the biggest impact on me.
Aang:
Starting off with a big one, Aang taught me so many lessons and shaped a lot of the morals of my life. He was a representation of someone who was forced into responsibility, but accepted it with grace and never compromised who he was for the greater good. The best demonstration of this was at the end of the show, when he refused to take the Fire Lord’s life because he was taught by the monks that all life was sacred and he shouldn’t have the right to end one. He was told that the only way to save the world was to kill the Fire Lord, yet he found his own way, without changing who he was. That showed me that I never have to compromise my values to do something, there is always another way.
Zuko:
Zuko was by far one of the most well-developed characters by the end of the show. He progressed so much, and while the other characters changed, Zuko became a completely different person from season one. The biggest lesson I learned from Zuko is that you are free to choose your own path, and it’s okay to make mistakes. Zuko’s path was not a straightforward one, but at the end he wound up in the right place and became the person he always had the potential to be.
Iroh:
There are not enough words I could write, or hours in a day, to describe how many things I’ve learned from Iroh. He is my favorite character of all time, and I will always remember some of his quotes. To keep this a reasonable length, the biggest thing that I learned from Iroh is to think outside of myself. It’s important to take wisdom and information from multiple places to be better well-rounded. Everyone has had their own lives and experiences, and taking lessons from them can help you understand and experience the world better.
Moving on from characters, I was thinking about the show lately and it has a lot of relevance to the world today. Something repeated in the show often is that everything is connected, and the division of the four nations is an illusion. That resonated so much with me and our political world today because the world is so divided right now. There is so much hate between people for our differences when at the end of the day we’re all people. We are all human beings, and we are connected in that way. One thing that’s always fascinated me is that we are all individual and unique, but instead of celebrating our differences they are now used against people. And while we are all individual and unique in our own ways, we are all human and should treat each other that way.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is a show that I genuinely believe everyone should watch because of how deep and impactful it is. It has influenced not only my life but also the lives of those around me, and it continues to get me through rough patches of my life.