Korra is still submerged in the subterranean pool of spirit water. One of the Fire Sages questions if she should be pulled up; the Shaman responds that she is connecting with her deepest Avatar memories and that she must confront her own past. Korra returns her attention to Wan's story, in which he is debating with Raava about humans' interference with spirit matters.
Wan continues his travels, and eventually discovers some people with the ability to airbend, thrilled to see other humans for the first time in two years. Frightened, the airbenders flee. Wan tries to follow them until he approaches a cliff which he cannot traverse. He notices one airbender running towards him, but is surprised to watch the man leap over him and go flying towards a lion turtle that is floating in the air. Wan eventually makes his way onto the lion turtle and introduces himself to the airbenders—and their spirit friends who live among them, in contrast to his own former home. However, Vaatu takes control of the spirits on the lion turtle and begins to terrorize the inhabitants, before revealing his presence, which the airbenders question due to the absence of Raava. Wan tries to fight off the spirits with firebending, when Raava arrives. After gloating about how he will destroy Raava, Vaatu flees with the dark spirits. Confused, the people living atop the air lion turtle ask why the spirits attacked. Wan explains himself and resolves to beat Vaatu by asking the lion turtle to grant him the power of air. Initially, the lion turtle declines, but Wan is determined to undo the damage he has done. The lion turtle agrees to grant Raava the ability, who will pass it to Wan when he is ready.
Raava warns Wan that every time Vaatu gains power, her strength wanes, and she goes on to say that in one year, the Harmonic Convergence will occur and Vaatu will destroy everything around them. During the next year, Raava helps Wan master firebending and airbending. They find more lion turtles and gain the powers of water and earth as well. Near the end of the year, Wan and Raava find a ravaged section of forest; it transpires that Wan's friends have left their city to create their own settlement with the help of the power of fire, but are being attacked by spirits. Wan recognizes several of the spirits from the oasis. However, they are soon corrupted by Vaatu, forcing him to fight them off with Raava. He ultimately fails in the attempt, and all the humans are wiped out by Vaatu's forces.
Raava, in a severely weakened state, asked Wan to travel to the southern portal for the Harmonic Convergence. In the final battle with Vaatu, Wan is severely beaten despite his bending abilities. Even fusing with Raava to bend multiple elements at once proves fruitless. Though her presence puts a great strain on his body, Wan refuses to give up. As the convergence begins, Wan, in a desperate gamble, touches the southern portal, absorbing the energy, permanently merging himself and Raava into one entity, creating the Avatar Spirit. After beating back Vaatu andusing all four elements to imprison him inside a tree, Wan makes it his mission to bring peace to the world while acting as the bridge between spirits and humans to avoid another disaster. To do so, he has all of the spirits leave the material world, and return to the spirit world, at which point he closes the spirit portals to ensure no human would be able to physically enter the Spirit World and free Vaatu.
Many years later, an elderly Wan, seconds away from death, is seen laying amidst a war-torn battlefield. He laments that despite all his best efforts, chaos and destruction still exist in the world even with Vaatu locked away. Raava tells him that she will always be with him for all his lifetimes. Wan then passes away and the Avatar cycle begins.
After this, Korra awakens with her memory intact. The shaman asks her who she is. Korra replies that she is the Avatar and knows what must be done. The head sage takes Korra outside to a herd of sky bison that were saved after the Hundred Year War. Korra is gifted one and flies back towards the South Pole with the knowledge that Harmonic Convergence will occur in only a few weeks.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Apocalypse How: The consequence for the world if Raava loses to Vaatu at Harmonic Convergence. Vaatu will ravage the world in ten thousand years of darkness and, at the very least, humans will likely be completely wiped out.
- The Atoner: Wan spends the rest of his life trying to make up for freeing Vaatu and creating wide-scale conflict between humans (and the different human factions) and spirits.
- Badass Boast:
- Vaatu boasts that no human can defeat him several times during the battle, and quite awesomely too.Vaatu: I lived ten thousand lifetimes before the first of your kind crawled out of the mud! It was I who broke through the divide that separated the plane of spirits from the material world! To hate me is to give me breath. To fight me is to give me strength. Now prepare to face oblivion!
- Wan gets one as well.Wan: Haven't you heard the legends? I'm not a regular human anymore.
- Vaatu boasts that no human can defeat him several times during the battle, and quite awesomely too.
- Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Wan breaths his last breath on an unknown battlefield. As Raava leaves him in that breath, she tells him that she will always be with him, and they'll keep fighting. When the screen fades to white, a baby is heard crying, symbolizing that the Avatar cycle has begun and the second Avatar has been born.
- Black Comedy: When Wan happens upon the airbenders and they see him firebending, the first thing they do is run for it.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: It is implied Vaatu's corruption is this to spirits. When the spirits, led by the Aye-Aye spirit, confront the firebenders destroying their forest, they are initially fine, if angry. Moments later all spirits become corrupted, with Wan stepping in to try to stop the fighting. For a moment, the Aye-Aye spirit recovers from the corruption and asks what happened, implying he was not aware of his actions while a dark spirit.
- Call-Forward:
- The people who live on the Air Lion Turtle have tattoos similar, though not completely the same, as those belonging to the Air Nomads.
- On the battlefield where Wan passes, there are some of the discs used by Earth Kingdom warriors during the previous series. The season two artbook says this is intended to be the same battlefield Zuko passed through in "Zuko Alone".
- Can't Argue with Elves: Averted. The problem is with both the humans and the spirits. When they conflict, Wan and Raava attack them both to make them stop. Then there's the fact that Wan definitely argues with Vaatu.
- Celestial Deadline: It's revealed that in Wan's time a celestial event called Harmonic Convergence is set to occur in a year, which only happens once every ten thousand years, wherein Raava and Vaatu fight for the fate of the world. If Vaatu wins then the world will suffer ten thousand years of darkness. After waking up Korra discovers that the next Harmonic Convergence is only weeks away and she has to close the Southern Spirit Portal before Vaatu escapes again.
- The Corruption: Dark spirits are created from ordinary spirits tainted by Vaatu.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Humans with firebending versus a horde of dark spirits. Vaatu comments to Wan the humans have been destroyed, off-screen.
- Wan is initially no match for Vaatu, failing to do any real damage while getting wailed on in return. Once he permanently bonds with Raava, he turns the tables.
- Dawn of an Era: Wan ushers in the age of bending, in addition to putting an end to a world filled with dangerous spirits where humans have to live in cities sheltered by lion turtles.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Wan eventually becomes the first Avatar and defeats Vaatu. It's justified because he's merged with Vaatu's opposite and then gained a further boost by acquiring cosmic energy from the Harmonic Convergence.
- Doomed by Canon: While it's a given that Wan was eventually going to die given his status as the first Avatar, it's still a gut punch that, given the state of how the world was even when Kyoshi and Roku were alive, that Wan was going to fail to maintain balance.
- Evil Gloating: Vaatu doesn't skimp on it, that's for sure.
- Evil Only Has to Win Once: As Raava explains to Wan, if Vaatu defeats her at Harmonic Convergence the world will be plunged into ten thousand years of darkness. And while she will eventually regrow from within Vaatu, the world, and humans especially, will likely not survive.
- Fairy Companion: Raava becomes this for Wan by traveling with him and aiding his training.
- Fusion Dance: Wan and Raava eventually fuse together permanently, becoming the first Avatar.
- Heaven Above: The end of the episode sees the god-spirit Raava leave via the mouth and fly into the sky upon the death of her first incarnation, Avatar Wan. Since she's going to the body of her next incarnation, you'd think she'd fly left or right instead of going straight up, but we gotta get across divinity somehow.
- Hope Spot: Wan and Raava temporarily fuse, allowing Wan to harness all four elements at once, which seems to work in calming down the spirits and the humans. Unfortunately Wan can't handle Raava being inside of him for too long and ends up collapsing. The two factions shortly get back to killing each other.
- Hope Springs Eternal: The world is far from being in balance when Wan dies tragically. However, somewhere among those who would be the Air Nation eventually, a child is born who will continue what Wan started.
- In Harmony with Nature: Unsurprisingly, the ancient airbenders are shown to get along with spirits just fine, and plenty live on the lion turtle with them.
- Kick the Dog: After Wan fails to stop his spirit friends from fighting his human friends, Vaatu shows up just to tell him that the humans all died in the battle.
- Lamarck Was Right: Now that the lion turtles have stopped giving people bending, it seems as if it has become genetic.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- By inspiring people not to accept things as they are, Wan has started a cycle of conflict between humans who decide to use violence to change things. Before, the lion turtles kept them protected and isolated.
- For Korra it was opening the spirit portal. Turns out Wan sealed them for a good reason.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Vaatu pins Wan down against the Spirit Portal to watch Harmonic Convergence happen first-hand. This gives Wan the opportunity to reach out and absorb the cosmic energy from the Convergence, allowing him to permanently fuse with Raava, become the first Avatar, and give himself enough of a boost to seal Vaatu away.
- Powers as Programs: Due to the way elemental powers work, Wan is incapable of wielding more than one at a time, instead having to swap them out with Raava's help as necessary. It's only when he fuses with her that he gains the power to wield all four at once, and he gets the Avatar State once their fusion is made permanent.
- The Reveal: The Portals were closed by Wan, in order to create balance in the world and make sure no one could reach Vaatu's jail. They should have remained shut.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Vaatu is sealed in a tree in the spirit realm, and in turn Wan seals the portals at the poles to keep humans from ever freeing him.
- Self-Defeating Prophecy: Vaatu claims to Wan as Harmonic Convergence begins that the Era of Raava is over. Vaatu is indeed correct, but unfortunately for him Wan and Raava merge to form the first Avatar, which leads to his defeat, beginning the Era of the Avatar.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Raava is not pleased with the thought of working with Wan after he inadvertently unleashed Vaatu into the world, and it's only after she realizes that she will need help that she very reluctantly agrees. She eventually changes her mind after seeing how kind Wan is first hand, and eventually the two truly become friends.
- Theme Music Powerup: The Avatar's leitmotif returns when Wan enters the Avatar State and defeats Vaatu.
- The Time of Myths: The story takes place 10,000 years before Korra's present, when humans are hiding from the spirits and live in the cities of the giant lion turtles, and the wilderness is dominated by the spirits.
- Took a Level in Badass: Wan trains himself to master all four elements, within a year, and gains the ability to stand against god-level spirits. He also becomes a stronger person in general. And of course he eventually becomes the first Avatar after permanently fusing with Raava.
- Tragic Hero: In the end, Wan, despite wanting peace and unity for the world, couldn't prevent war and violence. He died on some random battlefield, believing his mission a failure. However, his death began the Avatar Cycle.
- Tree Buchet: Wan uses one to get to the air lion turtle.
- When the Planets Align: This happens during the Harmonic Convergence (when Raava and Vaatu battle for the fate of the world).
