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     Reincarnation specifics 
  • Word of God is that Aang was born the exact moment Roku died. So what sort of reincarnation are we talking about? Are all the Avatars in fact different people while it is the Avatar spirit that actually keeps reincarnating?
    • As of Legend of Korra's two part episode "Beginnings", it's hinted by Raava that the Avatar is indeed the same person throughout, but different incarnations of that person. What makes the Avatar special though is that Raava also tags along when this happens.

     Avatar MIA 
  • Why haven't they ever lost track of the Avatar before? Their medical technology doesn't seem to be very advanced, and considering that even with modern technology we still have things like Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, how is it possible a baby Avatar didn't die before they could be discovered? This should have left "gaps" in the Avatar line and made it appear that the Avatar skipped a stage in the cycle.
    • Maybe things like that have happened, but they weren't important enough to mention.
    • If the spirit of the moon can revive a newborn on the verge of death from a birth defect by placing a portion of its own essence into the baby, then the human incarnation of the planet itself can probably prevent the child from dying due to any kind of birth problems or disease. Finding an unusually healthy baby could even be part of how they screen out the Avatar. A fair bit of care also seems to be put by the forces that be into picking the next person to be the Avatar, it's likely that the Avatar doesn't die prematurely for the same reason no Avatar has seriously abused their power which would seem inevitable if it was totally random.
    • Before Sozin's war, there used to be a fairly large network of Avatar confederates. The Fire Sages answered ultimately to the Avatar; if Aang hadn't frozen himself for a hundred years, he could have easily turned them against Sozin. There would be similar networks in the Water Tribes and the Earth Kingdom. After a 100 years without the Avatar, those confederates were either absorbed into their member nations or disbanded. These groups were likely responsible for doing whatever it was they needed to do to find who the Avatar was. And without them, it will be more difficult to recognize Avatars in the future.
    • The Kyoshi novels are essentially what happens when they don't find the next Avatar immediately.

     The next airbender Avatar 
  • Aang is the last Airbender. Who's going to teach the next Avatar airbending after Aang passes on? In fact, what does this mean for the entire Avatar cycle?
    • Korra was taught by Tenzin, one of Aang's kids. Regarding the 'last Airbender' part, it's honestly quite unlikely the Fire Nation managed to get every single airbender all at once - after all, Aang got away - it seems prefectly reasonable that others may have escaped as well. Even then, bending isn't entirely genetic; season three of Korra demonstrates that when non-benders suddenly start getting airbending powers.

     Animal guides 
  • What creature would be the guardian animal of an Avatar from the Water Tribe? It seems obvious for the other elements (Sky bison, badgermoles and dragons) because they learned the bending arts from them, but what does a waterbender get?
    • Nobody said that Avatars require an animal guide. In any case, it seems that the Avatar just travels with whatever animal they have at his disposal, or is provided with one by the sages from their country. Korra does travel with a polarbear-dog, for what it's worth.

     Past lives, but no Avatar State 
  • If Aang could access the individual Avatar spirits for a sort of mini-Avatar State before he communed with them (Kyoshi, Roku, Yangchen, Kuruk) despite his blocked Cosmic chakra (Book 3 version), why could he not access all of them at once?
    • It's not so much accessing a mini-Avatar State since it doesn't bring the power of the past Avatars out, but rather takes him within himself to it. Also, he's on the back of a giant Lion-Turtle who may or may not be part of the Spirit World.

     Calling card 
  • Chapter three. Aang finds out that firebenders killed everyone in the Southern Temple, freaks out, and enters the Avatar State. This causes things in the temples around the four nations to light up. One of the Fire Sages says to "send word to the Fire Lord," because the Avatar has returned. But if the temples light up when Aang's in the Avatar State, wouldn't they have lit up in the previous chapter, when he buries Zuko's ship in ice? Or in the chapter before that, when he busts out of the iceberg he and Appa were frozen in?
    • Simple proximity. Aang was miles away in the first two instances.

     Potential for evil 
  • Have any Avatars taken advantage of their powers and turned evil? Would they be kept in check by their previous incarnations when they entered the Avatar state?
    • The forces choose the Avatar likely makes sure whoever they pick isn't going to do that - after all the Avatar Spirit has chosen to endlessly reincarnate in order to protect the balance of the world; callous destruction/conquest would be anathema to it. But assuming it were possible, the four nations would probably unite into a coalition and take him or her down.

     Roku teaching Aang 
  • Given bending incorporates a lot of philosophy and forms, the elements themselves coming after the fact, why couldn't Roku at least get Aang started on learning firebending? (And waterbending and earthbending, for that matter?)
    • Roku doesn't have a living body, it wouldn't be possible for Aang to get nearly as good a grasp on bending than if he had an actual living teacher. Plus, learning the four elements carries risk: Toph mentions that when Aang is learning Earthbending he could have easily crushed Sokka, and Aang, not understanding the philosophy of Firebending, ended up burning Katara. A physical teacher would work far better. Though, this does bring up a good question: it's shown that past Avatars can share their memories with the current Avatar. If so, why can't the past Avatars simply implant the knowledge of bending directly into Aang's mind?
      • That presumably just goes against the spirit (No Pun Intended) of the Avatar having to learn and master all four elements for harmony and balance and maintaining the planet reasons.

     Killing Chin 
  • In Avatar Day, it's accepted Avatar Kyoshi killed the warlord that the townspeople idolize. Except no she totally did not. She broke her peninsula away from the mainland to escape him, he stood too close to the crumbling edge, and he fell off. Maybe she feels responsible for his death, but she certainly didn't kill him.
    • Even if we figure she didn't really kill him and only shares partial blame, Kyoshi had literally just explained exactly how she killed Chin, inadverdently and accidently it may be, and despite that only due to his own incredible stupidity.
This was specifically discussed in the finale when Aang is talking to his past incarnations. "You didn't really kill Chin... he fell to his own demise because he was too stubborn to get out of the way." But Kyoshi said that personally she doesn't see the difference.

     Aang, Kyoshi and Chin 
  • In "Avatar Day", we, the audience, get to see in a flashback what happens to Chin. In her narration though, she doesn't actually say that he fell to his death. Two seasons later where Aang is consulting with Kyoshi over killing Ozai, he brings up the topic of Chin, and remarks about how "he fell to his own doom because he was too stubborn to get out of the way". How exactly did he know how Chin perished if Kyoshi never said it
    • Kyoshi was possessing Aang when she told the story. Presumably he saw what was in her mind's eye while she was recounting it.

     Dai Li effectiveness 
  • Kyoshi and the Dai Li. The 'Escape from the Spirit World' short claims she began the Dai Li as a way of maintaining Ba Sing Se's cultural heritage, but she describes them as skilled, stealthy, elite earthbenders. The kind of traits you'd find in soldiers, or spies, or...secret police. What did she think they'd end up doing?
    • For someone who values stability above all else, such as the entire Earth Kingdom with a earthbender-based Avatar, something as chaotic as a revolution which overthrows the established monarchy is probably one of the worst things you can imagine. Historically, revolutions are bloody, violent, gets lots of people on both sides killed, and frequently lead to the rise of other, even more radical factions. In Kyoshi's mind, one bad king wouldn't invalidate the entire system, but destroying that system might prove irreversible. One evil monarch is something that an Avatar could deal with (as she did with the warlord, and as Aang spent the entire series building up to) but internal political upheaval might not. At worst what we're seeing here is a bad case of Lawful Stupid, where Kyoshi didn't consider the possibility that without constant guidance the elite troops she helped train might end up following orders not in the best interest of the people.

     Avatar State=Glass Cannon? 
  • The Avatar State is shown to be super powerful. Aang melds with the friggin' ocean and mops up an entire Fire Nation Armada. Then, he goes Avatar State and gets one-shotted by Azula... Really?! It seemed like such a huge inconsistency to me that it ruined any further appearances by Azula. She seemed like the writer's pet villain, and all the heroes had to carry an Idiot Ball (and Chain) whenever she came around.
    • The Avatar State is powerful, yes, that doesn't make it unstoppable. It's still housed in a human shell, and humans can still be killed no matter how much fire they can shoot from their hands. And if you look at the scene, he turned his back to the enemy in the middle of a fight. Azula saw an opportunity and took it.
      • That's my point exactly. Aang doesn't do that in the Avatar State any other time. It's only when fighting Azula that he does something so phenomenally stupid. Against every other opponent, Aang is clever and even a bit wise. Against Azula he (and to a somewhat lesser extent EVERYONE ELSE) is a complete moron. Iroh was able to beat her effortlessly during her first appearance, then all of a sudden she was able to evade/defeat Iroh, Aang, Zuko, Katara AND Sokka together!
      • Iroh "beat" her by taking her by surprise. Plus, this is Iroh. You can't really say that getting beat by him makes you a weakling made of fail. And she evaded Everyone in the chase by realizing that she couldn't take all of them, waiting for a proper distraction, and abusing that distraction to cause a bigger one, and then she escaped. And Aang going into a meditative state in the middle of the fight had noting to do with Azula in and of itself. Because he ran out on Guru Pathik, he was unable to enter the Avatar State at all. So Azula, crafty being that she is, sees her enemy turn his back to her, and he starts to glow. Did you just expect her to stand there and get her ass beat?
      • Point of order. Aang didn't "turn his back" on the enemy. For one, he was surrounded, so his back was going to be toward some of his enemy no matter what he did, and for another, he was facing Azula and Zuko when he started meditating. Azula moved around behind him while he was doing so, presumably specifically to shoot him in the back.
      • Also, Aang is never ready to fight as soon as he goes into the Avatar State. He always does the floaty thing where he seems completely unaware of his surroundings for a while while he charges up. It's that Aang was unusually foolish or that Azula had superpowers, just that Azula was the only villain who realized it might be a good idea to take a shot at him while he was vulnerable and before he was ready to harness the full force of hundreds of past avatars.
    • Beyond all this, Azula was FREQUENTLY shown to be very smart, so it shouldn't be surprising that her reaction to the Avatar state would be to assess the situation and get in a shot while she could. And what she did didn't even require THAT much genius- just a calm mind under fire. Heck, someone was bound to figure it out and try it eventually
      • One thing that people tend to forget about this scene that makes it different from his other times being in the Avatar State, is that Aang is attempting to master the Avatar State at that point. Because he ran away from Pathik in the middle of mastering the Avatar State to save his friends, he unintentionally locked it until he was finished with attaining enlightenment. In all the other times he's activated the state, it's been Raava and/or the previous Avatars who've been piloting the Avatar State and making Aang a dangerous force to be reckoned with, but this time Aang is the one trying to control it, making the transition a good opening for Azula to strike. When it boils down to it, the lights are on but nobody's home.
     Future airbenders 
  • So, if Aang really is the last airbender, what's going to happen after the next firebending avatar dies? If Aang has no airbending descendents, and/or no one else can figure out how to learn airbending, and/or he doesn't transfer airbending power to anyone else, (if he can take power away, surely he can give some?) will the whole cycle end? Will it skip over to the next nation/element, Water? Or will an airbending child just automatically be born?
    • The Legend of Korra. Aang's son is an airbender.
    • And as of seaon 3 of Korra, Harmonic Convergence has led to airbending being granted to a whole host of different people, worldwide. And there are two other nations for the Avatar to be born into before Raava has to go back to the Air nomads - the odds of the next earth and firebending Avatars dying quickly enough to leave her without any new candidates seem pretty unlikely.
     Aang's statue 
  • So where will they put Aang's statue after he's gone? The room of statues seems pretty full.
    • Move another statue over. They are stone statues.
     Air nomad genocide 
  • Why did Sozin think that massacring the Air Nomads would solve anything? If Aang had died as a baby, wouldn't a new Avatar just have been born in the Water Tribe? Unless he systematically slaughtered every race but the Fire Nation the Avatar still would have been born.
    • It was predominately a ploy to further his control. If he killed the Avatar too early, it wouldn't have made any difference. Instead, he waited until the Avatar was about 12 to give him time to plan. Also he probably thought "kill them until they Fire-bend and then mind-control them".
    • It's easier to kill than to capture, especially when the thing or person you're after specializes in escape and evasion. It was probably easier to wait until the comet came and launch a sneak attack to be sure, and then shift through the Waterbenders for the new Avatar.
    • Do note, however, that the Fire Nation did proceed to capture/kill all the Waterbenders from the Southern Tribe (even if this apparently took them a few decades...), and they at least tried to attack the Northern Tribe. Now, this doesn't rule out an Avatar being born to that tribe in the swamp, but it's unclear how many people actually know about them. Also, they did colonize a lot of the Earth Kingdom, so it wouldn't theoretically be too hard for them to find an Earthbending Avatar either.
    • The problem with that idea though is several fold. First the Air Nomads as far as we're shown are the least militaristic of the groups. Sozin wiped them out entirely but a hundred (or so) years later the Water and Earth Kingdoms are still standing. If he'd killed Aang the next Avatar would have been some place better defended. Also we know that Avatars aren't always identified as young as Aang. What reason did they have (aside from him not showing up in aforementioned Water and Earth kingdoms to believe they had magically missed a single Air Bender instead of the more likely idea that he was currently training at the North Pole or something. Honestly the Air Nomads with their strict no killing policies was probably the best place for the Avatar aside from on his side.
    • The problem I saw is that even if they didnt know how to officially end the Avatar cycle, they would've had a hard time sieging the northern Water Tribe for their Avatar. Dunno about the southern tribe though.
    • Well, I'm trying to write a screenplay/script for fun, and to see how hard it is. I'm explaining it this way: Sozin didn't give the order to exterminate the Air Nomads. He sent his forces to the temples to look for the Avatar, and the Air Nomads refused to give him up. The soldiers orders if they wouldn't cooperate was to kill them all and begin rounding up the benders from the next nation in the cycle. Thus, Hama's captivity. It makes sense to me because Sozin originally wanted to help the world. He let his friend die because he thought it was necessary for him to help the world by spreading Fire Nation culture. Not because he's an amoral sadist. He genuinely wanted to help the world, but was misguided. So giving the Air Nomads a chance to surrender the Avatar and the order to kill being secondary seems to fit in with his character to me.
    • Sozin's last will and testament states that he attacked the Air temples. Not that he tried to resolve things peacefully and only killed them as a last resort. Confronting the Air nomads like that only would've given them time to help the Avatar escape.
    • Since Roku was told he was the Avatar on his sixteenth birthday, maybe Sozin mistakenly assumed that's when he became the Avatar, too. So he figured that if he killed every airbender within fifteen years of Roku's death, there wouldn't be any candidates to become the Avatar, and so the Avatar itself would cease to be. It wasn't until later that he or his descendants discovered that the Avatar spirit doesn't quite work that way.
     Order of bending 
  • So the cycle of the Avatar being born into each nation always goes Air, Water, Earth, Fire, and because of the perceived difficulty in learning different styles they learn them in the same order. Usually makes sense: the purely reactive/defensive Airbenders would probably find the purely aggressive Firebending difficult, Firebenders focus entirely on their inner energies would have difficulty controlling the ultimately external and solid earth, Earthbenders would probably have serious issues with the "ebb and flow" of waterbending. But Waterbenders, as far as I can tell, should be pretty handy in picking up Airbending while having as many problems - or more - with Earthbending as anyone else. Can someone else figure this out?
    • Waterbending is about redirecting your opponent's energy for use against them, while Airbending is more about avoiding it entirely when possible. And, when you really think about it, you could theoretically be able to learn the cycle backward without much difficulty. Airbenders can gel with the acrobatics of Firebending, Firebenders will like Earthbending's natural offensive capability, Earthbending has synergy with Waterbending's use of defense. The thing is, It's just better a bit safer to go the cycle the right way. Aang treated fire like it was air in the Deserter, and you see what happened there.
    • Maybe on first glance, but think deeper. Waterbending and Airbending philosophy are extremely different. Waterbending is all about redirection of energy. To redirect an attack you need to be able to face it head-on, with a clear mind. Airbending is about being agile and defensive, earthbending is very balanced, firebending lacks defense, and water can be offense or defense. Waterbending has more in common with earthbending than the other two. Firebending and Airbending are linked through breathing. Waterbending and earthbending seem to be linked through focusing on shifting the world around you, rather than you shifting to the world.
    • Also, it seems to be enforced by a number of things from the show, including certain characters (like Aang's first Firebending teacher- Jeong Jeong), that the Avatar must as a law of how being the Avatar works, learn the elements in accordance to the Avatar Cycle. This actually helps considering that each art in a way helps progress to the next one in cyclical fashion. In the case of Aang specifically, it seems to work like this:
    Air is freedom- he knows by default how to evade and defend through finding openings he can exploit
    Water is change - he can take his evasion and defense and mold it into an offensive and vice versa, redirecting the flow of combat as necessary
    Earth is substance - now knowing how to evade and redirect are one thing but with this he learns to handle the unavoidable and unchangeable by rooting oneself, which finally leads to...
    Fire is power - now knowing how to evade, redirect, and root, he now uses all of this to mount a full offensive
     Keeping the Avatar a secret 
  • Why isn't the Avatar's identity ever kept a secret? I mean, it seems like it would be easier to have people know the Avatar is around but not really know who he/she is, so as to avoid things like assination attempts and allow the Avatar to go undercover or something if need.
    • A fully-realized Avatar would pretty much laugh at any assassin that comes after him or her. That said, it would be easy for the Avatar to go undercover. Most people really wouldn't know what the Avatar looks like; this isn't a setting where everyone has internet and iPhones. They have, at best, sketches and portraits, which aren't perfectly reliable, especially if the Avatar goes around publicly in flamboyant dress and then shifts to a more subtle disguise.
    • It's also unavoidable for some people to know who the Avatar is. Each generation of bending masters will have to teach them, and other benders will learn with them. They'll also have to learn how to master the Avatar state from some of the sages of the day. Presumably they'd formally meet the world leaders who'd be answerable to them, and those leaders would need to have some way of contacting the Avatar in times of emergency. Your average cabbage merchant might not recognise the Avatar, but there's quite a few people who would.
    • Indeed. Aang is kind of at a disadvantage because he's, well, the last airbender, and the tattoos are a dead giveaway. If he hailed from, say, any other nation, or if the airbenders weren't completely wiped out, he could actually blend easily with the crowd. Heck, even in the actual show he successfully goes undercover by hiding his arrow.
     Roku battling the volcano 
  • The scene where Roku fought two massive volcanoes. He stopped the first one with a single use of the avatar state to bend all the lava to flow towards the sea on the far side of the island, breaking that side of the volcano to create a large enough outlet. So when the second one exploded, why did he not try that again?
    • Because the Avatar State tires you out.
    • Aang used it twice in a row without a problem. Getting tired only seems to happen when the Avatars haven't properly mastered it.
    • Aang never had to redirect all the lava of a volcano, though.
    • Remember, Roku was old by that time; you can't expect him to have as much energy as the 12-year old, hyperactive Aang. Repeatedly taking in lungfuls of toxic gas sure wasn't helping, either.
    • According to the Visual Novel (the same one where Kyoshi explains that she created the Dai Li) Roku explains to Aang that he never had the patience to completely master the avatar state. So he probably couldn't summon it.
    • It's been shown several times that while the Avatar State still gives you a powerful edge and superhuman feats, the body is still susceptible to death and injuries. Sure, the Avatar State tries the best it can to prevent death and can even circumvent bloodbending, but it only buys them a matter of minutes. In The Legend of Korra Book 3, Korra is poisoned with a whole large bowl's worth of mercury soaking into her system. The Avatar State tries to turn on in order to prevent her from dying and eventually succeeds when Korra is too weak to keep it held back but even then she still ends up being affected by it after a few minutes. Heck, even Aang got shot full of lightning by Azula in the state and that wound up still killing him. So it's not too out there to believe that age + inhaling toxic fumes wouldn't give Roku enough time to get both volcanoes to stop when the odds are stacked against him, even with the Avatar State's help.
     Aang's blockage 
  • How did Aang's 7th chakra get blocked by lightning? The wound was in his back, not the top of his head. And how come Katara couldn't do what was done by a pointy rock? Did re-opening the wound also open up the energy path in the process?
    • Likely. Remember that the world of avatar doesn't just have locations for chi (like the chakras), but also has pressure points that can interfere with it. We're specifically shown Katara is unable to cure affected pressure points, so it might be that Azula hit a pressure point by accident (or maybe she learned some from Ty Lee).
      • They never actually state which chakra gets blocked by the lightning; the 7th was just the one that Aang was in the process was releasing when he got shot. My theory is that it was his first chakra, the Earth chakra, that got blocked, since the Guru stated that it was located at the base of the spine. Plus, when Katara starts feeling his chi there, he gets visions of when he got killed. The Earth chakra is blocked by fear, and what causes more fear than death?
      • Public speaking.
      • I'm not satisfied with that answer. It's a good one, but it doesn't explain things for me. He was in the process of releasing it, but that required him to let go of Katara. Maybe it didn't mean "let go of your love for her forever" so much as "let go of your desire for her; if she is with you then that is good, if she is not with you then that is acceptable as well." Regardless, his words to Katara in The Ember Island Players pretty strongly indicates he hadn't let go by that point. He was still emotionally attached, his seventh chakra was not opened, and the Avatar Spirit was damaged—the latter two are because of Azula's lightning bolt, but the former was just there. The idea that the lightning had specifically blocked him from reaching the Avatar State was really something not particularly made clear until it was 'un'blocked, and there were other reasons at hand that as far as I'm concerned were never resolved.
      • If you paid attention to Aang's Chakra training, you'd realise that in order for the Avatar State to be controlled you have to open all the Chakras. Like the Guru said, the Chakra is like a river and the day to day worries and such are clouding it. If you unlock them all then the energy flows. Considering that Aang was not only locked out of controlling the Avatar State but also locked out from using it at all, this would then mean that the river hasn't just been clouded; it's been blocked from flowing at all.
     Rebirth in the middle of nowhere 
  • So the Avatar cycle. When an Avatar dies, another is born into the next group. But what happens if the Avatar is born outside of the home of its Benders? I suppose they could still contact someone to say "my child is the Avatar," but what if they're born into a group that's cut off from society, like the Foggy Swamp Tribe? In fact, they wouldn't know when that Avatar DIES either, so they'd end up possibly going through GENERATIONS of Avatars without knowing until someone sees them bending an element they shouldn't be.
    • My guess is it's one of those fate things where something makes sure that the Avatar is identified and found. If it was in the Foggy Swamp Tribe, probably the kid would come of age right when someone from outside is passing through who could ID him.
    • This troper always assumed that if the next Avatar was born in the Foggy Swamp tribe, it would not take long for the Sage's to realise that none of the babies born in that time period at the North/South Pole was the Avatar, so they would go look for him/her elsewhere.
    • If the Foggy Swamp Tribe sees that one of their children is bending an element they shouldn't be or that their eyes light up whenever they get upset, it wouldn't be too hard for them to find a way out of the swamp to inform the rest of the world. And they said that they thought they were the only waterbenders in the world, not that there weren't any other humans at all.
     Breaking the cycle 
  • So, it was established that if the Avatar was killed in the Avatar State, the Avatar Cycle would stop. When Azula temporarily kills Aang, she blocks his Chakra, preventing him from entering the Avatar State. He somehow unblocks the Chakra during his battle with Ozai, thus letting him use it again. So... what would have happened if the Chakras WEREN'T unblocked? (Or if Aang were killed, for that matter( Would the Avatar Cycle just have stopped? I'm surprised this was never brought up, actually, unless I've missed something.
    • It's pretty clear that you have to be killed in the Avatar State to break the cycle. If Aang wasn't in the Avatar State when he died, that wouldn't break the cycle. Simple as that.
    • He saved the Avatar Cycle from ending in Escape from the Spirit World.
    • It's not even made clear that Aang actually died in the second season finale. For all we know, Katara managed to heal him up before he actually died. Otherwise, that spirit water would be in much greater demand if it had the ability to revive people from death.
     Breaking the cycle II 
  • So the Avatar cycle will end if an Avatar is killed while in the Avatar state. Okay. But how does anybody know this for sure? I mean, it's not like they had another Avatar to test this out on, did they?
    • Spirits are mortal when they are present in the physical world. So it makes sense that the Avatar is no exception. But then there have been at least a thousand avatars before Aang each with their own backstories and issues to sort out keeping the world in balance. So IMHO, I think there is a very good chance that at least some part of this lesson was learnt the hard way — Aang wasn't the only avatar to have been critically injured in the Avatar state.
    • This is perhaps something the Avatar Spirit knows innately, and passes along to its current incarnation when the time is right, in the form of the previous incarnation, as Roku did for Aang. The first Avatar simply knew it, or was told by the Lion Turtle or something.
      • The Moon Spirit didn't have to die for people to realize that it could be killed. I always assumed that the Avatar State was similar to the Moon and Ocean spirits becoming koi fish; Aang's tapping into his past lives, by extension, taps into the Avatar Spirit itself, which means that it temporarily exists fully in the physical world and can thus die.
    • Explained in The Legend of Korra. When Avatar enters the Avatar state, s/he is physically fused with spirit of light Raava. So if you die in this state, Raava dies too. No Raava, no connection to past life or ability to bend all four elements. However, if you separate Raava and Avatar...
      • They weren't asking why being killed in the Avatar State ends the cycle, though. What they were asking was how anyone knew that to be the case. That answer being, the only other people who seem to know about it apart from the Avatars themselves are the Red Lotus in The Legend of Korra, who probably learned about it from Unalaq, who may've learned about it from Vaatu.
      • The answer doesn't explain why Azula knew how to end the cycle enough to actually do it since neither Azula or the rest of the royal family even knew of Vaatu.
      • The Fire Sages changed loyalty from the Avatar to the Fire Lord. Presumably if they had known from a past avatar telling them so they could teach the next avatar how to do it safely, that info would pass to the Fire Lord and the rest of the nation.
     Number of Avatars 
  • How many avatars have appeared before Aang? Roku seems to put the number at around a thousand. Human society would be even older than that? But wait, it's said that the Moon and ocean spirits have been around almost since the beginning of the world and created the spirit oasis to help mankind. So just how old is human civilization in the Avatar-verse?
    • Well, humans didn't necessarily develop bending skills right at the beginning of human civilization. I don't think they ever gave a specific timeline for when bending was developed, and it's possible that some elements took longer to develop than others. A thousand Avatars seems like a small number, but also remember that people in Avatar seem to be able to live a long time, Avatar or not (Kyoshi was over two hundred, but even Bumi has to be over 100), so it's quite likely that the Avatar system has been around for longer than it looks like.
      • ^This. I'd say Firebending is the oldest, followed by Airbending, then maybe Waterbending and Earthbending? It'd make sense: the sun has been around longer than humans most likely, and the firebenders are very advanced for their time. Airbending I'd place second because air is such a natural thing and because the air nomads are so spiritual and seem so ancient because of it. Waterbending and earthbending are a guess. It also makes sense because what's the Avatar cycle? All together now... Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Perhaps the first Avatar was a firebender, then around the time they died, Airbending was discovered and so the next Avatar could firebend and airbend. When the second Avatar was dying, waterbending was being discovered and the third Avatar could bend water, fire, and air. Finally earthbending developed, the Avatar could bend all four, and the cycle started over again. This explanation is helped by the fact that the Avatar is empowered by its past lives.
      • Or it is just possible that when Roku said that the Avatar had been around 1,000 times, he was just saying a large generic number. It's entirely possibly that the Avatar spirit has been around for less/more time.
      • The Legend of Korra reveals that Wan, the first Avatar, lived 10,000 years ago. Assuming the average lifespan of an Avatar to be about 70 years (though considering Kyoshi, it may well be bigger than that), we're looking at roughly 140-150 Avatars between Wan and Aang or Korra. And human civilization predates the Avatar Cycle; by Wan's time there already existed human cities with roughly antiquity-era technology. Oh, and Wan was born a nonbender, learning firebending first, which counted as his native element.
      • But also being the Avatar is a very dangerous job, we know a couple of them that get to old age like Roku and Hiroshi, but we don’t know how many died young, so increasing the number.
     Surviving the genocide 
  • How did Sozin know the Avatar wasn't killed in his attacks on the air temples? He states he knew that the Avatar survived, but he didn't say how. Even if he was Crazy-Prepared and ordered everyone to account for somebody bending more than one element, that probably wouldn't account for much since a young Avatar at one of the air temples probably didn't know how to do anything besides airbender. Was he just paranoid and didn't want to assume they Avatar was dead unless it was proven without a shadow a doubt?
    • "Was he just paranoid and didn't want to assume they Avatar was dead unless it was proven without a shadow a doubt?" Yes, I think that's it. Sozin would have no way of knowing which, if any, of the slain airbender children was the Avatar. However, Crazy-Prepared runs in the family; in the flashbacks in The Search, Ozai similarly refuses to accept No One Could Survive That! as definite proof that Ikem is dead.
    • Sozin asks his troops did any of the airbenders use anything else than airbending or go into weird hypermode. No? Avatar got away. Avatar state is(until mastered) a reflex reaction to protect the Avatar.
      • This is the most likely answer. Considering the number of times the Avatar State kicks in during the events of the series, there's no doubt Aang would've also gone into it if he'd been present during the genocide of his people. Sozin probably knew from the Fire Sages (or from Roku himself, pre-Sozin's Face–Heel Turn) that the Avatar State was a defense mechanism, so its absence is what tipped him off that Aang had survived.
     Blocked chakra 
  • How did Aang go into the Avatar State in Crossroads Of Destiny? If the block was his love for Katara, then we would have to see him rejecting that love in some fashion, and we never do. What the heck did he do to "let her go"? And for that matter, what does "let her go" actually mean?
    • You have to remember that what was blocking Aang from the Avatar State was his final chakra in which he had to let go of all worldly attachments. Katara is blocking Aang from unlocking it because his love for her kept him bound. This isn't to say he shouldn't love her, as shown a few chakra's earlier, but the lesson here is not "let Katara go" but to learn to let go. It's not a permanent thing, it's just learning to disconnect himself from these earthly bonds and thus, control the Avatar State.
    • This is a very common issue with the "You must let go of your loved ones to unlock your true power" lesson that mentors like to give: they don't properly explain what they mean by "letting your loved ones go". The chakra isn't being blocked because he's in love with Katara (Roku proves this later on by showing Aang that he had a wife of his own without it affecting his abilities as the Avatar); it's being blocked because Aang can't set his love of Katara aside. What Guru Pathik should have told Aang is more along the lines of "There's nothing wrong with loving someone, but your duties as the Avatar have to come first." "Letting her go in order to use the Avatar State" means that if he's put in a position where he has to choose between Katara and acting as the Avatar, he needs to choose acting as the Avatar. The reason he was able to go into the Avatar State in Crossroads of Destiny is because he chose to focus on unlocking his power instead of rushing to Katara's aid when she was outnumbered by the Dai Li.
     Glowy tattoos 
  • Why do Aang and Yangchen's tattoos light up when they go into the Avatar State? Is there something special about the ink? If an avatar from another nation got a regular tattoo, would it light up?
    • The tattoos follow the flow of the chi in the body, and in the back, reach from the 1st chakra to the 7th (and the 6th on the forehead). The tattoos probably light up because the chi flow underneath them is greater in Avatar State than otherwise. Regular tattoos are unlikely to glow, though.
     Why bother learning anything? 
  • If the Avatar State is basically a manifestation of all the knowledge and experience of all the past Avatars, and there is a process through which Aang can learn to control it, then why does he even worry about learning to bend the elements on his own? Couldn't he just as easily do his job by going into the Avatar state to get the work done?
    • Because the Avatar State isn't something to be relied on too often. It's first and foremost a self-defense mechanism intended to help the Avatar in moments of life and death scenarios, but even then there's a big risk that the Avatar during an Avatar State could be overwhelmed and killed. If it was used simply for mundane tasks all the time then it's likely that the Avatar State wouldn't be honed to survival as well. Finally, it is taxing on the body if used too much. Aang had spent a full 100 years in the Avatar State and was biologically 66 years old by the time he died, which when compared to Roshi and Kyoshi before him lived longer than that. And keep in mind, Aang died rather peacefully whereas Roshi's life was only cut short thanks to breathing in toxic fumes and dealing with sweltering heat on two volcanoes: there's no telling how much older he could've gotten otherwise.

      In the end, all mastering the Avatar State allows you to do is control it and use it, but an Avatar still has to be responsible with that power.
    • Another thing to consider is that in order to master the Avatar State, it's best to master the four elements as well. Without the disciplines and teachings learned from the four elements, the Avatar will have a pretty hard time mastering the Avatar State. Roshi tried forcing it before he learned all four elements and he just wound up going on a rampage. Aang only finally mastered it by the end of the series after he had a somewhat good handle on the four elements.
     Glowy statues 
  • If Aang going into the Avatar State makes the eyes of his previous incarnations' statues glow, then why didn't the Fire Nation know he'd returned when he went into it while escaping from Zuko's ship?
    • It's probably a continuity goof as the statues hadn't been featured until the second time he went into the state. An alternative answer would be that they weren't aware of the first time it glowed, which would entirely be within the realm of possibility.
    • Speaking of which, Aang was in the Avatar State when he was frozen inside that iceberg...Does that mean that the statues had all been glowing for the past 100 years, and then suddenly stopped one day?
    • Maybe, maybe not. We have no way of knowing if the statues maintain their glow throughout the entire Avatar State, so it's possible their glow could've faded away after some time until the next time it was used.
    • Perhaps the statues glowing is conneced to the Avatar's proximity to a spirituarlly significant space, such as the air temples.
     Visiting the temple 
  • Why did Aang need to be at Roku's temple on the solstice in order to speak with him? Roku contacts Aang multiple times throughout the series with no apparent prerequisites.
    • IIRC, that visit with Roku happened to be the first proper time they could converse. Perhaps before then, Aang couldn't freely communicate with his previous lives which might explain why he needed to appear at the temple during the solstice, when spiritual energy is most abundant.
    • So what changed after Aang went to the temple? Roku is able to communicate with Aang when it's not on the solstice and when he's not at the temple.
    • Exactly. That's likely why the temple visit was needed, so Roku could communicate with Aang freely afterwards.
     Knowledge of Raava 
  • So, did any other Avatars besides Korra (and Wan, I guess) ever find out about the Avatar's connection to Raava?
    • I'd be willing to bet that the first handful were able to converse with Raava normally but after a certain point there were just so many past lives that she got lost in the crowd, and with her and her dark companion out of sight for so long the world largely forgot about them both so the Avatars stopped trying to contact her.
     Fire Avatar 
  • How did the Fire Sages know that Roku was the next Avatar? The monks gave Aang some sort of test, and Korra was bending earth and fire at four years old, so what did Roku do to prove himself amongst all the other people in the Fire Nation?
    • The White Lotus looked over Korra's training and are said to be allies of the Avatar. It's also known that the White Lotus isn't limited to any one nation, even back near the end of A:TLA. So it's implied at least that the White Lotus know what signs to look out for, and in particular, trying to narrow the list down to the number of children born on the day (or assuming Aang's vision of Roku's death wasn't instant, 9 months after) the last Avatar died.
     Avatar's descendants 
  • Could the Avatar give birth to a bender of an element other than their birth one? Like say, Aang giving birth to an earth or firebender, or Roku to a waterbender, and such and such.
    • You mean like Kya? Then yes. Otherwise it's unclear since Aang only had two children who had bending capabilities (and one who didn't at first) which mirrored his and Katara's. But seeing as bending seems to be partly genetic, it could be possible.
    • Technically, the Avatar didn't give birth to Kya. But as bending is, yes, genetic, it seems that Kya still works as proof. Note, however, that none of Aang's kids picked up Earth or Fire bending. I'd say it's more based on his birth nation than anything else.
    • I specified "earth or firebender" because Katara was already a waterbender, so them having a waterbender child could just be traced back to her.
  • The answer is "no". Aang is genetically an Air Nomad, his extra bending abilities came from being bonded to Raava. Since his children don't inherit that link they don't inherit those abilities.
     Avatar from Northern Water Tribe 
  • What if Avatar is born as a woman into the Northern Water Tribe?
    • This was asked on the "Other Characters" page. There, it was suggested that either an exception would be made for the female Avatar to learn combat waterbending, she would be sent to the South Pole (or the Foggy Swamp, provided they knew about the waterbenders there) where they don't seem to have the same bias, or the division of genders was a recent development (compared to when the last Water Avatar was born) and they hadn't really thought the ramifications through. We know that the last Water Avatar before Korra was the male Kuruk, and in between them we had two extremely long-lived Avatars in the form of Kyoshi and Aang — that gives the Northern Water Tribe plenty of time for their views and policies to have changed since they last had an Avatar, specifically a female Avatar, born to them.

    Why does killing all the nomads do? 
  • If the Fire Nation knows that the Avatar, once killed, is always reborn into the next nation in the cycle, then why did they kill all the Air nomads in the first place? And why are they still expecting the Avatar to be a 100-year-old airbender? Shouldn't there have come a point where they started looking for an earthbender instead?
    • They might have been intending to break the reincarnation cycle for good in the long term and keep the Avatar from being of a competent age for a few decades in the short term.
      • My personal assumption is that the end game goal was to rush the cycle back to fire nation, where the fire nation Avatar would grow up with the same propaganda laden education as Zuko or the kids from "The Headband" and as such putting the Avatar, theoretically an unstoppable weapon, in their army, with the goal that, by the time that Avatar has perished the Earth Nation, Water Tribe and whatever survivors of the Air Nomads (presumably non bender offspring that survived the massacre) would all be under Fire Nation Control.
    • It's worth noting that, as Zaheer proves in Korra, if Airbenders were to be pushed to forgo their pacifistic nature (say, because of a 100 year long war for example) they could become a devastating threat, perhaps even more than Firebenders. Taking them out at the start of the war may have been a survival strategy.
  1. They're still suspecting it's an airbender because there hadn't been so much as a single substantiated sighting of the avatar in over 100 years, even during the years when the "new avatar" would've been a child, meaning that the only explanation is that the avatar escaped and has lived to a ripe old age.

    Shouldn't the FN be checking out the Water Tribes? 
  • Why didn't the water tribes get mentioned more in series 3? Between Crossroads of Destiny and the Day of Black Sun most of the fire nation believed that Aang was dead, so why is it that none of the fire nation scenes suggest that they were considering the fact that the next avatar would be born into one of the water tribes, which was the reason for the Air Nomad massacre 100 years prior. Not only that, none of the Gaang made any reference to the possibility of the fire nation thinking this.
    • Azula “killed” Aang while he was in the Avatar State, remember? If you get killed in the Avatar State, the Avatar Cycle ceases to continue. They don’t mention the search for the next Avatar because they probably don’t expect that there’s going to be another one.
    • The fact the Avatar cycle ends if you're killed in the Avatar State doesn't seem to be common knowledge, in fact it's implied to be a secret only the Avatars know, passed on to the current incarnation by the previous one. Which makes sense, because the Avatar wouldn't want to reveal their greatest vulnerability... So how would the Fire Nation know about it?
    • The sequel series tells us there's an offshoot of the Order of the White Lotus who is aware of the weakness; they try to force Korra into the Avatar State before killing her so that they can plunge the world into anarchy. If they know about it, there could well be others who could've spilled the beans to Ozai or someone serving under him. It may not be common knowledge, but it's not something only the Avatar is in on.
    • Even if they'd expected the Avatar to be reborn again, them going after the Water Tribe wouldn't be big news since they've been going at it already for a good portion of the war, and were never successful. Nothing about Aang's supposed death would change the fact that the Northern Water Tribe is still extremely defensible, the southern tribe was stripped down to a group of people who are too old to be giving birth, and there's no indication that they're aware of the Foggy Swamp Tribe. And as an analogy, the Air nomad genocide took place 12 years after Roku died, partly because Sozin had all that time to prepare when the newborn Aang wasn't a threat. Ozai has that same time to build up his resources to ensure that when he does move against the Water Tribes, it will be a success.

    Avatar in the more secluded communities 
  • So what happens if the avatar is born into the Foggy Swamp Tribe or the Sun Warriors? I mean they’re pretty secluded, what would their methods be to tell?
    • They don't have a way to tell, but the child would still be able to bend all four elements and would likely stumble upon a second one eventually and realise they have to leave. Or they might make contact with one of their past lives eventually.
    • The Sun Warriors probably know about the Avatar already (especially after ‘’The Legend of Korra’’ revealed that it was the first Avatar who invented the Dancing Dragon), and it’s implied they were only in hiding during the first series because the Fire Nation in its current state is actively trying to destroy their firebending philosophy. I’m guessing they’d become less secretive after Zuko took the throne, also considering his dragon mount is said to be the spawn of the Masters Ran and Shaw. And there was at least one member of the Foggy Swamp tribe who knew who the Avatar was, on top of the swamp itself being a very spiritual place. Not to mention, we don’t know how secluded they really are either.

    Age sixteen 
Is there a reason why sixteen is the recommended age to tell the Avatar of their identity? Is sixteen considered the age where adulthood is reached? I know that in the Northern Water Tribe, people were considered of marrying age by their sixteenth birthday, which is kinda why I'm asking.

     Talking to the Past Avatars 
In finale, we see Aang summon Roku and other Avatars in order to seek their counsel. Ok......so why did he never do that before? Every other interaction they had, Aang had to invoke some kind of condition(like talking on the solstice, or wearing Kyoshi's outfit) to summon a past Avatar or Roku would just show up to Aang by his own volition. But in the finale, Aangs just mediates and brings Roku up. When did Aang learn to do this? If he could always do this, why the hell did he NOT do this before the finale? The scene does not even have any real impetus that would lead Aang to this deduction. He just wanted to talk to Roku and then *realises* he can talk to Roku whenever he wants apparently.

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