Avatar: The Last Airbender/Other Characters/Headscratchers


 * How did the old man in The Chase know about Zuko? I would have thought something like that would have been kept pretty tightly locked up.
 * I hope you mean one episode before, Zuko Alone, because the only old man in The Chase was Iroh. As for how the old man knew, I guess it's like how everyone else knows if something happens to the Prince of England or something like that; news travels.
 * Yeah, I did mean Zuko Alone. My bad, I'd just watched The Chase and it was still in my mind.
 * It's been a while since I watched the episode, but I seem to remember there being a huge crowd at the Agni Kai where Zuko's face was burned. It didn't seem to be a secret at all.
 * But in The Storm, Iroh sits down with the ship's crew and has to tell them the story of Zuko's Agni Kai. They were under the impression that his face got burned during a training exercise.
 * Perhaps the "training excercise accident" was the official press release? And why would they question that? The crowd that was there during the Agni Kai was probably mostly upper class nobles and military higher ups. The Royal Family might've ordered those who were there to keep the truth to themselves and it's unlikely that they'd be interacting much with the lower class, anyway, let alone say that the Fire Lord's a liar.
 * Which brings us back to the original question, how did the old man know?
 * You forget that as of "Zuko Alone", he was no longer an outcast but actually declared traitor. I assume the official press story changed along with his status.
 * And the old man didn't realize who he was until Zuko practically spelled it out for the village.
 * I don't get why nobody else in the earth kingdom recognized him before. I know this goes under Paper Thin Disguise and they do it alot in the show, but the only thing Iroh and Zuko do to protect they're identities as wanted men is cut the little top not off their hair. And Nobody puts the really obvious scar on the teenage boy together with the old man? Sometimes I wonder what people are really the blind ones in this show.
 * As shown in the episode where Zuko fights and Agni Kai with Zhao, getting blasted in the face was the standard result of losing an Agni Kai (or at least one that was the result of disrespecting another). I think it's perfectly plausible that fire nation soldiers would have disfigured enemies' faces using the same practice. This would make the scar, while rare, not impossible to find in the earth nation. Especially among wanderers, who would very feasibly be AWOL soldiers or escaped prisoners.
 * The Ember Island Players' stageplay writer did a lot of research, and managed to get Zuko's scar on the wrong side.
 * I always thought the cutting off of the hair wasn't a disguise, it was a mark of disgrace that solidified their status as traitors. I don't know about Chinese/Japanese culture, but in India at least, hair was a symbol of status, and it was a punishment akin to the "scarlet letter" to have it shaven off, even partially. And I know Bryke borrows from all over Asia.
 * In Chinese culture, hair is sacrosanct, as it is a symbolic tie with one's parents. Cutting your hair is an insult to your parents because your body is their gift to you. It is permissible only in the context of rituals wherein one severs one's ties with worldly matters (as with monks and nuns). At least for Zuko, cutting his hair would be symbolic of him trying to cut his link with his father. Though of course it doesn't immediately take.
 * Solidified their status as traitors... and Zuko's status as bishounen with the nice bishounen hair.
 * Remember also that the Fire Nation is a Nazi-esque propaganda state. The Fire Nation citizens/soldiers would've been told it was a training accident and they would've accepted it without question, while the rest of the world knew the true story.
 * Iroh told the ship's crew. They could've talked about it in a bar or something after that, and the news could've spread that way.
 * How did the Dai Li keep the war secret for so long? This troper could understand if they only kept it secret from a small middle class and the king, but it seems to be suggested that it's kept secret from the entire city. Considering the needs to raise an army, the logistics needed to support it, the fact that Iroh nearly broke through and the sheer number of refugees flooding in this turns into an issue.
 * They didn't keep the war secret to anyone except the king, who was sequestered away. What they did was constantly claim that they were safe and that the Fire Nation couldn't get to them in Bah Sing Se. People who said otherwise were re-educated.
 * Exactly. Most of the people the kids talked to in Ba Sing Se weren't confused by questions about the war, they were frightened by Joo Di's presence because they knew she was reporting to the Dai Li.


 * Other than Avatar being a kids' show, what's with the very light punishment Mai and Ty Lee got for attacking Azula? They committed treason and attacked royalty. Even with a normal monarch, such a thing would result in swift, messy, and most likely painful death. A monarch as cruel as Azula would probably have tortured them to death while laughing. Instead they get put away in a prison where the worst work is cleaning and the rooms resemble a rather bad motel. One that they could probably escape from effortlessly (Ty Lee proved she can run along the lines of the cable car). One where they could easily beat up the guards (remember what happened to the "elite" earthbenders that attacked them in The Drill).
 * It could be that Azula cared for them more than she let on, and couldn't bring herself to kill them.
 * I think this is the most realistic. Remember, their betrayal meant so much to her that it started her on her mental collapse. These two girls obviously meant a lot, even if that was just the fact that they were the only friends she allowed around her from a young age, and she had considered them completely trustworthy. There's a good chance that she had unconsciously formed an emotional bond with them that would not allow her to kill them.
 * Or rather, she wanted to kill them herself, so she'd go down the prison when she was feeling up to it and pump them full of lightning. Or burn them alive. Or both.
 * Also, Ty Lee was NOT kept at the Boiling Rock. If she was, how could she have "bonded" with the Kyoshi Warriors, who were previously stated to be elsewhere? Presumably, she was brought to a less overall secure prison, but one without what is essentially a neon-lit escape route for someone of her ability.


 * What happened to the guru during Season Three? Why'd he disappear and nobody ever mentioned him again? Why didn't Aang go back to see him, he probably could have helped after, ya know. And why doesn't he have a section in the character sheet? The freakin' Foamy Mouth Guy does!
 * And which of the four nations is he supposed to be from, anyway? The India-Analogue nation?
 * LOL India-Analouge nation. No one likes the guru. Foamy Mouth Guy, on the other hand, is Epic Win and a Zutara.
 * Ahem. You may not like him but the Guru is an awesome character and Cool Old Guy for others. There are good and/or interesting arguments to be made for him being either Earth, Fire or Water, not that he cared either way, but as a non-bender he wasn't Air. Agreed with the post below, they made a perfectly good character and did very little with him. Of course, this isn't a black mark against anybody IMO, for obvious reasons.
 * They wasted a perfectly good character.


 * In "Imprisoned" why didn't the arresting officers realize that they were being set up? Katatra and Sokka don't look anything like the villagers (wrong hair, clothes, etc.) and their argument was an exercise in Stylistic Suck.
 * So? She made a motion, and the rock moved. That's all that really matters, right? Also, they assumed that she was wearing the "wrong" clothes as an attempt at disguise.
 * Or maybe the gaurds were idiots who at first thought Momo was the one doing the 'earthbending'.


 * So Mai and Ty Lee are repeatedly shown to be perfectly capable of handling people who can bend by themselves, yet they can't take out a few prison guards at Boiling Rock? This is also made even weirder by the fact that these are Firebenders we're talking about, who don't have strength in numbers. Or does anyone think they willingly gave themselves up? Either way bugs me...
 * Maybe it was becasue they realized they had no way off of the island? Yes- Ty Lee can run across the wire, but we don't know/never see if Mai has that same skill. That is interesting, though...
 * And Then What? Mai was fully aware of Azula's Unstoppable Rage after the betrayal - she only "escaped" Azula because of Ty Lee's help. Which came as such a surprise that even Ty Lee herself didn't expect it. So of course neither of them was prepared for an escape: Ty Lee didn't think she would have to and Mai didn't think she would be able to. As for taking out the guards during the imprisonment: We can presume that Azula made really sure that the two would "rot".
 * Hmm good points. Actually the more I think about it, Mai possibly stood up to Azula as a diversion so that Zuko and Sokka could escape without having Azula go after them. It would have probably bugged me if Ty Lee was planning on betraying Azula and they happened to let themselves be captured.


 * Suki. 1. Is she truly a shallow character? 2. Is it me or does her eye/hair color, or at least shade, change when she puts on make-up? I could barely tell that was her when she first appeared without it.
 * She's certainly a less fleshed-out character than others, but I wouldn't go so far as to call her shallow.
 * Shallow is a matter of opinion; just being an Action Girl with no other unique, memorable personality traits (except an adeptness at bondage?) doesn't cut it in a world full of Action Girls. Notice how, after That Scene in "The Southern Raiders," every line she has is generic and could easily be said by anybody else, and we know nothing about her Backstory.
 * Probably the reason she seems shallower is that we never get into her backstory that much, and compared to all the other members of the Gaang, who have very deep, complex backstories, she seems flatter in comparison. Not to mention she never really gets episodes that focus on her character, she doesn't get a "field trip with Zuko", for example.
 * But then again neither does Toph, not really :(
 * 1. I suppose it depends on how much you can project. This troper sees Suki as someone who's had to grow up quickly during a time of war, just like the rest of the main cast. So she's been through trauma, but she has no angst-filled story arc because she's focused on doing something about it and doing it well. She's secure in her identity as both a warrior and a girl, even as a Kiyoshi Islander and a human being, so has no need for visions of Red Oni, Blue Oni dragons to force her into one determining action or another. How must she have felt, wondering if she should remain in a highly respected position protecting her beloved village, or take grunt jobs where they'll help thousands of strangers who've lost everything and let her see what the rest of the world really is like? We won't know, but we've seen that she actively makes her own choices and commits to them. That commitment doesn't make her inflexible. She's hardworking, but no martyr. She doesn't whine much about being dishonored, either because she's so secure, or has the good graces not to seriously play with the expectations of people whose opinions she values, or has been sensible to refuse any choice between what she'd personally consider evils, or just lucky that she hasn't been forced to (that we've seen.) Among the godlike benders, it's good to know that the "merely" competent and ordinary civilians have a crucial place right alongside them. Suki rocks!
 * Yeah, and wouldn't it be nice if the viewer didn't have to infer all of that?
 * Actually, the base for good story telling is "show, don´t tell". The series has shown compelling characters, but due to time and budget constraints, it can´t flesh out each and everyone of them. The Troper above, for example, had his/her imagination ignited by the Suki character, and that´s a good thing!


 * Why did Zuko stop using June and her scent tracking pet after one episode? They found the Avatar for him without too much trouble, so why abandon a proven effective plan? Did he run out of money to pay her or something?
 * A number of reasons. The first being that the pet in question ran away after being subjected to all of those perfumes; there's a strong chance it's superior sense of smell was damaged for good, and therefore would be useless. Another is that June could have refused to work with Zuko again due to Iroh's 'interest' in her, or because of the trouble they had landed her in. She saw how powerful Aang was, it's not likely she would be all that willing to chase him again. And the last thing? Aang stole back Katara's necklace, so they have nothing to track him with now.
 * They don't need Katara's necklace anymore, Nyla (the pet) already knows her scent. And Nyla's sense of smell wasn't damaged, it and June return in book 3 and it's sense of smell is actually vastly improved. June also doesn't seem like the type to back out of a job because she doesn't want trouble or because her target is strong, but I suppose I could be wrong about that. You might be onto something with Iroh's interest in her though, she did seem disgusted by that.
 * It's entirely possible that, as was suggested above, June just didn't want to tangle with the Avatar again. After all, when Zuko first asked her to find Aang in the finale, she isn't interested and only agrees after Zuko brings up the possibility of The End of the World.
 * All of the above are true but she is primarily a mercenary, as such after being beaten like that she probably would have upped her rate quite substantially, possibly making it not worth the money that she would have asked.


 * Does anyone else think the Dai Li turning on Long Feng for the sake of Azula made no sense? He was a fellow earthbender and their leader for years. Under him, their absolute control of Ba Sing Se would continue for certain, and in fact would reach new heights with the Dai Li in direct control and no need for a figurehead king. Moreover, while some of them might feel uncomfortable betraying the currently sitting king, a coup that replaces one Earth Kingdom ruler with another is still a far cry from a coup that sells the entire city out to their sworn enemies of over a century, who might very well choose to reward them as a traitor deserves. Even if that didn't happen, it would still likely be the Fire Nation in control in reality, with the Dai Li as nothing more than puppets. It just makes absolutely no sense to back Azula over Long Feng...unless we're genuinely to accept the premise that the entirety of the Dai Li thought they would lose to three teenage girls.
 * Judging by their comments during and after planning the coup with Azula, they seemed to be inspired by her leadership and intelligence. Their betrayal of Long Feng was probably motivated more by admiration of her fierce cunning and commanding aura than by logic.
 * I believe they did it because they had already decided that Ba Sing Se was a lost cause. Just days prior, the Fire Nation had nearly broken through the city's will with a giant drill. Recall how pathetic the earthbenders retaliatory attacks were. Clearly, decades of pretending there was no war had greatly reduced the effectiveness of their army, so they relied on that wall entirely for their defense. If it hadn't been for the timely intervention of the Avatar himself, the Fire Nation would have breeched the wall and conquered the city. Realization of this fact, combined with the knowledge that Long Feng wasn't interested in fighting the Fire Nation (the whole pretending there was no war thing, and he refused to listen to Aang's intelligence on the solar eclipse), and they have ample motivation to abandon their seemingly doomed kingdom for a more powerful position with their eventual conquerors.
 * That, or they might just be that power hungry, and decided that the risk of being rewarded as traitors was worth the chance to move up from serving the man behind a King to serving the future Empress of the World.
 * I was bothered by this too. Azula's so-called "inspirational" speeches were nothing more than an Informed Ability; characters say they're inspirational, but they never sound inspirational.
 * Near as I can remember, the Dai Li didn't just turn on Long Feng at the drop of a hat. They were unsure who to support until Long Feng surrendered.
 * Azula outright says that the Dai Li are waiting to see who will prove more effective: Long Feng or Azula. And considering Azula is the one with the massive army and is apparently a lot more competent/effective/ruthless/ohgodshe'sgoingtomeltmyfaceoff-scary than Long Feng, guess who wins.
 * I really don't see a problem here. The Dai Li would follow the one who has more power. If Long Feng didn't bow down to Azula, she would have pumped him full of lightning and claimed leadership anyway. They all knew that it would go down like that, so Long Feng quit while he still had a head.
 * Azula was B Sing during that whole scene, if you think about it. The Dai Li were afraid of her, and for good reason. Would you want to try and handcuff the girl who can shoot lightning at you? Didn't think so. Azula just spun the whole "They don't know who to support" tale as a way of saying "Well, Long Feng, It looks like we're going to have to fight for control. Do you think you can win?" Long Feng, and everyone in the room, knew he couldn't take Azula and even dream of to coming out of that fight in one piece. So he quit.
 * How did Long Feng know he coudn't take Azula? He was an earthbending master-surely he had a fighting chance against her.
 * Earthbending "master"? I don't know about that. Long Feng was much more of a schemer than a fighter. His real strength was in his control of the Dai Li, not in his combat ability.
 * He was able to capture Appa (by overturning a huge slab of stone) and to kill Jet, so I'd say his combat abilities are pretty significant. At the very least (considering how much was at stake), he should have tried to put a fight.
 * "Significant" doesn't mean he's a "master." And he didn't fight Appa--he caught Appa by surprise. Note how once Appa knows he's an enemy and it's more or less even playing field, the "fight" is over in one move, with Appa hurling him across a lake. As for what was at stake? His life. Specifically, if he fought and lost, he was dead. Surrender, and he lives to scheme another day.
 * I'm going with the "Avatar Wiki" website, which states that Long Fen was an earthbending master. But you're right, he probably didn't want to risk his life in a fight.
 * There's a fanfiction that postulates Long Feng enabled Azula to take the city peacefully so that the Fire Nation wouldn't obliterate Ba Sing Se and everyone in it on the day of Sozin's Comet.
 * Mandate of Heaven. It's not such a big thing in western cultures, but in Asian cultures like China and Japan, which the Earth Kingdom is based on, it's required to rule. It's probably why they never just straight out overthrew the Earth King and put Long Feng in his place. Azula is born royalty, and she's significantly more intelligent than the Earth King, and thus harder to control. The Dai Li are not going to arrest any royal somebody, even if she's from a foreign, hostile nation and is perfectly capable of ruling.


 * In season 2, episode 1, the Earth Kingdom general insists that Aang immediately attack the Fire Lord, on the logic that they don't have any time to waste. Why does no one point out that if Aang gets killed because he's forced into battle before he knows what he's doing, they then have to wait at least eleven or twelve years (and ideally more like sixteen or seventeen) for the next incarnation of the Avatar to mature? Not to mention that if Aang dies now, there will be no one in the world who can teach the next Avatar air bending. And that's assuming that they can even find the kid, when the Fire Nation seems to have much better access to the Water Tribes than the Earth Kingdom does, and the Fire Lord would know for a fact that the Avatar was dead and therefore reborn into the next element in the cycle! Pushing Aang into battle less than half trained sounds like a good way to ensure that the next Avatar lives his or her entire life in a tiny cell in the Fire Nation.
 * You're forgetting the important part. Fong's plan all hinges on Aang being in the Avatar State. Y'know, that thing he does where he glows and starts pwning everything in a 2-mile radius? Let's see Ozai fight a friggin' force of nature. Oh, wait, we did. And he got owned.
 * In support of the first comment, The Avatar state has a huge disadvantage. If Aang dies in the avatar state, he is not the only one who dies, the AVATAR dies. Just because Aang was able to defeat the fire lord after a large amount of training and actually understanding the Avatar state, doesn't mean he'd be able to do it at that time in the second season. He'd be in the uncontrollable Avatar state and wouldn't even know about the Avatar state's weakness assuming Fong's plan went along the way it did and Roku never appeared to Aang. Azula took out Aang while he was distracted so the risk would be too high. On the other hand, because they didn't know of Aang's weakness at the time, it's justifiable that Fong would create such a plan.
 * They also seemed to be almost completely unaware of the lightning problem at the time and considering the power Aang showed while in the Avatar State they could be forgiven for thinking that it would be unstoppable.
 * And yet they were wrong. An uncontrolled Avatar State against a disciplined bending master like Ozai could very well have lost.
 * True, but you have to remember that 1.) Ozai wouldn't be powered up by Sozin's comet, 2.) Lightningbending hadn't been introduced yet, and appears to be so rare as to be little-known, and 3.) while they likely assumed Ozai was a powerful Firebender, they had no way of knowing he was the most powerful Firebender in the world, especially since he didn't actually do anything directly until Season 3.


 * How does Zuko realizing that firebending is related to the sun in "The Firebending Masters" not contradict his comment about "rising with the sun" during "The Seige of the North"?
 * The same way Katara realizing that the moon is related to waterbending does not contradict her previous deduction that her powers get stronger when the moon rises.
 * Just because Zuko gains power from the sun doesn't mean that he realizes the source of firebending is the sun. He just knows that as a firebender, his powers strengthen while in the presence of the sun, just like firebenders' powers get a massive boost during Sozin's Comet.
 * I don't think it's so much as him realizing that it's "related to the sun." I think he already knows about the relation, but this episode has him reevaluating just what that means. Previous to that episode, he probably just looked at the sun as "that big ball of fire in the sky." It's only after he sees the Dragons' firebending that he realizes the sun, and by extension True Firebending, are about life itself.


 * What is the problem with fighting Fire Lord Ozai, exactly? Is he not simply one man? Here's what I mean. Towards the end of Season 2, the Gaang decide, on the spur of the moment after no-dobut being tired from their most recent fight, to invade the Earth Kingdom palace! And they're successful! In fact, nobody even so much as lays a hand on them. The Gaang systematically smash through the Earth Kingdom royal gaurds without breaking a sweat, and are easily able to reach the Earth King. Now, yes, the Earth King is not in fact a master bender badass enough to kill you with lightning in half a second. But it's still one on four. Why doesn't the Gaang just bum-rush the palace, take out the Fire Lord, and leave it at that? Remember: until Zuko actually pointed out that what they were going to do was an assassination, Aang didn't even think about the Thou Shall Not Kill problem. And we're not talking about just any four people here. You've got a master Airbender, a woman who mastered Waterbending in a scant few months, THE GREATEST EARTHBENDER IN HISTORY, and Sokka. I mean really, unless Sozin's Comet is around at the time, would Ozai and his army even stand a chance? Simply put, Ozai is not that scary, even if he is voiced by The Joker.
 * Good points. Honestly, if Ozai hadn't been tipped off by Azula and gone into hiding they should have been able to defeat him, even without the solar eclipse. Hell, if they'd taken out Azula and pushed on to Ozai instead of running away and leaving their allies to surrender, they still would have stood a decent chance. I mean, it's not like Aang hasn't fought a master bender on equal terms before ... oh wait. He has. He was equally matched with Bumi, and I have a hard time believing that Ozai is stronger than Bumi without the comet boosting his firebending. What exactly did Ozai do to gain such a Memetic Badass reputation in-universe that even the Avatar backed up by a master waterbender and the greatest earthbender in the world is terrified to face him unless he's completely helpless?
 * Taking down the Earth King and taking down Ozai are two completely different problems. Remember, the Earth Kingdom has A) been on the losing end of a century-long war and thus has massively a depleted army, and B) There Is No War In Ba Singh Se, so there is no reason to maintain a massive, tight defense. The Fire Nation, meanwhile, is extremely heavily defended; the entire invasion force, with all four members of the Gaang behind it, was bogged-down Normandy-style when they attacked the Fire Nation capital - and that was a trap, deliberately set up by Azula and Ozai to allow the invasion force to enter the city and be captured. The Gaang on their own would have been wiped out.
 * Most of the Fire Nation army is in the Earth Kingdom. You know, that pesky war and all. The invasion force was bogged down because they were small and because the Fire Nation knew they were coming. They specifically diverted forces to deal with it. The invasion intended to sieze the capital; all the Gaang needed to do was take out one guy. They could easily have just flown in on Appa, using clouds for cover, came straight down on the palace, and started kicking ass. Or, they could go in, Ninja-style at night and catch everyone off-guard. And Azula wouldn't even be home, because she'd be off in the Earth Kingdom looking for Aang.
 * Yes, most of the Fire Nation's army is out. That won't change the fact that the capital is still going to be very heavily guarded. If this is prior to the third season, Ozai would have simply stomped Aang flat. Aang doesn't even know firebending at that point, and the Gaang has trouble with Azula; Ozai is actually better than she is, and Ozai will have his entire palace army backing him up. This isn't like with the Earth King where he can't fight back very well; Ozai + his army are way too much for the Gaang to handle without some serious backup. Remember also that the assault on the Earth King's palace was an act of desperation on the Gaang's part, not a preplanned invasion, and Aang can't even control the Avatar state. It would be idiotic of them to attack without help or even a full understanding of firebending on Aang's part.
 * Aang was able to fight Azula to a standstill by himself, on top of the drill. Aang and Katara, with no firebending in sight, were able to face-stomp Azula until Zuko showed up to save her at the end of season 2. God only knows how fast Aang + Katara + Toph would have taken her down. The only thing that Aang learned later that might have been of help was redirecting lightning. Also, you forget that the attack on the Earth King's palace wasn't a close battle by any stretch of the imagination. The guards were face-stomped, plain and simple. Lastly, why would the captial be "heavily guarded" at all? Unless Ozai is protecting himself against a rebellion, those troops would be better used in the Earth Kingdom. Remember: they specifically recalled troops to the Fire Nation to deal with the invasion. That strongly suggests that they don't keep lots of troops in the Fire Nation doing nothing.
 * The US is at war with Afghanistan right now. Does that mean that president Obama would be under no guard whatsoever? There would have to be a guard over the Fire Nation Palace, in case, I don't know, maybe the Avatar shows up to kick Ozai's face in, perhaps? They know the Avatar exists, so they know he's going to confront Ozai at some point. Knowing how powerful the Avatar is, they'd have to be terminally retarded to not keep a strong garrison around in case the Avatar does aim for the exact decapitation strike you're suggesting. And just because they brought some troops in to protect the capital, it doesn't mean that they leave the capital completely unguarded.
 * Aang was able to fight Azula to a standstill by himself, on top of the drill. If by "fight Azula to a standstill" you mean "got his ass kicked and knocked unconscious, and was only not killed because Azula took her time sauntering up to deliver the killing blow", that would be accurate.
 * This entire "decapitation" plan assumes that the Gaang knows that the Fire Nation army is as easy to defeat as the Earth Kingdom's palace guards - which is patently ridiculous. They've got no reason to assume the Fire Lord's personal guards are going to be easy to defeat, let alone the most powerful firebender in the world. And even if they go in "ninja-like" that's no guarantee they'd be able to bypass the defenses around the Fire Lord's palace, and if they get caught, its instant defeat as they'll be surrounded by hundreds of firebenders. Assaulting with an invasion force is the most sensible course of option and the least risky.


 * Solid justifications are presented pretty much from the moment Toph joins the team. In order:
 * Just after Toph joins: They don't know what the Fire Nation even looks like; they need a map. Ergo, the Gaang heads to the library to find one.
 * After reaching the library: Appa is gone. Can't get into the Fire Nation, period.
 * Once they've recovered Appa: they're right in the middle of Ba Sing Se, and the Earth King's army is on hand, if only they can convince him to join. Armies are useful things, so recruit the army to help out.
 * After the war ends: They've got an invasion force on hand and a plan of attack. Stick to the plan of attack for minimal risk, as they're already preparing to hit Ozai when he's weakest. It gives Aang time to train.
 * After the Day of the Black Sun: Wait until Sozin's Comet has passed so they can kick Ozai's ass after Aang has finished training.
 * And don't forget that after visiting the library and learning of Black Sun, the Gaang has a definite plan of attack that serves as an overall objective: hit Ozai when he and the Fire Nation are weakest on the Day of Black Sun. Pretty much everything the Gaang and their allies had been working toward for the second half of the second season and the first half of the third was to that end. Once they left the library, the Gaang was focused on striking the enemy at their most vulnerable; there's no reason for them to hat up and try to take Ozai down when they can wait until he's powerless and then take him down.
 * Why does Zuko side with Azula in the season 2 finale? He just went through his little sickness, and accepted the fact that he can choose his own path and that he doesn't have to do things for the sake of getting back to the Fire Nation. He's believed, not without good reason, that Azula is a bitch that no one should ever trust or align themselves with. Iroh, on the other hand, has been supportive of him throughout the series, serving as a mentor, guardian, and father figure after his son died, and Zuko's father abandoned him. Yet, when it came time to make the decision, he chooses to help Azula, who he has openly hated and distrusted in the past, and betrays Iroh, who has been quite possibly the nicest and most supportive person in the world for him. It just...doesn't...make...sense...
 * Think about the two alternatives Zuko is being presented with. On the one hand, he could join Azula, defeat the Avatar, take his rightful place in the palace of the richest, most powerful nation that now virtually rules the world, eventually becoming Fire Lord himself. Or, he could live in Ba Sing Se as an outcast, serving tea for the rest of his life as a nobody. Sure, we know that the Avatar would likely have named him Fire Lord and so forth, but that isn't part of the choice presented to him. For Zuko, it's live as Iroh's tea server or take a chance on Azula being true to her word.
 * I ultimately get the impression that Zuko's acceptance of his life in Ba Sing Se was more for Iroh's benefit than any actual acceptance of this state of affairs. He'd play the good nephew for his uncle, because he had no other prospects than this. Azula came along with actual prospects, so he jumped at the chance. However nice and supported Iroh had been, he didn't get Zuko where Zuko wanted to go.
 * None of that really explains why Zuko all of a sudden trusts Azula, who has, on a regular basis, screwed Zuko over several times. Not to mention, it's not much of a chance to go with Azula. Hell, This Troper was surprised that Zuko didn't get a lightning bolt to the back the moment Aang got away.
 * What in that entire series of events makes you think Zuko trusts Azula? He sides with her, yes, but that does not mean he trusts her. This is corroborated by the look on his face during and after the fight. It's not one with any joy or trust. It's filled with anger and passion. Zuko had just come to terms with the fact that he can choose his own destiny, which doesn't automatically mean he's turned on the Fire Nation. And now he's given an opportunity to take his life and change it in a way that should have made it better. Even if that meant teaming up with Azula. And being willing to team up with her could easily have been the result of his rejection of his old, weak self, as he would now be willing to work with her.
 * Well, he didn't "get a lightning bolt to the back" because Azula suspected that Aang might have survived. She needed Zuko to take the fall if the Avatar suddenly showed up again.
 * Another thing to consider about his "two choices" is that one didn't really exist. Azula was likely to have the city whether the avatar got away or not, and I don't think she was going to let him and Iroh go back to serving tea. Unless we assume Zuko and Iroh turning to Team Avatar's side would result in a stunning victory over Azula and driving her and all her allies from the city, Zuko's new life was already GONE. Everything Iroh had worked for, everything that Zuko has decided to settle for instead of getting his life back (yeah, you can have a date with a girl you will never be able to tell an true story about your life to!) was trashed from the moment Katara saw them. (And on a topic that bugs me, did he not ever find that out? Might have changed the whole "Zuko seeking her forgiveness" dynamic when he first joined the team quite a bit.) The choices were between a chance at what he thought he'd always wanted, not to mention being in a position to make sure Azula didn't off his uncle out of hand, and going back to having absolutely nothing.
 * The problem with that theory is that Azula was losing. Yes, Zuko joining the gaang's side would have resulted in a victory. Katara had just crippled her, and we can see the expression of "Not As Planned!" on Azula's face. If Zuko hadn't broken Katara's water tentacles at that point, it's no stretch of the imagination to say that Katara could have defeated Azula, especially if Zuko realized his opportunity and turned on Azula. That would have allowed him to keep his life in Ba Sing Se just fine and stop Azula, who is established as someone he hates. Also, like previous posters have said, Azula already tried the "let's be friends!" thing, and we all know how that ended. She does the exact same thing and he goes with her anyway? Why? She's going to have to give him serious justification for him to not think she won't immediately backstab him. And finally, Zuko's Face Heel Turn would have worked under normal circumstances since his entire season 2 characterization is that he's on the fence and we can't see what he's thinking. However, the whole fever thing completely throws it of, what with it being all "NO REALLY HE'S CHANGED WE SWEAR!" I mean, what, did he have another fever the moment he got back home?
 * Maybe it's because she's his sister and even if he knows he can't trust her and she's a liar and doesn't care about him, he kind of wants to believe her anyway? The same reason he keeps believing his father will be proud of him and just wants him to prove himself, the same reason he keeps trying to capture the Avatar even after Azula says Ozai's decided he's a failure. Stubborn, stupid hope that his family might actually care about him, despite all proof to the contrary.
 * Exactly. Azula "established as someone he hates"? Er, no. He's his sister and, logic be damned, he cares about her. He's been furious at Azula and wanted to surpass her, but in his heart, he's never truly hated her.
 * Yeah well we've all always known Zuko's not exactly the brightest or most logical bulb in the box. Remember the North Pole? You're acting as though his character was ever completely rational and clearthinking, but it never really has been. Plus it's not like he had any good reason to want to help the Avatar - sure, they might have gotten out if he helped them, but they were so outnumbered by the Dai Li that it's only a maybe, not to mention these kids are his enemies. Okay, so he sort-of bonded with Katara in prison, so what? That was one moment after several years of trying to capture the Avatar. None of this excuses the fact that what he did was wrong and really quite stupid in hindsight, but it makes sense for the characters and the storyline. The only really stupid thing about the whole Ba Sing Se arc was the Angst Coma, which was completely unnecessary and ultimately pointless in the context of the rest of the story. Aside from that, the storyline and the decisions that the characters make, including Zuko, make sense.
 * Hell, the north pole? Try the first episode. As far as he knows, the Avatar is over 100 years old, and has presumably been spending all that time honing his mastery of all four of the elements--and to give him a sense of scale, the previous Avatar single-handedly held the entire Fire Nation back from going to war. Zuko's 16 and knows some basic firebending, and he thinks, "Sure, I can take'im." Einstein he ain't, folks.
 * My first impression is that you are all overthinking this a bit to much. We've got months to sit and debate Zuko's motivations, whereas he had a few minutes at the most, and probaly more like a few seconds, to evaluate Azula's impending defeat and act accordingly. I doubt anyone would disagree with me when I say that the entire FN royal family is a little off-kilter, so its seems reasonable that Zuko would be obsessed with finding/capturing/defeating the avatar. And I mean obsessed in the strictly clinical definition that he can literaly think of NOTHING else. As another troper pointed out, Zuko is not exactly a strategic mastermind or a revolutionary thinker; he tends to accept things as presented to him and then block out anything that contradicts that. He's been relentlessly pursuing the avatar for years, repeatedly risking his life and focusing on nothing else, and here he is with his enemy, the source of all his problems, right in front of him. He doesnt think about the broader implications, the consequences, or any of the Azula vs Iroh vs Ozai conflicts; he's just goes with that is the familiar, comfortable patern that has defined a significant portion of his life up until this point. Also, while Azula is a schemer, Ozai is a conquerer, and Iroh is a crafty mentor, at this point in the series we've only just started seeing Zuko's character development and he still fits firmly under the archetype of "soldier". Some one who does what he's ordered, without question, and achieves his objective no matter the cost. Its only after he succeeds in getting everything he always wanted (i.e. his "mission" is complete) that his mind has time to stop and evalutate how it turned out, and he starts to question if what he got was really what he wanted. In a way, he's stuck as the same person for a long time, and in a moment of character weakness he CANT break out of that, until that reason for existing no longer exists.
 * In a way, he wasn't choosing between Azula and Iroh. He was choosing between siding with or against his father. It was pretty thoroughly established that Zuko wanted to make his dad proud of him. He hunted the Avatar for three years on the off-chance that succeeding would make his father let him back into the country. In Zuko's eyes, Iroh betrayed him by joining the Avatar (like Azula says later in that episode) and Azula, while not trustworthy, is at least acting in a way consistant with how she's acted before. His decision was a shock for the audience, but when you take a good long think about it, it's actually one of the most brilliant pieces of writing in recent TV.
 * Exactly. Recall that several episodes earlier Iroh gave Zuko a big angry lecture in which he told Zuko to start thinking about what HE wanted. The problem is that Iroh misjudged what Zuko really wanted. He assumed Zuko would want to settle down and help him run the tea shop, but at his core Zuko always felt that he was cheated out of his birthright when his father banished him. He lost his title, his home, his honor, and, yes, his royal authority and he wanted it all back. He was only willing to set that desire aside when it looked like there was no chance of ever getting it back. Then Azula came along and presented him with the chance to reclaim the very thing he'd spent the past few years of his life trying to obtain. Is it really so surprising that he grabbed it with both hands?


 * The details Fire Lord Azulon's death and the events surrounding it are pretty sketchy even at the end of the series, but we're, I believe, meant to assume Ozai manipulated Ursa into killing him and then banished her. What I don't get is how did they get Azulon to declare Ozai the heir to the throne? Azulon said earlier that he would never betray Iroh. Did he change his mind or was it a lie spread by Ozai? If the latter, why would anyone believe him?
 * a) it was obviously a lie, and b) no one with half a brain believed it. By this point, however, Ozai had enough political power to declare himself Firelord with the flimsiest of justifications, and nobody dared to call him out to his face.
 * There's also the fact that Iroh retired after Lu Ten's death. He appeared to have renounced his claim to the throne after Lu Ten died in battle, and Ozai does bring up the fact that Iroh doesn't have an heir and probably won't sire one.


 * Might be in the wrong folder, so if it is, I apologize. It bugs me, however, that Iroh appears decades older than Ozai. What gives? Iroh is an elderly Retired Badass with gray hair, and Ozai is a fairly young Hot Bishounen Dad. How big is the difference in their ages? If they're close in age, does Iroh just look older while Ozai looks younger? Did Iroh just happen to age prematurely? If they're very far apart in age like they appear to be, was Ozai a sort of "late-in-life" baby?
 * Iroh was likely significantly older than Ozai. Also, Iroh spent a lot of time on the front lines fighting a war, while Ozai appeared to have stayed behind in the capital living a relatively lesuirely life. If Iroh was constantly on the front, constantly fighting and constantly in severely stressful situations, it would have prematurely aged him just from said stress. It probably got a lot worse when Lu Ten died, too.
 * Lu Ten was certainly a lot older than Zuko and Azula when he was slain - he looks like he's in his twenties in the portrait of him that's shown. That would fit with Ozai being significantly younger than his elder brother (and also explains why Firelord Azulon took Ozai's presumption very badly - for a long time, Iroh probably was his only son).
 * During the flashback scene in "The Puppetmaster", was Hama's friend Gran Gran? Katara said that "this ship has haunted Gran Gran ever since she was a little girl", but during the flashback, when the ship was frozen, she was more of a young woman.
 * Katara didn't even know about Hama's existence, so it's likely that Kanna's stories were either remembered incorrectly or embellished by Gran-Gran to add warning for a young Sokka and Katara. Or it's possible that it wasn't Gran-Gran who told Katara at all, but her mother or father, furthering the chance that it was remembered wrong. Plus, little girl getting tortured by Fire Nation? Probably not okay with Nick execs.
 * On a similar note, keep in mind that Kanna didn't head south until after Pakku propsed to her, when she was 16. And that she never told at least Katara that she's from the North.
 * Actually, Katara's exact words in that episode were "this ship has haunted my village ever since Gran-Gran was a little girl." And my memory is a bit hazy, but I'm pretty sure it took years for the Fire Nation to round up all the Waterbenders, and Hama was the last one. If the ship was wrecked in one of the earlier attacks, it might still fit the timeline. If not, the whole "it's a kid's show, so imprisoning and torturing a small child is a huge no-no" is likely the answer.


 * At the very start of the series, Zuko is shown learning the basic sets of Firebending. Was he never taught properly before, or was Iroh just starting again from the ground up, trying to teach him The Right Way?
 * I think so. In the flashbacks, he's shown to be still very much a basic firebender. Later, Zuko had to be reminded in the Agni Kai with Zhao to stay grounded and use his feet... very Earthy advice, wouldn't you say? Couple that with the waterbending inspired lightning redirection technique and It entirely possible Iroh was working to make him a "balanced" Firebender and hoping it would spill over into his daily life.
 * Keep in mind that this is season 1 episode 1, good!firebending was introduced in season 3 episode 13. Due to the numerous other retconny things in season 3, I think it's plausible to say that they hadn't thought up good!firebending at that point in the first place. Also, Zuko expresses anger over the fact that he's still being taught basic sets and thinks he's ready for advanced training, which to me simply implies that Iroh was teaching him slowly and he was just learning basics for three years. That or the above poster's theory.
 * In martial arts there are certain schools of thought which teach that you'll be much better off focusing on the basics than trying to learn "advanced" moves. Bruce Lee once said "I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once. But I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times." Basically, Iroh was trying to train Zuko to be Jack of All Stats of firebending.
 * How exactly was Combustion Man going to get his money? He was out to kill Aang. His method of murder seems to be making people explode. How did he plan to prove to Zuko (or Ozai) that he had killed Aang, hand them some charred pieces of liver? My best guess is that he planned to kidnap a member of the Gaang to provide witness testimony, though I can see several problems with that.
 * Well, bodies in Avatar in general seem to be more durable than they are in Real Life. Also, if you'll notice, most of Combustion Man's shots are never aimed directly at the Gaang; he's always shooting objects around them, probably in an effort to wound via shrapnel instead of vaporizing outright. Note that he's more aggressive when targeting Aang at Zuko's orders, probaby because Zuko just wants Aang dead, no need for proof just kill him, whereas when attacking the Gaang for Ozai he's a bit more conservative, up until he just decides to drop them. By dropping them to the bottom of the canyon, he can just waltz down there, dig through the rubble, find the mangled corpse with the arrow tattoos, and call it a day.
 * When Zuko decided to hire him, he said that he had heard that Combustion Man was "good at what [he did]," implying that he would almost certainly succeed. Maybe Zuko just had so much faith in his skills that he wouldn't question it when he returned saying that he had killed him. Combustion Man did seem pretty resistant (to the point of refusing money and attempting to kill the one who hired him) to giving up on killing Aang. I guess Zuko just knew that this man simply would not give up until he had finished the job or was killed himself. The real question is, why didn't Zuko hire this legendary assassin earlier on in the series?
 * That's simple. He didn't hire an assassin to blow up the Avatar because he wanted to capture the Avatar alive. Also, he wanted to do it himself. He gets no Honor for having someone else do his work for him, after all. He only hired Combustion Man to cover his tracks discretely--to take out the Avatar without his father knowing.

"Earth King: You know these warriors‌?
 * I apologize if this has already been brought up here - I didn't see it, but the page is so long I might have missed it. My question is this: how famous is Zuko and how he got his scar? Why is it that his own crew doesn't know about it until Iroh tells them, but a random Earth Kingdom peasant knows enough of the details to throw them in his face in Zuko Alone? Do any of the Gaang members know about the story behind it before he joins their group? When Toph mentions his messed up family in The Western Air Temple, is she talking about his Dad being abusive or just about the fact that they all know Azula is psychotic and Ozai is trying to take over the world? And how the hell does he manage to pass as an Earth Kingdom peasant when there's wanted posters from the Fire Nation naming him as a prince all over the place? Not to mention, why is it that none of the teenagers on Ember Island recognize him or Azula as members of the royal family during The Beach?
 * Well I've always thought,although this idea might have come from another source,that Ozai covered up the truth up until the end of the first book,the FN nobles who were there knew but were ordered to stay silent and so the FN soldiers were told only the basics that Zuko was ordered to find the Avatar but after the Siege of the North Ozai learns enough of what happened to declare Zuko and Iroh traitors so the propaganda machine,which the FN like all good dictatorships has,revealed the truth and spread it so far that even that EK peasant knew eventually probably Zuko was quite the hot topic of conversation being the son of the "love him or hate him" Fire Lord.
 * As to the second question Toph was probably referring to Azula,she was much more of a physical presence in their life than Ozai and can make one hell of a impression.
 * About anybody disguising themselves in the show,basically everyone's a moron see all the infiltrations of Ba Sing Se and that FN principal thinking Katara was Aang's mom,and as aside Azula was really unlucky that Katara was the one who remained in Ba Sing Se she has Suki's exact body type,you could only tell who she was by the eyes,and well Sokka could have gone a long time looking at other things.
 * WHY DID THE EARTH KING NEVER THINK TO MENTION THAT HE TOLD THE FAKE KYOSHI WARRIORS ABOUT THE DAY OF BLACK SUN? So much trouble could have been avoided if he'd just said "Oh, no, they're not the real Kyoshi warriors? I just told them all about our invasion plan!" I know he's sheltered, but is he really so stupid that he didn't think maybe that was an important detail? And why did no one else think to ask him what he discussed with them?
 * Yes. In case you missed it, the Earth King is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He's reasonable but not particularly bright, and also pretty naive. Coupled with the chaos of the takeover and subsequent escape, he probably just forgot to mention what had happened.
 * The fact that HE TOLD THE FAKE KYOSHI WARRIORS ABOUT THE DAY OF BLACK SUN so quickly in the first place should kinda give off a clue as to What an Idiot! he is.
 * Did you watch that episode? This quote explains most of it. Emphasis mine:

Sokka: Oh yeah. The Kyoshi warriors are a skilled group of fighters, trust worthy too. They’re good friends of ours."

"How many dicks did you fucking suck?!"
 * Frankly, a bigger problem would be the fact that Katara never thought to mention the fake Kyoshi warriors.
 * May just be a case of Values Dissonance but I was always taught that you should look someone in the eye if you wish to be treated as an equal. When Hakoda refused to look the Warden in the eye it was played as an act of defiance, not an act of submission. Right...
 * Yeah, I think this is a simple case of Values Dissonance (perhaps on multiple levels). In Real Life casting the eyes downward would be considered an act of submission, but on the show it seems that people mostly look each other in the eye. As far Hakoda casting his eyes downward- it doesn't matter in what direction he cast his eyes because the warden had issued an order and Hakoda refused to comply.
 * in the US, a lot of the time parents tell their kids "look me in the eye when I'm talking to you" when they're yelling at them.
 * This troper saw it explained in a fanfic as it being that in the Water Tribe you only meet someone's eye if you respect them, see them as equals. Hakoda deliberately avoiding the Warden's gaze - and once he does, tripping him up on his handcuffs - was portrayed as a simple indication that the Warden is nothing to him.
 * Extremely trivial complaint: Zuko's hair in season 3. There is no way you can get hair that short into the kind of topknot he wears when it's up. I tried it out with my own hair, which is a little longer than his, and it still doesn't work.
 * *shrugs* How come Azula seems to have some kind of Hammerspace for her hair? This troper has no idea.
 * That bugged me too, especially since I was otherwise pretty impressed with the consistency of their hair (by animated standards!). At first, I thought there'd been a bit of a timeskip, and his hair had gotten longer. Then, after we saw it down, I thought maybe it was some kind of artificial topknot (with gallons of hair gel to keep his real hair swept up). But then we get that scene where he undoes the ribbon and his hair falls down around his ears...they don't show us the top (obviously), so I guess the artificial topknot theory is still in play, but seriously...
 * How does Zuko have peripheral vision in the eye on the burned side of his face?
 * Just because the skin there is damaged doesn't mean that the eye itself is.
 * But the ear on that side is shriveled. If he was burned bad enough that that happened then his eye probably isn't in the best shape either.
 * He doesn't. It's really subtle, but if you watch closely in a few episodes ("The Blue Spirit" and "The Western Air Temple" come to mind immediately) you can see that he turns his head all the way to the left when he wants to see something on that side.
 * During the "Cave of Two Lovers" there was a scene when he seemed to have peripheral vision but now that I think about it he could have been relying on his hearing and instinct.
 * Pakku and general north pole tradition only allow men to waterbend. Does he think there have been no female avatars? Every avatar has to learn all the elements. I hope at least he'd make an exception if Aang was a girl.
 * Obviously, exceptions are made for female Avatars, but your general run-of-the-mill female waterbender is off to the kitchen Healing Huts.
 * Avatars are definitely a special case. If the Northern Tribe members refused to teach a female Avatar, there's a better than even chance that Tui and La would voice their displeasure very quickly.
 * Culture can change by a great deal in just a century and based on the cycle of reincarnation it would have been quite some time since the last Water Tribe Avatar (who might not have been female). Just look at the difference between Aang's value of life and Avatar Yangchen's values.
 * And anyway, there used to be waterbenders at the South Pole, so a female Avatar wouldn't have to be trained up north if she didn't want to.
 * This troper always figured that the no women thing was only a hundred or so years old. The Northern tribe might just have needed a lot of healers at the beginning of the war and the women-are-healers thing was just convenient.
 * Ok, so Jeong-Jeong doesn't firebend offensively. This is said explicitely by Zhao: "My old master gave up fighting long ago". For his first experience, Jeong-Jeong keeps that up; he never firebends to attack someone, only to teach Aang, protect Katara, make that wall of fire (which the boats can and did avoid, as he probably knew they would), and make his escape. Cool, clean, consistant. Then, in his next appearance, he's making giant pillars of fire and destroying tanks with people inside them. Eh, what?
 * He wasn't destroying the tanks, he was shoving them into piles. You see the piles during the attack. As for what Zhao said, "gave up fighting" is probably superceded by the call of the Order of the White Lotus. With that call, Jeong-Jeong had a cause to fight for that he really believed in.
 * Why does Gran-Gran marry Pakku? She left the Northern Water Tribe because she didn't want to marry him. Did something happen to her since then that made her think that marrying the man the was arranged to marry as a teenager was a good idea? It just seems to me so backwards that they would show Gran-Gran as being strong enough to escape an arranged marriage, then have her marry him years later.
 * It's plausible that Kanna did harbor something for Pakku, but simply couldn't tolerate his sexist attitude, and was more open to those feelings once he learned the error of his ways.
 * More than plausible, she not only keeps the betrothal necklace, but passes it down. If she really hated him, she probably would have left it behind (as a smack in the face) or thrown it away.
 * That's how I always took it- it wasn't so much Pakku himself she was against as it was certain unpleasant aspects of their culture that he represented. When they met up again, I envision a scene to the effect of him swallowing his pride and apologizing for being a jerk (and bringing up that he trained Katara probably wouldn't hurt), which no doubt smoothed things over considerably.
 * Forgive me for being dense, but - is there ever an explanation for Zhao's ridiculously convenient promotions in Book One?
 * It isn't dense. As far as the show itself goes they never seem to give any explanation for why he got those promotions. In real life it was probably because the writers needed a way to make him a justifiable threat.
 * In that case, I'm going to have to fall back on the Kevin Smith explanation.


 * There's a war going on. Officers at the top of the chain die, retire, or get transferred, and new ships/fleets are getting regularly constructed. This leaves room for subordinates to get promoted to higher ranks. Zhao getting promoted isn't anything strange; he's an ambitious and reasonably competent officer (leaving out his rather misinformed notion of taking out the Moon) so there's no real reason he'd get passed over for promotion.
 * Except that he goes from commanding a few ships to admiral and apparently has the authority to commit the Fire Nation to attacking the Northern Water Tribe without any approval from the higher ups.
 * When did Zhao ever command "just" a few ships during the series. He was introduced as a Commander in charge of a base, and was next seen commanding a blockade with the same rank. I always figured that Commander was the rank directly below Admiral in the Fire Navy, so it's not a huge jump- and while we never saw him ask for permission/get an order on screen, I highly doubt he committed a whole fleet to the NWT without Ozai's permission.
 * A few ships? No he was in charge of an entire naval base, dozens of ships all under his command. Though this does bring up a mistake, he shouldn't have been Commander Zhao he should have been Commodore Zhao. Commodore is one step up from Captain and one below Admiral, Commander is a lesser rank than captain. Could be different in the Fire Navy though. Which makes it quite believable, he gained two ranks one happening before we saw him one during the show. Not that much really, cause we don't have any idea when he was promoted up from Captain.
 * The most likely explanation is he was promoted to Admiral because of his plan for the Northern Water Tribe. You don't think Ozai would've jumped at the idea of having someone eliminate all Waterbenders? He saw that Zhao had taken initiative to find this out, and had a plan, and promoted him to Admiral so that he could carry it out.
 * There wasn't anything to suggest that there were any plans to attack the Northern Water Tribe at the time of Zhao's promotion and in fact there wasn't anything about Zhao prior to the end of the season to suggest that he had any ambitions of spirit-killing. Maybe Ozai was impressed enough with him to promote him but if so it was done completely off screen, it was never even mentioned and the only suggestion for it is a wild mass guess. Based purely on what we saw in the series prior to his promotion Zhao had gone off on his own to hunt Aang (abandoning his post to do so), had failed to apprehend Zuko or Aang and from the conversation with the officer in charge of the Yu Yan archers at least some people felt he was just on a hunt for glory. That isn't exactly the sort of thing that suggests admiral material.
 * There wasn't anything to suggest spirit-killing because it never came up- Zhao had obviously been planning it for a while, based on his flashback in "Siege of the North", but wasn't going to spread that around until he was ready to play his trump card. But that doesn't mean he hadn't dropped that infor to Ozai in the hopes of finagling a promotion out of it. Also, how do we know that there weren't plans to attack the Water Tribe- we never see the Fire Lord's court during the whole first season outside of Zuko's flashback, so we have no idea what Ozai and his elite may or may not have been cooking up. Finally, I think that Ozai seems the type to promote someone based more on power and ruthlessness than common sense- someone like Zhao, channeled properly, is a definite asset to the Fire Nation, but he's too sloppy to successfully pull of a plot against Ozai himself. And again, just because we don't see it on screen doesn't mean Zhao didn't have Ozai's approval for at least some of his actions (particularly after capturing the "traitor" Fire Sages).
 * Forgive me if this has been answered somewhere else, but what was the point of Long Feng's character besides padding out the Gaang's time in Ba Sing Se? He's running his Orwellian conspiracy to keep the king a puppet, I get, but...how? Why? Do the generals clearly fighting the war just not notice that the cultural police are denying that there's a war to fight and intimidating the populace into believing the same? Are they somehow unaware that their king somehow hasn't noticed they've been fighting a war for him his entire life? What does anyone gain from the conspiracy, anyway? Long Feng gets to be the power behind the throne at the cost of guaranteed defeat in the war eventually? The Fire Nation's been banging on the walls for a century now and reduced the rest of the Earth Kingdom to ashes or colonies at this point, so there's no reason for the Fire Nation to ever give up and go home and nobody's coming to help Ba Sing Se. Literally the only point of the conspiracy as far as I can tell is that Long Feng gets to play puppetmaster until he croaks or the Fire Nation arrives and effortlessly conquers the city because of his actively sabotaging the war effort. The Dai Li gain nothing from following Long Feng's orders, so exactly why they are so loyal to him without being brainwashed is another unanswered question; if they were following him because he was the power behind the throne, there's no reason to remain loyal when he screws up and the jig is up for the conspiracy being kept from the Earth King. Then they also side with Azula over Long Feng, despite the fact that the Dai Li would probably have been better rewarded if they'd turned on both of them and let Long Feng rot and thwarted Azula's attempt at a coup and arrested her. The entire second half of book two only works if you assume all Dai Li are drones that instinctively attach themselves to causes that give them little benefit or have actively been working to hand Ba Sing Se over to the Fire Nation this whole time. Long Feng and his secret police are a walking gang of Plot Holes in an otherwise well-told story.
 * Long Feng and the Dai Li are obviously an expy of the Communist Party in China (and possibly the Communist Party in North Korea). Presumably the members of Dai Li get all sorts of benefits regular citizen's don't get, which would explain why they have remained loyal to the organization. The organization has probably existed for generations (just like the Communist Party), and Long Feng is merely its current leader. The reason the Dai Li have wanted to keep regular citizens uninformed on the war is the same reason the North Korean Communist Party keeps on denying the country is suffering from famines; to admit it would be to admit they are not in full control of things. As for the King, they want to keep him uninformed on anything he might want to exert his power on (not just the war), so that they can keep controlling the society and reap the benefits of their position. The Generals probably co-operate with the Dai Li, and don't want the King to mess with their affairs either. One reason why they don't want the King to know about the war is that he's obviously very naive, and would make a terrible Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces (a position that a king would naturally have). And the reason why the Dai Li change sides so easily is exactly what you say above: they come to realize that the war has been fought for decades, Fire Nation has colonized most of Earth Nation, and no one is coming tho help Ba Sing Se, so better side with the likely winner. Keep in mind that the agents of Dai Li are the sort of people who are drawn to power and its benefits, so nationalism matters little to them. The generals, on the other hand, do seem to be more driven by nationalism and honour, so the Dai Li can't count on them to change sides, which is why they have to be removed from the picture. The reason Long Feng keeps on running the city as if nothing's wrong, and doesn't choose to work with Azula with the rest of Dai Li, is that he's probably worked long and hard to get to his top dog position. He's too stubborn and too attached to his power to admit that the Fire Nation has essentially won the war. (Remember how Azula says that Long Feng doesn't have the innate charisma aristocracs are – according to her – born with. He probably was born into a middle class family, and had to climb his way up the society's ladder.) If the Fire Nation colonizes Bai Sing Se, the position of the de facto ruler he worked so hard to attain is lost forever.
 * You are probably thinking of the KGB actually everyone in Russia was a member of the Communist Party since it was the only political party that was allowed to exist, and if everyone in Russia was given lots of priviliges good food and good housing I dont think they would be remembered as poorly as they are in Russia.
 * A little detail: not everyone in Soviet Russia belonged to the Communist Party. Membership in the Party was reserved for the elite who controlled the general populace. Gaining membership was a privilege only available for few. While all citizens were subjects of the Party, most weren't members.
 * Another reason is that they could believed if the real details about the war where revealed the citizens of the Ba Sing Se would rebel against them and surrender hoping they wouldnt be killed by the Fire Nation.
 * None of that explains why Long Feng doesn't want to use the Earth Kingdom armies to use the eclipse to attack the Fire Nation. What could Long Feng possibly gain by stopping Ba Sing Se's forces from exploiting the firebenders' moment of weakness?
 * Maybe Long Feng simply didn't believe the eclipse theory? It's not like Team Avatar could prove it, so from Long Feng's point of view it was just a presumption based on an oblique mention in an old book. It's a terribly big risk to send an army to the middle of enemy territory based on such theory, especially since Ba Sing Se's soldiers were needed to protect the city from the Fire Nation. So it's perfectly possible Long Feng chose not to attack the Fire Nation because the risk of the eclipse not working like Team Avatar thought would have been too huge.
 * My read on Long Feng is that he's clever, but cautious by nature- he knows that if the Eclipse Plan goes wrong (and it easily could, with the firebenders only being incapacitated for a few minutes) it would be a complete disaster for the Earth Kingdom (and him, by extension) and so he's certainly not going to commit troops to such a gamble. It's the same quality that led him to submit to Azula (with, I've always felt, the hopes of pulling a successful doublecross someday) rather than fight her by himself in "Crossroads of Destiny".
 * What happened to Iroh's wife? He had a son but mention is never made of a wife or anything beyond how his son died in battle.
 * Presumably she died a long time ago. Otherwise Iroh, being the sort of family-oriented man he is, would surely have talked about her.
 * Furthermore, given how fatherly Iroh is towards Zuko, it seems odd that he only had one child of his own. His wife having died a long time ago would explain this, too.
 * sorry if this is a stupid question and I probably just missed an episode but I thought that Boomi was the earth king, how did that guy with the bear end up in charge, also did the Dai Li exist when Boomi was in charge, and if not how did they gain so much power so quickly. If they did exist why did Boomi allow them to exist?
 * Boomi was only king of Omashu. The other guy was the Earth King (king of the whole Earth Kingdom). The Dai Li were always there.
 * The way I always saw it was that the Earth Kingdom was actually closer to a federation of smaller territories, each of which have their own king or queen, united under the leadership of the King of Ba Sing Se, who therefore gets to be the Earth King. Of course, by the time the show roles around, only Omashu (King Bumi) and Ba Sing Se (Earth King) are still free of the Fire Nation. And the Dai Li were actually founded by Kyoshi, so they've been around for centuries (though they only came to completely control the throne with the last couple of Earth Kings in my headcanon, the show itself never specifies exactly when and how the group's Motive Decay from "protectors of Earth Kingdom cultural heritage" to "creepy tyrannical conspiracy" happened).
 * Who was Lu Ten's mother? She's never, ever mentioned or shown in a flashback. If she had died, maybe in childbirth or something, she would be mourned for, like Lu Ten is. Iroh is royalty, so I'm going to assume that he was married to her, since it would be odd for royalty, especially someone like Iroh, to have an illegitimate child. And Iroh doesn't seem like the kind of person to have an affair or anything, although he does have that episode where he's rather creepily attracted to June. I know Iroh apparently went to the spirit world at some point, so maybe Lu Ten's mom was a spirit, but I've heard people say that he went to the spirit world after Lu Ten's death. It does make sense that his trip to the spirit world was after Lu Ten's death, since he seems to have changed a lot since then (in a flashback from when he was invading Ba Sing Se, before Lu Ten's death, he jokes about burning the city to the ground, something the Iroh we know would never say). So who is she? What happened to her? Why does know one mention or ask about her? I only realized it recently, after being a fan of the show for a long time. It's not something you think about, but once you realize it, it makes no sense at all.
 * If Lu Ten's mother died at childbirth, that was over 25 years ago (I assume Lu Ten was at least 20 when he died). So it makes sense Iroh would have gotten over her death, and wouldn't mourn her in the same way he mourns for Lu Ten. Lu Ten's death was more recent, and more importantly, Iroh feels he is responsible for him getting killed, as Lu Ten died under his command. So Iroh hasn't really gotten over the death of his son, but he has gotten over his wife's death, which is why he never mentions her.
 * I guess that makes some sense, but I still think she would be mentioned at least once. It's treated as if she never existed.
 * Iroh is a member of the White Lotus, a society that's dedicated to upholding balance in the Avatar world, and it's implied that he's been a member for a long time. Also, many other things in his character, such as the fact that he traveled to meet dragons and managed to convince them that he is worthy of learning the secret of true firebending, suggest that he's always been dedicated to peace and balance. Why, then, did he agree to become a general in the Fire Nation army and attack against Ba Sing Se, even send his own son in the battle, when he must've known the whole war was against the ideals of balance and peace? Of course it's possible he didn't become a proper pacifist until after his son's death, but that was only a few years before the events of the series, and I got the impression that him joining the White Lotus and meeting the dragons had happened long before that.
 * My personal explanation is that until his son's death, he's subscribed to a My Country, Right or Wrong mentality.
 * How come the Kyoshi warriors never get called out on their sexist warrior training policy, but Pakku and the Northern Water Tribe do?
 * Because in the Avatar world discrimination against women is clearly more prominent than discrimination against men, and therefore what the Kyoshi warriors do can be seen as a form of positive discrimination, which is meant to undermine the larger phenomenon of sexism towards women.
 * We never really see the Kyoshi warriors turn down a male who wants to train with them, it just seems that they're "traditionally" female, and the uniform reflects that. They're not so much anti-man (the head of the village appears to be a man) as they were screwing with Sokka for being misogynist.
 * What was with Iroh being portrayed as a Dirty Old Man in that one scene with June in Bato of the Water Tribe? It seemed completely out of character (he never does anything like that in any other episode), just a shoehorned-in anime trope for the sake of the show's "American anime" credentials. That this is a particularly distasteful anime trope does not help matters.
 * Given how he occasionally jokes that Zuko needs a girlfriend, you might be able to stretch it and say he is a Dirty Old Man. Only normally, since Iroh is a Cool Old Guy too, he downplays it and just tries not to talk about it too much. I do agree that it seems pretty shoehorned in that episode though.
 * Maybe Iroh isn't a Dirty Old Man in general, but for June specifically? June is a rather unique woman, so maybe she's exactly Iroh's type, and the reason Iroh acts lecherous with her and no one else is because he doesn't mean anyone else like her during the series? Though it's true that his behaviour in that one scene still doesn't jibe with how Iroh is generally depicted.
 * So... What was up with Hama's escape plan? She bloodbends the guard to make him unlock her cage and flees. Pretty cool, yeah, much like Toph inventing Metalbending to escape captivity. But why does Hama not stop to think about either bloodbending the other guards into freeing some of the other waterbenders, or taking the keys from the guard she knocked out and freeing them herself? Yes, I know the "obvious" answer might be because she's a little bit crazy, but given how focused she is on revenge, you'd think she'd realize that freeing all of her tribe members would be perfect revenge. Then she could also pass bloodbending on to them instead of just getting lucky and meeting Katara later. Plus, even if she doesn't teach them bloodbending, the Southern Tribe gets its waterbenders back, they're better able to defend themselves again, families get reunited, and everyone's happy. So what gives, Hama?
 * Fridge Horror comes in here: Remember that Hama was the last of the Southern Tribe waterbenders. All the others had been captured years, or decades before. It's entirely possible that by the time she escaped, Hama was one of the last, if not the last, southern waterbenders still alive.