Avatar S2E3: "Return to Omashu"
Aang must find a new teacher | Grade: B+
Thanks for tuning in to my twenty-third of 61 daily reviews of Avatar: The Last Airbender! Yesterday, we watched S2E2: The Cave of Two Lovers.
Omashu has fallen. The city is rechristened "New Ozai" in this episode — since we last visited, the Fire Nation successfully captured it in a major offensive. The once-gleaming city's peaks and chutes have been covered up by a smoking, hulking shell of metal. An enormous red Fire Nation banner is draped over the gates, hammering the point home.
Looking for King Bumi to teach Aang earthbending, Team Avatar has to sneak in through the sewers. They find a number of earthbenders fighting the occupation in an underground (literally) resistance movement, but the eccentric king is nowhere to be found. When the Fire Nation marched to Omashu's doorstep, the resistance leader, Yung, explains, King Bumi decided to do nothing and surrender. Why?
Yung is raring to fight to take back his home, but Aang urges caution. They're outnumbered, he says, and won't win. Why not escape the city and live to fight another day? Yung's two associates take the Avatar's side, and he quickly acquiesces. Sokka’s plan to get them out revolves around the purple pentapus, a cute little sewer creature that leaves pockmarks when its five tentacles latch onto skin. They fake a mass illness of "pentapox" and the Fire Nation soldiers drive everyone out of the city walls.
Meanwhile, Princess Azula has been assembling a "small, elite team" of two old friends to capture her brother. Her first recruit is the pink and bubbly Ty Lee, Fire Nation nobility turned circus girl. We're introduced to her upside-down, in an effortless handstand. She rejects Azula’s offer, because the circus is her calling. But Ty Lee’s horrified face when the princess says she'll watch the show speaks volumes. Azula is only there to torment the girl until she accepts, and it works.
Her second recruit brings the Fire Nation princess to Omashu/New Ozai at the same time as Team Avatar. In contrast to Ty Lee’s cheery personality, Mai is a bored and glum teen whose father has been appointed governor of the occupied city. Her baby brother, Tom-Tom, wanders off and ends up following the citizens of Omashu as they exit the city. It doesn’t really make a ton of sense, but it’s stroke of luck for Aang, because the boy is a precious bargaining chip with Mai’s loving parents.
They arrange a trade: Mai’s brother for King Bumi. It’s not really a fair exchange, Azula points out, and she suggests Mai call off the deal. The emotionless girl seems to have no issues with not getting her brother back. Is Mai really that cold? Aang chases after Bumi, who’s ensnared in a metal coffin, but his cover is blown and a brawl ensues.
It’s an opportunity for Azula’s formidable squad to show off their fighting skills. Mai is probably the least scary of the three, and her signature move is throwing knives and arrows. Acrobatic Ty Lee stuns us with her unique attack, and Katara too: with a flurry of small jabs, she temporarily blocks the waterbender’s powers! It’s an incredibly dangerous ability that instantly makes the nimble circus girl a threat to even the strongest benders. Both girls are thoughtfully designed characters with distinctive hairstyles and outfits.
The greatest threat is still Azula, whose tenacity, intelligence, and ruthlessness are only matched by the ferocity of her raw firebending power. She follows Aang down the Omashu delivery super-slide, and is only held off when Bumi reveals he could still earthbend the entire time with just his face muscles. Another feather in the cap for Aang’s old friend, who boasted “I am the most powerful earthbender you'll ever see” in Season 1. But the Fire Nation princess will be back. “We have a third target now,” she tells her crew.
But why did Bumi surrender Omashu? He explains:
There are options in fighting, called jing. It's a choice of how you direct your energy. … Neutral jing is the key to earthbending. It involves listening and waiting for the right moment to strike.
The mad king always loves speaking in riddles. Bumi knew Omashu could not stand up to the Fire Nation, and decided to preserve the peace — for now. But what could he be waiting for? Perhaps time will tell. But for now, Aang will need to find a different earthbending teacher. Someone who waits and listens.
Return to Omashu is mostly a plot-driven episode, but it does have one interesting observation, when the resistance leader Yung eyes little Tom-Tom cynically. He’s cute now, says Yung, but one day he’ll grow up to be a “killer” in the Fire Nation army. Maybe he’s right, but Avatar points out how easily we vilify and dehumanize opponents. An enemy toddler is still an enemy in war.
See you tomorrow for Episode 4: The Swamp! Share your own thoughts on this episode in the comments.
Spare observations
It’s the first episode without Zuko since S1E17: The Deserter.
Pentapox. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of that.
Resistance leader Yung goes from “let’s take back Omashu” to “let’s evacuate the entire population” very quickly. Plenty of leaders make hugely consequential decisions without much deliberation at all in Avatar. It’s definitely pre-democracy.
There’s a cameo from Bumi’s pet goat gorrilla, Flopsie, who Aang frees from his chains.
As far as I can remember, this is Aang’s first time using the freeze ability (besides, of course, the iceberg).
Jing (勁) roughly means “energy” or “expression” in Chinese. But its martial meaning in this episode is not real.
Friends of the White Lotus [SPOILERS]
Bumi’s face-earthbending means he can basically free himself whenever he wants.
This episode exists mainly to explain why Bumi can’t teach Aang earthbending, further foreshadowing the introduction of Toph.