History Headscratchers / AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheAvatar

** The Kyoshi novels are essentially what happens when they don't find the Avatar immediately.

*** 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 ''[[FridgeBrilliance 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 [[spoiler: 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, [[IncrediblyLamePun the lights are on but nobody's home.]]

[[Folder:Age sixteen]]

** 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 fozen 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.

*** 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 that the Avatar State was a defense mechanism, so its absence is what tipped him off that Aang had survived.

* WordOfGod has it that Aang was born the exact moment Roku died. So then 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?f
** Actually the whole relationship between the avatars and the Avatar spirit itself is a tad puzzling to me...
*** I saw it as the Avatar spirit being the spirit of the world which binds to a new human each time the old Avatar dies. Also, in Budhism IIRC, you aren't the same person in this life as you would be in a past one. The life force moves on, but the personality doesn't.
*** To clarify, think of flame being passed from one candle to another. The candles are the people, the fire is the Avatar spirit.
*** Actually 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.

* 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 that the baby Avatar didn't die before he 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.

** For some reason, they seemed to know right off the bat when an Avatar is born. Also, Kyoshi lived for nearly three centuries. Clearly Avatars are made of stronger stuff.
*** No one else had such a long life stated. Clearly, Kyoshi was just that badass. Look at Roku, who was as aged and withered as Sozin, and appears to have aged at the same speed as a normal person. Likely, though, there could also be a bender-relevant explanation which Kyoshi simply never got around to explaining during her time.
*** Or they just fucked up the chronology.
*** Extended lifespans happen in Avatar, and the Avatar isn't necessarily one of those individuals who'll have an extended lifespan. Aang might or might not have lived longer had fate been more kind, while Roku seemed well on his way to an average lifespan before he was betrayed. Kyoshi has the longest known lifespan, but the Guru was pushing 100 as well, and Bumi was about the same age as Aang, so he would have been about 112 and still going strong.
*** 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. Not to mention the possibility of a baby going into the Avatar State...
*** A fair bit of care 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 it's power which would otherwise seem likely to happen
*** The Air Nomads didn't know that Aang was the Avatar right off the bat--in the flashback where Aang learned he was the Avatar, they said that Aang had chosen the artifacts of past Avatars as his toys when he was a baby. I can't imagine how Avatars in the Earth Kingdom are "found"-- do they just leave Kyoshi's boots hanging around and wait for a baby to start nomming on them?
*** The way I see it, they just send the toys to a temple in the next nation in the cycle once they know who the Avatar is. When word gets out that the previous Avatar (say, Waterbender) has died, any Earth Kingdom babies born in the first few days or weeks after the death is taken to a nearby Earth Temple. The toys pass around between the Earth Temples- probably with some duplicates and some way to mark the real ones- and the baby who finds them all is the Avatar. Also, both Aang and Roku were buddies with Gyatso. I highly doubt that this was the first time such a thing has occurred. Maybe a friend/lover/confidant of the Avatar feeling an odd kinship with someone is also a step in the right direction.
*** There have been a ''lot'' of Avatars, as first shown in the third episode. They probably all left something behind, quite likely more than one thing each. And holy relics can last for a long time if stored and handled with care. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that there are enough for each nation to have its own set of dozens. Hiding four of them among about a hundred other objects every fourth century or so probably doesn't cause that much wear and tear.
*** Maybe it's a tradition in the avatar world to have every baby select items as soon as they can walk? It's not an invention of Bryke.
*** Some eastern traditions try to determine a child's aptitude from the items it chooses from a set of objects.
** It seems to me that, 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 fozen 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.
*** There is a pattern: Air, Water, Earth, Fire. The next nation in line is where the Avatar will be from, as well as what the Avatar must learn. When the Fire Avatar dies, it goes to Air. They are taught their element sufficiently (generally to the age of 12), are revealed as the Avatar, and go on to learn the other elements. Most often the avatar wouldn't know about the connections until he's learned the element, but we are given plenty of indications that spiritual intervention and uncontrolled avatar-state are possible defenses.
*** Point of fact: The Avatar is traditionally revealed when they reach the age of 16. Aang was the sole exception to that.
*** Now it looks like Korra started her training when she was barely a 4 year old.
*** Korra was the exception. The Avatar starts training at age sixteen because that is when they are told they are the Avatar. Korra started to earth and fire bend all by herself so she already knew she was the Avatar. Presumably, the OOTWL just decided to start anyway, given she'd be practicing her bending anyway.

* So we know that 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?
** Aang has kids, and a few of them are airbenders. This might mean polygamy for the sake of his nation, but Katara would understand.[[note]]I'm joking on that last part[[/note]] Alternatively, Aang writes a manuscript/manual of all the airbending forms he knows, so if he dies before his airbending kid is born, the kid has some sort of backup for learning. Alternatively alternatively, the spirits pull a DeusExMachina to get more airbenders born.
*** Hey, if Aang can take bending away, maybe he can give it? It hasn't been [[WordOfGod stated]] either way (that I know of), so that is ''maybe'' plausible. For all we know, he's decided to "give" it to the people who were living at the Northern ([=IIRC=]) temple, like Teo.
** The first airbenders learned by watching the sky-bison. Given time, I'm sure that people can learn again.
*** I'm fairly sure that Appa was the last sky-bison. That doesn't stop Aang from teaching his children or leaving scrolls behind, but unless there's some hidden flying bison herd we haven't heard about once Appa's gone that's over.
** Why would Aang even need to have children? Couldn't he just teach some people Airbending? Bending isn't genetic, or else none of the original benders (the 3 animals + the Moon) could have taught others. So why couldn't Aang just start a new Air Nomad society, perhaps at the Northern Air Temple?
** One word: [[WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra Tenzin]].
** My experience is to never take anything from a TV show at face value. Yes it makes for nice drama when then put "the last airbender" in the title, but it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't really mean that. As devastating as the fire nations initial attack was, I doubt they could have gotten every single air bender all at once (after all, Aang got away, right?). It seems prefectly reasonable that others may have escaped as well, and as per the airbending philosophy rather than try to fight back, they avoid, evade, and otherwise run away. A few airbenders might be able to hide out relatively easily, especially in mountainous places no one else can easily reach. In addition, bending isnt strictly genetic; the series shows that benders are likely to have bender-offspring, but its neither a requirement nor a guarantee. Also, look at Katara- the fire nation attacks on her tribe pretty much stopped as soon as they thought they had every last waterbender. Did they? Nooooooo. And then the Gaang find a previously UNKNOWN tribe of water benders in a swamp.
*** All air-benders at the time lived in the Air Temples, the general idea seeming to be that they were shipped off if they were found out. However the combination of genetics, spirituality, philosophy, and training could lead to later air-benders...just not in the 100 years that Aang's been gone.
*** For a group titled the Air Nomads, having all airbenders at the temples makes no sense. Aang mentioned that he did a good deal of traveling, and he was only twelve at the time, though he did have his teacher/guardian to go with him. Unless something really important to the Air Nomad community was happening, and I doubt Sozin's Comet would qualify, being helpful for firebenders and no one else, there should be plenty of airbenders traveling the world. Complete and total destruction of such a people should be impossible with the vast majority of the world at the time (the entirety of the Water Tribes and any parts of the Earth Kingdom that are not coastline) being out of their attackers' reach.
*** Remember that Sozin's Comet only became Sozin's Comet ''after'' the genocide of the Air Nomads. Just because it only helps Firebenders doesn't mean that a comet streaking that close to the planet is going to be ignored by everyone else. Maybe the Airbenders were avid stargazers and gathered in their temples to watch what must've been one hell of a sight.
** Even without new airbenders being born, it's the Avatar spirit (now revealed to be Raava) that "carries" all four elements from Avatar to Avatar - that's how Korra was able to airbend in the sequel series. We can assume, therefore, that whichever child Raava chooses as the next Air Avatar would be born an airbender by default, regardless of their parentage or nationality.

* What creature would be the guardian animal of an Avatar from the Water Tribe? Maybe I just missed that point in the show. 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? The moon is a bit unlikely...
** Nobody said that Avatars ''require'' an animal guide. So far, only Roku and Aang have been shown to have one. In any case, it seems that the avatar just travels with whatever animal he/she has at his disposal, or is provided with one by the sages from his/her country. As for the water tribe, those moose/elk/whatever things up in the north pole seemed pretty capable. We also hear of polar dogs, which in my minds eye is some sort of Wolf/Polar Bear of awesomeness.
*** Very astute. At San Diego [=ComiCon=] this week a picture of Korra astride her guide was shown; it looks like a lop-eared polar bear with dogish features.
** The [[WordOfGod Avatar Extras]] in season 3 confirm that the moon is the source of waterbending, and that the badgermoles/dragons/bison are the source of the rest.
*** True, but not really the point in this case. The moon can't be an Avatar's animal guide. The moose/polar wolf idea sounds plausible. For all we know, the next airbender Avatar won't be able to get a bison, so he might use another animal.
*** The dragons that taught firebending were supposed to be extinct, and then the source of firebending power became things like the sun and comets. I suppose each element would have both an animal guide and a planetary correspondent. Narwhal-seahorses or Jellyfish-seal? Or maybe just holy carp.
*** It really depends on what you mean by "source". Firebending is powered by the sun; the sun is why firebending exists at all. The original firebenders were the dragons; they then taught it to the Sun Warriors. Firebending can exist without the dragons, but firebending cannot exist without the sun. The moon is both the power source of waterbending and the original waterbender; the Moon Spirit directly taught the first waterbenders. Airbending and earthbending may not have an actual powersource outside of their elements; if they do, it was never mentioned in the show.
*** Not in the show, but it has been stated airbending is more powerful at higher altitudes and Earthbending is stronger near fault lines. One can infer that the "source" of air and earthbending are then just atmospheric conditions and the Earth itself. Personally I think it's silly to attribute the "source" of bending to any singular thing, but if you have to it makes sense that the sources are all forces of nature that can't really be destroyed.
** True, Aang likens Roku's dragon to Appa as a 'guide'. The flashback in Appa's Lost Days show that Air Nomads gain bison companions early on in life. Aang could have been comparing Roku and Fang as an Air Nomad tradition (it would fit with the similarities between Nations) rather than an Avatar one. Although this troper can somehow see a person like Kyoshi with a badgermole at some point. Tough, no-nonsense, fundamentally 'earthbender'.
** Y'all are forgetting about something: in the first Kyoshi Island episode, the Unagi can shoot water from its mouth, similar to the way dragons spit fire. While it is unlikely that that would be practical as a spirit guide, it's not unthinkable that there would be similar/smaller versions.
** In the sequel series, Avatar Korra's animal companion is just a common polar bear dog, and we've never heard of anything suggesting that Kyoshi had a pet badgermole or anything. I'm thinking that the "Avatar has a pet that's also the original source of their bending" thing just happened to be a coincidence between Roku and Aang. An Avatar doesn't ''need'' to have an animal companion, and if they do, there's no limit to what animal it can be. We've seen other people from the Fire Nation riding dragons, after all - Sozin and Zuko both come to mind - and having a sky bison seemed to be tradition among the Air nomads. So their having companions was probably a cultural tradition among their people rather than due to being Avatars. (Lending credence to this, Avatar Wan's animal guide was shown to be a simple catdeer, even though he was the equivalent of a Fire Nationer in his time.)

* If Aang could access the individual Avatar spirits for a sort of mini-Avatar State before he communed with them (Kyoshi, Roku, [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans Yangchen]], Kuruk) despite his blocked Cosmic chakra (Book 3 version), why could he not access all of them at once? Was it because the cosmic chakra was required to have enough harmony to have more than one of them in/controlling the body at once ''at all'', rather than just the the thing that lets them be One instead of one big lump of not-oneness? Because all the imagery said that he couldn't access them ''at all'', and the text practically (and possibly literally, in Book 2) said so as well.

** I believe that the circumstances may have affected it. In the instances with the iceberg and the attack on the ship, the Avatar state activated defensively, while in the Southern Temple, Aang entered the Avatar state while enraged. With those differences in mind, the temples likely don't light up if the Avatar only activates for brief defensive purposes, but when the Avatar is getting ready to royally kick someone's ass, the temples flash a warning.
*** Or, maybe it's because he wasn't within one-hundred feet of a temple the last two times he went into the Avatar State.

* Have any Avatars actually took advantage of their powers and turned evil? Would they be kept in check by their previous incarnations when they entered the Avatar state?
** First that's more of Wild Mass Guessing than Just Bugs Me, second given the reverence the majority of the world gives the Avatar I'm going to guess that's a negative. Of course it's equally possible that some of them did this and the historians recorded it as a good thing. After all a bit of luck in battle could have resulted in Julius being remembered as a bloody minded military dictator and Pompey a hero of democracy.
** The balance probably works this way: a nation tries to take conquer another: the attacker loses because the Avatar helps the offended (unless you attack when there is no adult Avatar). The Avatar tries to seize control of the world: all nations unite against him. Well, of course things would have been worse if Roku had agreed to help Sozin, rather than just staying almost neutral.
** Or maybe the Avatar spirit chooses a human being with some particular inborn tendencies? Or having the avatar spirit incarnate in a human makes that person develop a nature to protect the world?
*** The Avatar Spirit is a spirit of the world that has chosen to endlessly reincarnate in order to protect the balance of the world; callous destruction/conquest would be anathema to it, so while there might be Avatars who are willing to be more "proactive" in keeping balance (Avatar Kyoshi comes to mind), an honest-to-god evil Avatar would be extremely unlikely, if not impossible.
** A friend of mine speculated that the Avatar is required to be morally stable to open their chakras and enter the State, so a corrupt Avatar would be deprived of his main weapon.
** [[spoiler: WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra reveals that the Avatar spirit is the fusion of a human soul and the spirit that represents peace and light. So maybe she keeps them good.]]

* Given that 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?)
** That could be justified by the fact that since 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. 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? There doesn't seem to be anything stopping them.
** My guess is that it's for the same reason that the Avatar has to be a mortal human.
** Roku had no body to teach with, and subsequently the spiritual lessons wouldn't be physical lessons. Additionally time would be limited for contact with them; talking may be a free action, but training is not. And then there's the lack of control created from power-overload and ignorance of methodology. Aang, not understanding the philosophy of Firebending, ended up burning Katara. And this is even more-so in that knowledge does't imply mastery: Toph mentions that when Aang is learning Earthbending he could have easily crushed Sokka. Aang would need to gradually refine his own abilities before thinking to even handle what he wouldn't even know. It's the same with every avatar, which is why they must learn the elements in order.
** Spirits can't bend.
*** Unless they manifest themselves through a human, as in Roku destroying the Fire Sage Temple with firebending through Aang.

* In ''Avatar Day'', it's accepted that 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''. It's not like she opened the chasm under his feet. If he'd taken ''even a single step back'' '''at any point''', '''''even after she'd begun pulling the peninsula away''''', he would have lived. Maybe she ''feels responsible'' for his death, but she certainly didn't ''kill'' him.
** That may be true, but remember- it's people's ''perceptions'' that matter. If people ''thought'' she had killed him (especially if it was a long time ago, and no one is left alive who remembers the "truth"), then it no longer matters what she did/didn't do. People may have believed that that she killed him, and years of it being accepted as "truth" permeate their everyday knowledge.
*** Fair enough, but this is a situation where Kyoshi possessing Aang's body to tell her side of the story is a plot point - and ''she actually says'' "yes, I killed him", even given the flashback from her perspective showing that she didn't...
*** Her island-splitting shenanigans were a major factor in his death. So in a sense, she indirectly caused his death. And how was he supposed to know the rock was going to fall?
*** To be fair any sane person, or non earthbender would have stepped back. Kyoshi says she may as well have killed him because as an Earthbender herself she knew EXACTLY how stubborn that warlord was and that he would not budge. The crumbling rock thing was a foreseeable consequence from her island splitting.
*** Weren't her exact words "I may as well have"?
*** 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 the Conqueror, namely by complete and total accident and despite that only due to his own incredible stupidity. And then the villagers declare Aang, who himself has no connection other than being the reincarnation of Kyoshi and aside from that is the mother freaking [[MessianicArchetype Messiah]] and the only one who can save the world for some reason, guilty and sentence him to death.
*** This was specifically discussed in the finale when Aang is talking to his past incarnations. Apparently, Aang agrees with the original poster's assessment of responsibility ("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. As to ''why'' he didn't get out of the way, it's heavily implied if not stated outright that Earthbenders tend to be stubborn and unyielding.
*** Maybe I'm reading into this too much, but it was shown very clearly that he was shorter than his followers, and much shorter than Avatar Kyoshi. Usually charismatic leaders have tall, intimidating stature that he didn't possess, so he overcompensated with his big attitude. Being an Earthbending leader, the quality that would have appealed to his followers would have been unyielding stubbornness, and so taking a step back, even to escape danger, might have been seen as relenting, and thus shattered his charisma.
*** Also - while the Kyoshi did cause death it was clearly in combat situation. If solder kills during war other solder he is not charged for killing by any side (as long as he adheres to rules of war). Hence capturing Avatar could be considered at most POW (except the war ended few hundreds years ago).
*** Yes, and all of this ''would'' be important if that trial wasn't a blatantly obvious KangarooCourt run by a bunch of moronic assholes who were sore losers on top of it. The whole point of that episode was that those villagers were pigheaded idiots who only relented when they needed Aang to save their worthless hides.
** But she could have used her airbending to push him backwards away from the falling rocks, or her earthbending to hold them in place, or any number of other things. She feels responsible because she could have done something to stop it but didn't.

* So in "Avatar Day", we, the audience, actually see what happens to Chin the Conqueror during Avatar Kyoshi's confession when she briefly takes over Aang's body or form or what have you during his trial. In her narration, she doesn't actually say that he fell to his death, but we see it. Flash forward almost two solid seasons to the finale, where Aang is consulting with his past lives. When talking with Kyoshi, 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 (going off of the assumption that Kyoshi's confession was the entire speech and not just bits and pieces of it) that he went plummeting to his death, and he wasn't alive to see it happen?

* 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? I get she was trying to 'compromise' with the Earth King, but it looked as though she initially weighed it far too much in favour of his desire to suppress the rebellion.
** For some one 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. Have you ever actually studied revolutions? Yeah the pictures of Che Guevaras face on those GAP shirts look cool, but 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. The fallback historical example is France, but for something more modern look at whats happening in the middle east right now. 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 hold the same importance for a different Avatar, and even if it did, they probably wouldnt feel the same way as Kyoshi did. Think about the Water-bender avatar Aang talked to in the last episode, the "go-with-the-flow" guy. Do you think Kyoshi would have wanted some one like that handling an earth-kingdom revolution? At worst what we're seeing here is a bad case of LawfulStupid, 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.

** 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 it also takes time for the newborn Avatar to become a threat; after Roku died, Sozin was able to wait until Sozin's Comet came to wipe out the Air nomads, which is when Aang was 12.

** 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 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.

* What if Avatar is born as a woman into the Northern Water Tribe?

[[/folder]]

** 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.

*** Very astute. At San Diego ComiCon this week a picture of Korra astride her guide was shown; it looks like a lop-eared polar bear with dogish features.

*** To be fair any sane person, or non earthbender would have stepped back. Kiyoshi says she may as well have killed him because as an Earthbender herself she knew EXACTLY how stubborn that warlord was and that he would not budge. The crumbling rock thing was a foreseeable consequence from her island splitting.

*** ^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. Airbendingg 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.

** 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 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.