Netflix’s new live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender is finally here, ready to sweep us all back to the world of one of the best animated stories to have ever been put to screen—Avatar: The Last Airbender, of course, and its sequel The Legend of Korra, both of which aired on Nickelodeon in the time between 2005 and 2014.
If there’s one thing we can give all the credit to this new adaptation for, it’s that it absolutely nailed the bending effects. Gone is the memory of that Other-Live-Action-Adaptation-That-Should-Not-Be-Named where it took ten earthbenders to move a single tiny rock—these benders are going all out and I, for one, love to see it.
That includes, of course, the special set of skills that only Aang possesses as the Avatar, the Avatar State first and foremost. Let’s dive into one of the most iconic powers in the entire A:TLA universe.
***Spoilers for the first two episodes of Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender ahead***
So what is the Avatar State?
The Avatar State is the most powerful ability that the Avatar can invoke, one that is accessible only to them and no one else. The Avatar’s eyes—and tattoos, in the case of Air Nomads—glow white as they channel all the Avatars that came before them. In this way, they can draw upon the strength of hundreds upon hundreds of benders, becoming a force that no other bender could hope to reckon with.
In the animated show, the Avatar State is described as a defence mechanism first and foremost rather than a weapon of attack—it protects Avatars and their cycle of death and reincarnation. It makes sense then that the first time Aang uses is to protect himself and his sky bison Appa when the two are submerged by a wave as they fly through a storm, as depicted in the first episode of Netflix’s show.
In that case, the Avatar State allows Aang to waterbend the waves around him and Appa and lock them into a sphere of ice—something that he wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise since he still hadn’t started his waterbending training.
The Avatar State is a great asset to any Avatar, but like all great assets it’s compensated by a significant amount of drawbacks. The most evident is that it takes time, study, and meditation to truly master the Avatar State—inexperienced Avatars fall into it when it’s triggered by powerful emotions, and usually have no control over the consequences of what happens when they’re in the State.
That’s exactly what happens to Aang at the end of the first episode—the shock and grief at seeing the fate of the Air Nomads and of Gyatsu especially triggers a destructive Avatar State over which he has no control and that threatens to harm Sokka and Katara.
It’s also what happens in the second episode of the show when Aang is “possessed” by the spirit of one of his previous incarnations, Kyoshi, born an earthbender. While that particular Avatar State helped our heroes defend Kyoshi Island from Fire Nation troops, Aang wasn’t controlling it—it was all Kyoshi, reaching out from inside Aang’s spirit.
That’s because she’s an Avatar who has mastered the Avatar State and is therefore able to enter and exit from it at will, never losing control of her powers but instead using the State to enhance the skills she has already acquired. And that’s one of the many skills that Aang will have to work on over the course of the story.
(featured image: Netflix)
