If you know me, you know I like Avatar: The Last Airbender. At this point, it’s probably the least interesting thing about me because I freaking talk about it so much. But that's for a good reason.
The show is awesome, the characters great to follow, and there’s so much lore that you can get lost in it for hours. Today, I’m going to talk about a particular character that truly changed my life as a kid – and that, my friends, is Azula.
Daughter of the Fire Lord Ozai (voiced by Mark Hamill) and younger sister to Zuko, Azula had her screen debut at the very end of Season 1, and only continued to grow in her fearsomeness as time went on. Now, as an adult, I can acknowledge that she was freaking scary, and still is to this day. Here are seven times throughout the series that she proved just how scary she could be.
She’s Literally Younger Than Zuko, But A Thousand Times Better At Bending, As We Saw In Her Introduction
I mean it wholeheartedly when I say that Azula isn’t just one of the best female benders out there, but one of the best Firebenders ever. While I do love Zuko and his redemption arc, his Firebending ability is nowhere near hers.
From the beginning of her story, we find out that she was always the ideal prodigy, who’s bending came extremely easy to her, so much so that Zuko’s father has said to him personally that Azula was born lucky, and Zuko was lucky to be born. Talk about father of the year, huh?
Either way, one of the first scenes we see Azula in is her practicing her lightning ability – i.e., being able to generate the heat of lightning. Keep in mind that she is fourteen, and the fact that she is able to generate electricity at such a young age is astounding, considering her uncle Iroh took forever to learn that ability – and even then, she’s dissatisfied that it wasn’t perfect and as powerful as it could have been.
She Kept Going For Hours To Find Aang And The Gang – Without Fail
In the Season 2 episode, “The Chase,” we get just a taste of Azula’s resilience when she and her friends are chasing down Aang and his gang in a mysterious machine. The thing is, she doesn't let up for a single second. No matter what, she keeps chasing after them for hours on end, which causes the group to grow tired and angry with each other over not getting any sleep.
It’s almost funny how, even from a distance, she is able to play mental games on people in order to get what she wants. When it comes down to it, and she’s finally confronted by not only the group but the banished Zuko at the end, she is still able to make a run for it. She does not give up.
Azula Nearly Killed Aang With Her Lightning
Remember when I brought up that lightning ability? Yeah, Azula used that against Aang.
In the season finale of Season 2 finale, it’s a big fight between the gang and Azula and Zuko (who, at this point, is looking for praise from his father and thinks joining Azula is the right way get it). Azula, however, takes her shot at Aang as he is in the Avatar State – gravely wounding him.
Iroh actually helps them escape, seeing that this went too far, and Katara is miraculously able to heal Aang with water from the Spirit Oasis, but the fact that she was that close completely killing the Avatar at that young of an age (even if he was frozen for 100 years) is scary. Aang may be a powerful bender, but damn, even he couldn’t avoid that.
She Somehow Survived Falling To Her Death By Using A Hair Pin
I remember that I always found this scene so surprising, but when Azula and her forces attack the Western Air Temple, she and Zuko have a fight that ends up with both of them being blown off of a floating blimp of sorts. Zuko is thankfully saved by the group, who have now accepted him in, but for a moment, it looks like Azula is going to die.
She’s falling to her death, no one around her, with nothing to hold onto – until she suddenly undoes her hair.
Using the hairclip that was keeping her hair in place, Azula is able to force her body towards a cliff using her powers, and then makes use of the hairclip to stabilize her position on the rocks, saving her. Like, what? This girl has immense strength that we don’t usually see.
She Convinced The Dai Li To Work For Her
One of the biggest twists out of every episode in Avatar: The Last Airbender is when it’s discovered that the Dai Li is actually working for Azula. She was able to infiltrate Ba Sing Se, force the Dai Li (the secret police) under her rule, and take down the Earth King with ease.
It seems almost impossible that she is able to do this so easily, but we see her take that throne within a few episodes, something that the Fire Nation has never been able to do, because Ba Sing Se was behind a giant wall to protect them from outside forces (almost reminds me of Attack on Titan in a way).
What she says to the Earth King, that he was never even a player in this game, is always going to be savage.
The Whole Fight At Boiling Rock – Even When Her Friends Abandoned Her
The Season 3 two-parter, “The Boiling Rock,” changed lives because we got that famous Zuko line, “That’s rough, buddy.” Other than that, we also got more of Azula fighting her brother and showing just how terrifying she could be.
However, in the end, it’s revealed that even her friends were growing tired of just how vengeful and ruthless she could be, and when she moved to strike Mai, Ty Lee was able to stop her by chi-blocking. Even so, Azula still had the power over everyone and ordered them to be thrown in prison. She let go of her only friends, just like that – because they had a heart.
Last But Not Least, Her Agni Kai With Zuko
This was Azula at her most unhinged, but even then, she was freaking powerful, almost reminding me of the brutalness of Avatar Kyoshi and how powerful she was. Even Zuko said, towards the end, that she was slipping, and we could see that her mental state was deteriorating thanks to the pressure of living up to her father’s expectations and her past with her mother. She was insane.
She and Zuko fought in their legendary Agni Kai, and she was able to use his good heart to her own advantage and took the opportunity to try and strike lightning at Katara when Zuko was winning. He doesn’t have time to properly redirect the lightning and takes a hit to the heart, and Azula then goes to try and kill Katara.
If Katara wasn’t lucky enough for there to be water nearby, she would have been literally toast. Even at Azula’s most unhinged, she was insanely powerful and scary – I love Katara, and think she’s an expert bender, but she was damn lucky she got that water when she did.
Writing about Azula just makes me want to see her more in the upcoming animated movies surrounding the series. A part of me almost hopes she gets a redemption arc – while the other part hopes she sort of just stays a menacing villain. Either way, it makes for great television.
