2.07: Zuko Alone

2.07: Zuko Alone

“My name is Zuko. Son of Ursa and Fire Lord Ozai. Prince of the Fire Nation, and heir to the throne.“ “Liar! I heard of you! You’re not a prince, you’re an outcast! His own father burned and disowned him!”

[Zuko offers the knife to Lee.] “It’s yours. You should have it.” “No! I hate you!”

3.08: The Puppetmaster

“Then you should understand what I’m talking about! We’re the last two waterbenders of the Southern Tribe. We have to fight these people whenever we can, wherever they are, with any means necessary!”

“I won’t! I won’t use bloodbending and I won’t allow you to keep terrorizing this town!” “Congratulations, Katara. You’re a bloodbender.”

I’m not sure if it’s just me, but I’ve always felt that Zuko Alone and The Puppetmaster are similar in the role they play in Zuko and Katara’s respective character journeys. 

In Zuko Alone, Zuko learns the consequences of war and begins to question what he was taught about the war from the Fire Nation. He realizes that even actions of kindness aren’t enough to undo decades of oppression from the Fire Nation. 

Likewise, The Puppetmaster shows Katara the complexities of war and how it forced Hama to invent bloodbending, and turn to hurting innocent people for revenge. Katara - who has always believed in the absolute goodness of her people in the war - realizes it’s not always that simple. 

Both episodes also examine themes of identity and what it means to each character - Zuko’s identity as Prince of the Fire Nation and Katara’s identity as a waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe. 

Even though Zuko has spent most of the episode hiding his identity, when he’s put in a position where he has to reveal it, he proudly declares himself as Prince of the Fire Nation - and quickly gets a reality check from the townspeople, who reject him because of his status. In contrast, Katara has spent most of her time embracing her identity and connecting with Hama over it. But Hama turns her identity against her - she tries to use Katara’s heritage as leverage to convince Katara to turn against her ideals. In the end though, Katara stays true to her principles and refuses to harm innocent people. 

Despite this, by the end of the episode, the identity of bloodbender is forced onto Katara - a title she has never wanted. Similarly, Zuko is forced to confront the reality that he is no longer seen as a prince, but as an outcast from his family (and from the town).

Neither of these episodes have a happy ending, but Katara and Zuko have each gained a new perspective on the war and the events that transpire in these episodes have ramifications for their future actions. 

(Of course, there’s also the obvious sun and moon parallelism and similarities in scene framing used in these episodes, which just further ties them together).