From the beginning of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the protagonist Aang has the weight of the world on his shoulders. He is humanity’s last hope against the Fire Nation. It’s easy for fans to forget that despite being the Avatar, Aang is just a 12-year-old kid. Team Avatar faces pain, loss, and trauma as they navigate their war-torn world. Avatar: The Last Airbender never strays away from exploring the darker parts of the heroes’ stories.
Circumstances force the members of Team Avatar to age quickly, but Avatar: The Last Airbender stresses that these heroes are just kids. Aang’s role as the Avatar forces him to put humanity before himself, but in some episodes Aang’s immaturity jumps out and there are consequences to the Avatar’s more juvenile actions.
10 He Is Impatient While Learning Earthbending
Aang is patient, often choosing passive techniques over brute force. This quality defines him as the Avatar. However, Aang is still a kid, so no matter how much patience his upbringing as an Air Nomad has granted him, he’s still eager to learn bending as quickly as possible.
When it comes to earthbending, Aang has a hard time learning the basics. Earthbenders are forceful and direct, like Toph is, while airbending is more about evasion. In the episode “Bitter Work,” Aang gets easily frustrated with Toph’s teaching style. In moments like these, fans realize how quickly Aang is expected to master the four elements while other Avatars had decades to complete the same training.
9 Aang’s Water Slide Nearly Alerts The Fire Lord Of His Existence
In the episode “The Beach,” Team Avatar relaxes in the water when Aang decides to have a little fun with a massive, very visible water slide. Two Fire Nation lookouts recognize Aang, which is a pretty big deal considering Aang is supposed to be dead at this point in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Zuko’s assassin, the aptly dubbed Sparky Sparky Boom Man (or Combustion Man) stops the messenger hawk that the two lookouts send to alert the Fire Lord. If the assassin hadn’t stopped the message from reaching the palace, Aang’s fun in the water could have destroyed Team Avatar’s plans.
8 He Starts The Series By Disclosing His Location
Aang stays youthful throughout Avatar: The Last Airbender, but he’s especially childish in the first episode, “The Boy in the Iceberg.” Fans love watching Aang run into snow forts and ride on Otter Penguins as it shows just how adventurous the hero of this tale is.
Being a kid in Aang’s situation also explains why he doesn’t ask questions about what happened during his time frozen in the ice. This leads to Aang taking Katara’s warnings lightly and he alerts Zuko of not only his presence but the location of Katara and Sokka’s village.
7 Aang Showing Off Leads To Failure At Kyoshi Island
Aang let his ego inflate at Kyoshi Island. The young airbender is typically weighed down by the stress of being the Avatar, so it’s refreshing for fans to watch him enjoy praise from the island locals.
Unfortunately, Aang’s optimism about staying on the island causes him to let his guard down. It isn’t Aang’s fault that Zuko is hot on his tail, but having to leave a burning Kyoshi Island for the sake of its citizens is a wake-up call that Aang must be prepared for anything.
6 Team Avatar’s Detours Are Usually Aang’s Ideas
Most of Book One, Water, is comprised of the detours Team Avatar takes on their way to the North Pole. Most of these little escapades are Aang’s ideas, as the airbender used to have friends all over the world pre-iceberg.
A good portion of these detours endangers Team Avatar. For example, Aang’s desire to recreate his memories with Bumi on the Omashu delivery system is what puts the heroes on the palace’s radar. Luckily, Aang’s old pal Bumi is the king, but Aang’s ideas to have fun frequently endanger the group.
5 He Makes Up A Story In “The Great Divide”
Many Avatar: The Last Airbender fans deem “The Great Divide” to be the least interesting episode. Two clans fight for generations and Aang decides to patch things over with a white lie. It works, but the idea of turning an age-old conflict into a children’s story is a testament to Aang’s naivety.
In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang acting his age helps people in this case. However, in terms of how fans perceive this episode, his youthful optimism lands it with some of the lowest ratings and a lack of payoff.
4 His Desire To Be A Student Endangers His Identity
Book Three’s “The Headband” is a refreshingly lighthearted episode considering how bleak the Book Two finale is. Team Avatar has to face Firelord Ozai soon, but for now, they lie low in the Fire Nation by stealing local clothing.
Aang’s uniform leads to a misunderstanding and Aang accidentally enrolls at a Fire Nation school. Instead of hightailing it out of there to protect his identity, Aang decides to hang around and experience being a student. Aang loses out on a lot of his childhood, so the audience sympathizes with his desire to attend school. Inevitably, it puts his identity at risk.
3 Aang Takes Out His Anger In The Worst Ways When Appa Is Missing
Fans are shocked at how angry Aang becomes during Appa’s absence and are uncomfortable with how he takes this anger out on his friends. Toph saves their lives, but Aang still blames her for losing Appa. Katara does her best to keep the group’s hope alive in the desert, but Aang snaps at her.
Aang is just a kid who is separated from the one companion he has from his past, so the audience understands why Aang lashes out at those around him. That being said, the episodes following Appa’s capture demonstrate that Aang isn’t fully in control of his emotions.
2 Aang Hides Hakoda’s Letter & Faces The Consequences
In “Bato of the Water Tribe,” Aang receives a letter from Hakoda, Katara and Sokka’s father. The second he reads the letter fans know he’ll do anything in his power to make sure Katara and Sokka continue with him on his journey.
Aang is just a kid, but by hiding the letter from Hakoda, Aang deprives his two best friends of seeing their father from whom they’ve been separated for years. In the end, the siblings forgive his lapse in judgment and stay, but this episode serves as a reminder that even the Avatar makes moral slip-ups.
1 Aang’s Eagerness To Firebend Hurts Katara
Aang’s eagerness to learn firebending from Jeong Jeong is a combination of him being an excited kid and also feeling the pressure of having to master the elements in time to stop Ozai. No one can blame Aang for his impatience during this episode, but he faces the consequences in the worst way.
Aang ignores Jeong Jeong’s instructions and ends up burning Katara. While the waterbender unlocks her healing capabilities and fixes her wounds, Aang never truly forgives himself for hurting his friend. It’s a hard lesson the young Avatar learns because of a childish mistake.
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