I’m well aware that this opinion isn’t really original, as well as the fact that I’ve discussed this several times before. However, to quote a band called Those Damn Crows, “🎵I DON’T GIVE A DAMN!🎵”

Plus, I’ve finally put to practice, a power far greater than any sort of bending that ever existed. The power of formatting. So I wanted to try it out with a topic that I’m quite passionate about.

Azula’s mental breakdown and subsequent decent to madness was a good ending for her arc in Last Airbender as the culmination of her entire philosophy of demanding utter perfection from everyone and worldview that fear was stronger than anything else, as proved by Mai and Ty Lee’s betrayal, being a complete and utter lie. That combined with the revelation that her father would abandon her which she constantly tries to deny, as well as her jealousy over how her “inferior” brother Zuko managed to gain unconditional love and approval from their mother and even one of Azula’s own friends. That’s an excellent ending for Azula’s arc, but it was never for her story as a whole, that’s because of two things.

Her relationship with Zuko and their relationship with Ursa. Aaron Ehasz’s plan of having Zuko help Azula as Iroh did for him makes so much sense for both of their characters.

Zuko has seen the darkest depths that being a child of Ozai can bring you to and he would obviously pity his younger sister and desire to help her. Azula never had someone like Iroh in her life to help her through her pain, obviously she wouldn’t be open to the idea of letting Zuko into her heart but it’s idiotic to assume she’s a lost cause due to a first rejection. People aren’t machines that can get something right on just the first or second try. People are flawed, they will fuck up constantly whether in real life or in fiction.

After all, Zuko’s redemption was an immensely difficult process even though he had Iroh on his side. Even with a kind old man who was there to love him unconditionally, Zuko betrayed him in order to regain his honor. But he still changed his ways and redeemed himself even though he didn’t deserve a chance to after betraying Iroh.

Azula would slowly but surely come around after experiencing the sense of unconditional love she desperately wanted from her parents and realizing just how much Ozai’s parenting ruined her.

As for Ursa, the show ended with a setup for a story where Zuko would finally be reunited with his mother(which eventually became a comic trilogy known as The Search). So why should Azula be excluded from such a plot considering how important Ursa is to her story? She shouldn’t be, she deserves a role in that plot just as much as Zuko was so the notion that her story didn’t need a continuation after the show at all is completely asinine.

Redeeming Azula would allow closure for both Zuko and Ursa’s arcs. Ursa wasn’t there for Azula during her childhood but she has a second chance to help her broken daughter, and I doubt she would ever desire to waste it.

Zuko helping Azula would effectively end the cycle of violence that’s been running in his family for a hundred years and make sure it never continues ever again. That is why I believe a redemption would be the best ending for not just Azula’s story but for the entire Fire Nation Royal family’s story as a whole.

Oh and considering the fact that Aaron Ehasz, head writer of Avatar: The Last Airbender since 2005, confirmed that he always intended to redeem Azula. Something that Micheal Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the creators of Avatar, have done nothing to debunk(as far as I’m aware of). Hell, Bryan even said before that Azula still had the chance of healing after Sozin’s Comet since Katara and Zuko spared her. The comics recently toyed with the idea and even though Azula ultimately didn’t redeem herself, she still chose to let her traitorous followers go despite expressing the desire to find and exact her revenge on them early in the story, thus proving that Azula is capable of changing.

Plus the questionably canon Avatar cook book that suspiciously avoids any mention of Republic City, or as it was initially called, Cranefish Town. Thus making it difficult to nail an exact timeline besides “After the Hundred Year War.” As far as I’m aware of, Azula is the only villain to have a segment in that cook book where she straight up name drops Mai as the one who convinced her to try the drink her segment was talking about, suggesting that Azula and Mai are on speaking terms.

All of this combined, makes me believe that the people involved with Avatar desire a redemption arc for Azula. And that the recent Spirit Temple comic reversed a lot of changes to Azula’s story that Smoke and Shadow made, plus the aforementioned Cook Book, it appears that Avatar Studios has made up its mind on what to do with Azula. It looks they will redeem her.

Unrelated but I wanna point this out. Can someone, for the love of god, call out Reddit for making it extremely difficult to scroll up when you’re making a long post like this one?! I had to hold down on the space bar and then type a random letter and delete it afterwards so I could scroll up to make edits. Also get them to allow you to edit titles and posts that have images in them. This is ri-goddamn-diculous as Johnny Cage puts it.

In The Search, it’s revealed that Zuko and Azula’s mother Ursa had her memories erased. She did this in order to forget the pain that abandoning her children, as well as all the shit Ozai had done to her in general, had caused her. I like this decision because it explains where she was during the show pretty well and justifies her not coming back to Caldera the moment news came of Ozai’s defeat.

However I also like this decision both because of what Azula does later on, and because I can understand why Ursa did, even though I don’t agree with her. In a moment of emotional weakness and vulnerability, Ursa chose to have her memories erased. She chose the easy way out.

After Azula’s breakdown on Sozin’s Comet and subsequent institutionalization, she believed the delusion that her mother was conspiring against her. Later on, after failing to kill Ursa and losing the letter that could’ve helped her regain the throne and her father’s favor, she retreated to the forest. She developed another delusion that it was her destiny to groom Zuko into becoming a “better” Firelord(a ruthless tyrant).

Both situations, Azula was in a moment of emotional weakness and vulnerability. Instead of reflecting on her past actions, or questioning the grounds her father taught her, she chose the easy way out. It’s understandable of course, given her mental state, such reflection would’ve been too painful for her. But I think it’s quite telling that in spite of Azula’s talk of power and strength, she’s the true weakling. She couldn’t bring herself to admit the truth that became so clear on Sozin’s Comet. The truth that Ozai’s philosophy, everything he taught her, was a complete lie. But instead acknowledging it, Azula runs away from it every chance she gets. She is completely terrified of confronting it.

Like mother, like daughter.

This is partly why I wanna see Azula have a redemption/healing arc, I want to see her be brave enough to open up about her emotions and stuff like this.

This was probably unintentionally from Yang’s part. From what I’ve heard, the reason why he made Azula the main villain of Smoke and Shadow was because he just didn’t know what to do with her otherwise.

But man, I really wish this parallel was pointed out more, because I think it could’ve helped make Smoke and Shadow be a little better.

The comic is apparently coming out in March

At first I thought Schizophrenia since that’s what’s been tossed around but from what I’ve heard, Schizophrenia is an illness people are born with and need medication to treat. And considering what we’ve seen from Azula, it doesn’t really look like she was born with it.

I think the basics were portrayed decently, Azula desires love yet pushes everyone away due to her warped worldview from her father’s teachings and her anger at her mother for seemingly loving Zuko more than her. I just think we needed to see things from Azula’s perspective, see the pain and sheer rage that’s been boiling in her for so many years, as well as seeing Zuko try to bond with her more. More scenes like Azula having a tear in her eye when Ursa apologized for not loving her enough, that scene was great. I like the scene after Azula talks to Ozai where Zuko tells her that he wants to move her back in the palace because it feels like he genuinely does want to help her but he’s still cautious and unsure how to help because they’ve been enemies for so long. It’s awkward and I love it. I do think it’s dumb and wasteful that he doesn’t know about the hallucinations because like, didn’t the doctor charged with treating her take any notes? Didn’t Zuko check to see how his SISTER was doing in the asylum? That’s just dumb. I will say however, I do think Zuko and the Gaang are completely justified in distrusting and being angry at Azula since she did a lot to hurt them while she was still sane. Also, I actually quite like the straitjacket visually speaking(I have a thing for creepy straitjacket designs) because it easily conveys just how far she’s fallen. There’s something so haunting seeing someone who seemed so calm, cunning, and in control, just shatter into such a maddened and crazed state. Especially in the image from the end of the Promise, her face just looks so haunting and I love it, do think her still having lipstick in an asylum is really stupid though. As for the abusive stuff, I don’t really know if the asylum actually did that stuff. I have found no evidence, I’ve only seen her in a straitjacket when in Zuko’s presence and the times where Azula and the Fire Warriors talked about the asylum, it was usually in an incredibly vague way that they never went into detail for. If anyone could let me know if there’s any concrete evidence of the asylum being abusive, I’d really appreciate it.

Here’s a link to Airspeed Prime’s video on the upcoming Comic Con

https://youtu.be/dKVhCF7r8LU?si=YOXxqaZeYTG5m71i

I can’t really see those two ever getting together even if Azula gets redeemed(or when, it’s pretty clear Avatar Studios will redeem her as they should), I think it’d be way more interesting if Ty Lee and Mai weren’t really able to forgive Azula, maybe Ty Lee can but they aren’t ever able to get close with each other again. This can teach Azula a valuable lesson, some people just won’t be willing to forgive her, even if she’s apologized and proven that she has changed. Azula still can’t change what she’s done, the best she can do is move on and try to be better. Find new friends and try to be better to them. That said, I do think Azula being bi has a lot of potential and would make a really interesting story, she is someone who desperately wants to be loved and accepted so her having a romantic partner of either gender(I don’t know if trans people exist in Avatar, they probably do I think it’d be better to cover that in a future era rather than Aang’s) makes sense. I just don’t think she and Ty Lee need to be together for that.

https://www.deviantart.com/klickwitch/art/Azula-Aftermath-632201198

One of the many changes that the Netflix avatar made is that it seems like Ozai is harder on Azula than he was in the show. If we get more seasons, would they be willing to explore a new side of her character? Thoughts?

If you believe its possible, especially since they introduced Kiyi too (they shouldnt but too late now). And if this happends in a movie (Zuko movie) how would it go. I also heard theres a fan fourth season of the series, where this happends?

Up to you to disregard the comics or not. You can pick up right after the finale or do a time skip.

I like the idea of Azula, after being imprisoned, having an arc of self discovery and forgiveness. Not necessarily revolving around redemption but recovery. I think it'd be nice to have someone by her side to guide her and support her as she overcomes her self worth issues caused by her father and she realizes the severity of her past actions and tries to make amends. I think either Zuko or Ty Lee should be that person or both.

Zuko obviously because he knows the kind of abuse Ozai inflicted and he can also learn how Azula suffered just as much as he did.

Ty Lee would also be interesting because she was alongside Azula throughout the whole show and aided her crimes so she'd also have to confront issues herself. Plus I just love their dynamic. Seeing their friendship be given more depth and watching Azula make amends for being a bad friend to her at times would be really compelling.

What about you guys? If Azula's writing was in your hands how would you handle her?

I just want anything with her, redemption/closure with her mother Ursa/ending anything..cuz the atla ending with 14 year old kid going insane is awful.