Avatar S1E19 / S1E20: “The Siege of the North”

An explosive finale for Book 1 | Grade: A+

Thanks for tuning in to my nineteenth and twentieth of 61 daily reviews of Avatar: The Last Airbender!

I’m doing a combined review today because these brilliant episodes really must be considered together. Also, I’m going to try to focus more on the review part instead of recapping as thoroughly, because there’s just too much ground to cover here. If you like that style better and think I should do it more going forward, drop a comment!

Yesterday, we watched S1E18: The Waterbending Master.

Wow! What a journey it’s been to get to this point. After twenty episodes and nearly eight hours of TV, all the threads and characters that Avatar has been juggling all come together at once in a perfect storm of relentless action, unexpected turns, and heart-wrenching moments. So much happens in these two episodes, as they run and then fly towards that world-shattering second half of Part 2, undoubtedly the most momentous and literally monumental minutes in all of Avatar’s run so far. The stakes have never felt higher. 

The double-feature finale zooms in and out perfectly precisely when it needs to, highlighting in turn the overwhelming might of the Fire Nation, the scrappy tenaciousness of Zuko, and the awesome, desperate energy of the Avatar, while still taking time to teach us key details about bending and the spirits. And, naturally, to crack a few jokes. The very best scenes come in Part 2, which reaps the payoff from all the seeds sown by its predecessor, but Part 1 is no slouch either.

At its core, Avatar is about its characters and their stories more than it’s about the plot and the war. Because of that, the Fire Nation and it’s army can sometimes fade into the background as an omnipresent “big bad” that we can ignore in favor of its often-bumbling mooks who continually fail to catch Aang. But with nowhere left to hide, Part 1 completely shatters that illusion. The North Pole is rocked by one, and then many jaw-dropping fireballs that scatter the Water Tribe like ragdolls. It takes a fierce offensive from Aang and a platoon of waterbenders to take down one Fire Nation ship and its massive artillery, uprooting it in a mountain of ice that visually references the abandoned ship in the South Pole. The cut to a hundred more ships lined up behind it is predictable, but excellently effective in making us feel the insurmountable hopelessness of the battle.

Zuko also shines brightly in The Siege of the North. It’s hard not to be moved by the poignant words he shares with his uncle before heading off on his stealth mission.

Iroh: I'm sorry. I just nag you, because ... well, ever since I lost my son...

Zuko: Uncle, you don’t have to say it.

Iroh: …I think of you as my own.

Zuko: I know, uncle. We’ll meet again.

It’s a touching tribute to one of the most nuanced and vivid relationships in the series. Zuko’s nail-biting battle with Katara illustrates how much they both have improved over the season, and it also throws into stark relief the similarities between their characters: two of the most determined in the cast, who also take themselves the most seriously. But it’s Zuko’s soliquy that reveals the most about him.

My father says she was born lucky. He says I was lucky to be born. I don't need luck, though. I don't want it. I've always had to struggle and fight and that's made me strong. It's made me who I am.

Since The Storm, we’ve only gotten a deeper and deeper look into the banished prince’s noxious and tormented inner world. And every episode, he looks less and less like the callous, angry Zuko who captured Aang at the South Pole. Avatar is his show now, too.

This finale has an entire hero’s journey contained within it. It’s the abyss of Zhao’s victory, and the bittersweet redemption of Yue’s sacrifice, that lend the greatest urgency to the episodes. The beautiful and unique shifts in the animation only amp up the intensity of the drama. Our fear is palpable, literally made manifest, when Zhao threatens the Moon Spirit, turning the entire sky blood red. When he kills it, the monochrome style evokes loss and lifelessness, contrasting strikingly with the glow of fire and the Ocean Spirit.

And now, finally, it’s time to talk about the Ocean Spirit. Holy shit! When Aang says, “No. It’s not over" in a harmony of voices, and the score echoes with quiet chanting, it feels like the most chilling, badass moment ever. He fuses with the Ocean Spirit, and out of the darkness arises transcendent light, a colossal spirit monster with Aang inside its glowing heart. The spirit monster may be a deus ex machina, but it’s so unexpected and so astonishingly cool that it doesn’t matter. The way it slices and launches ships demonstrates staggering power at a level we haven’t seen before in the show. Those scenes of rampage will always be burned into my mind as the defining image of Season 1, elevating this episode of Avatar to one of the most memorable ever.

As dawn rises on the aftermath of the brutal battle for the North Pole, our characters and the audience take stock of what remains. Even though we haven’t known Yue long enough to feel the full weight of her sacrifice, we suffer it through the heartbroken Sokka, who shares a tender scene with her father. Zhao is no more, dead or gone as a consequence of his own pride. Zuko and Iroh have been labeled traitors to their country. It’s time for Team Avatar to move on and continue their journey. And a new villain emerges: Zuko’s sister, introduced by the still-faceless Fire Lord Ozai and a frenetic, shrieking score.

Cliffhanger aside, the season leaves our characters with a definitive air of finality. There’s a heaviness that makes me want to sit with these latest developments and their massive implications, even as I can’t wait to see what’s next. Even Zuko, uncharacteristically, is in no spirit to go after the Avatar right now. He’s tired. “Then you should rest,” Iroh tells him. “A man needs his rest.” So do we all.

In that same spirit, I’ll take a break for one day, and then we’ll return on Wednesday for Season 2, Episode 1: The Avatar State. See you then! Share your own thoughts on this episode in the comments.

Spare observations

• Those turtle seals are so cute! Zuko tells them to shut up and they listen.

• After Aang says “I'm going to make a difference this time,” the camera pans to the sun in a visual reference to the title sequence.

• Yue’s ill-fated, arrogant dudebro fiancé, with his outdated disguise, just cannot remember Zhao’s name. “We’ll take out this Admiral Cho,” he declares. And then later: “Admiral Choi! Prepare to meet your fate.” It’s honestly impressive that he somehow managed to infiltrate Zhao’s ship anyway.

• The cycle of day and night seems to move much faster in the Avatar world than in real life. Maybe I’m scrutinizing things too closely.

• “Hey, this is some quality rope!”

• Koh is such a creepy, well-designed villain, leaning more heavily on traditional horror imagery than the show usually does. He seems to have foreknowledge of Zhao’s plan. It’s horrifying when Aang gets excited in a eureka moment, but he recovers quickly and I guess the spirit has to see the emotion to steal his face. “We’ll meet again,” Koh says. Is it true?

• The creators humorously dubbed the spirit monster “Koizilla.” Aang foreshadows the Koizilla with his joke: “Or maybe they'll unleash a crazy amazing spirit attack on the Fire Nation!”

• Yue’s eyes glow blue when everything is monochrome. That’s how Iroh can tell she has been touched by the Moon spirit.

• The moon is present (and big) in the sky the day after Yue’s sacrifice.

Friends of the White Lotus [SPOILERS]

• Zhao learned the identity of the Moon and Ocean Spirits in Wan Shi Tong’s library, which we’ll encounter later.

• We won’t meet Koh again, unfortunately. Unless you play the now-defunct online game Escape from the Spirit World. He does appear in a flashback in Sozin’s Comet, though, when Avatar Kuruk’s spirit recalls the theft of his lover’s face.

• Does Aang kill anyone during his spirit rampage? Avatar takes lots of liberties with people surviving things they shouldn’t, but it’s hard to believe that everyone survived that. However, since he wasn’t in control, I don’t think this counts as a moral stain for him. 

• In The Legend of Korra, it’s revealed that after being dragged away by the spirit hand, Zhao was sentenced to a Tartarus-like eternal punishment in the Spirit World, where he went insane.

• Enter Azula!!! LET’S GO!