Avatar: The Last Airbender remains one of the greatest cartoons in history. With its well-rounded cast of characters to great arcs and a phenomenal understanding of what makes a good series, it remains popular among its fans, even more so than its sequel series, The Legend of Korra.
The Last Airbender has become the gold standard for what can be done with a television show. It can entrance viewers, beg them to keep watching, and keep them invested in the wellbeing of its characters. Topped off with exciting moments, like dismantling the drill at Ba Sing Se and defending the North Pole from the Fire Nation, there is almost never a dull moment.
However, the show never loses focus of its central character: the Avatar. We get to see Aang grow from a boy in the iceberg to a fully-realized Avatar. We get to learn about his strengths and weaknesses, the rules of the universe, and what it means to be the Avatar.
Despite how excellent the series is, though, doesn’t mean that its devoid of mistakes. There were a few blunders on the way that, albeit small, become much more noticeable on repeat viewings. They’re more than just subtle animation errors though, as that type of mistake is inconsequential. We’ll be discussing greater details of the show, including its story, characters, and episodes.
Avatar: The Last Airbender remains a fantastic show that holds up years after it ended. However, it’s not perfect and has these 25 mistakes that only true fans noticed.
25 Episodic First Season
As The Last Airbender was figuring out its footing with its first season, the writers went for a more episodic format.
This way, Nickelodeon could run various episodes without viewers feeling lost.
They could fit just about anywhere in the series just fine. However, this approach led to a lot of episodes that could be skipped without losing much. Some fans feel that the show didn’t pick up until Aang reached the Northern Water Tribe and had to fight off the Fire Nation.
24 Lack Of An Antagonist
Azula did wonders for The Last Airbender. Up until that point, the series had been lacking a seriously threatening antagonist. It was clear that the writers were preparing more for Zuko. Meanwhile, one-dimensional villains opposed Aang, like Admiral Zhao. When Zuko was declared an enemy of the Fire Nation, Azula took over as the antagonist while Ozai pulled the strings in the background. This led to a much more imposing and urgent threat for Team Avatar to face, and the show was better off for it.
23 One-Dimensional Villain
Despite being teased throughout the entire series, Fire Lord Ozai wasn’t that interesting of a character. For all purposes, he was a foe that Aang needed to face as his final test, and that was it. Ozai was a bad guy from the very start, never having a moment where we got to feel sympathy for him or understand why he wanted the throne. Azula was a much more interesting antagonist, as there were hints of her growing insanity throughout the series.
22 Energy-Bending
Near the end of the series, Aang had to deal with taking the Fire Lord’s life. He didn’t want to harm anybody but was told by his past lives that it was the only way. Instead of accepting his responsibility to the world as the Avatar, there was a cop out with a lion turtle that taught him how to bend energy. This felt like a last-minute cop-out that allowed Aang to defeat the Fire Lord without having to come to grips with his own spiritual needs.
21 The Great Divide
Of all the episodes in The Last Airbender, “The Great Divide” is easily at the bottom. While it’s not a bad episode, it’s an uninteresting one. It introduces characters that never appear again and has little impact on the rest of the story.
It spends a lot of time dealing with a pointless conflict that doesn’t add any powerful insights to the story.
It’s little more than an episode where Aang struggles with being a mediator. Then there was the fact that he lied at the end of the episode.
20 Tales Of Ba Sing Se Order
This is a minor complaint of one of the series’ best episodes, “Tales of Ba Sing Se.” It starts out with Toph and Katara, then goes to Iroh, Aang, Sokka, Zuko, and Momo. They’re all decent stories, but the order could be improved. With the somber emotion from Iroh and the tribute to Mako, it would’ve been more fitting to have that tale appear at the end. Sokka’s tale should’ve been thrust in the first half due to its unimportance to the story. The others are fine where they are, though.
19 Katara’s Anger
Katara goes through a major arc starting in The Last Airbender’s third season. When she finally reunites with her dad, she is angry and lashes out at him. This sentiment is later echoed by how nastily she treats Zuko in the latter half until they meet her mother’s assailant. While her anger is justified for her character, it gets grating to see her so hostile for a good chunk of the season. It often leads to her berating others that mean no harm, and it damages her appearance.
18 No Resolution For Toph’s Family
After Toph leaves to join Team Avatar, her parents buy some people to bring her home. Later, Toph misses her parents and wants to talk to them, going as far as to send them a letter.
However, if there is any resolution to Toph’s relationship with her parents, we never see it.
When the series is over, Toph’s family is one of the few loose ends that the writers never tied. There was likely no efficient way to insert it into the story, but it’s a nagging question nonetheless.
17 Choppy Animation
When the show premiered, it had a nice art style. That said, the animation needed some cleaning up before it would become the smoother-moving show it was later on. This is especially noticeable in the first episode when Aang and Katara are penguin sledding. As they slide through an ice tunnel, the animation is so choppy that it becomes hard to discern what is happening. Thankfully, the show gets better as it progresses, having some beautiful sequences, especially with the battles.
16 Third Season Filler
After the end of the second season with Aang’s demise and resurrection and the team going undercover in the Fire Nation, there was reason to believe that it would be an intense season. Much to everyone’s surprise though, the third season had a lot of filler that took away from the urgency the team was under to invade the Fire Nation. There wasn’t much need to give Sokka an episode where he learned how to use a sword or to let Team Avatar help a struggling town.
15 One-Off Characters
This is mostly a complaint with the first season, but the problem pops up again in the second. There are a lot of characters who appear once to never have any time after that. Remember Aunt Wu, the Yu Yan Archers, and the town that celebrated Avatar Day?
All of these characters only appeared once and that was it.
It was clear that having old characters appear during “The Day of Black Sun” and “Sozin’s Comet” was a way of addressing this problem, but there were still plenty of characters who had little to do with the show.
14 Aang’s Questionable Ethics
It isn’t until the end of the second season when Aang starts to fully mature. This led to a few episodes in the first season where he did some things that were questionable for his character. One was when he lied to the tribes in “The Great Divide”. Another was when he hid Hakoda’s map from Sokka and Katara in “Bato of the Water Tribe”. It seemed like issues that were beneath Aang, as he had much bigger things to worry about, and they didn’t advance his character much.
13 Where Is Zuko’s Mom?
Zuko’s mom had a lot to do with how Zuko turned out. After defeating Azula and becoming the Fire Lord, he went to prison to ask his father where his mother was. This is a serious complaint because we see Zuko asking about her with no resolution. The only way fans can get their closure is if they read a series of graphic novels that deal with Team Avatar looking for Zuko’s mom. Those who only watch the show will never find out. They even teased it in The Legend of Korra with no payoff.
12 Combustion Bending
Combustion bending was an art that first appeared during the third season. Believing Aang to still be alive, he hired a combustion bender to end him. However, it’s never explained how combustion bending works.
We know that Combustion Man can send explosions out of the third eye in his forehead, but that’s it.
It’s presumably an extension of firebending, but it’s never properly explained. How does one gain the third eye? How does one learn to bend combustion?
11 Combustion Man
Combustion Man was a life-taker hired by Zuko early into the third season and existed only to provide some urgency for Team Avatar while giving Zuko a chance to be heroic. The issue with Combustion Man is that his existence is never explained. Who is he, how did he learn combustion bending?
The guy never says a single line.
Then there was the fact that he ignored Zuko when he was denied payment for still hunting the Avatar. There was no reason given for his actions, and we still know nothing about him.
10 Tracking Appa’s Fur
“The Chase” was a stressful episode for Team Avatar. While flying on Appa, they were being chased by some sort of machine. After flying for hours, trying to get away, the machine still found them. It was revealed that they were being tracked by Appa’s fur. However, seeing that fur constantly fall out of the sky seems like a bit of a stretch. How would Azula see the fur falling while she was inside the machine? Moreover, how could she catch up so quickly?
9 Zuko In The Right Place At The Right Time
“The Boy in the Iceberg” showed Katara and Sokka cracking the ice that housed Aang for 100 years. Once he was free, a beam of light shot from the ice, signaling his return. It just so happened that the person hunting the Avatar, Zuko, was in the South Pole when the light happened. To be fair, this coincidence needed to happen to tell the story and move the plot, but there’s no denying that it was a lucky break to say the least.
8 Iroh And Ozai Never Having A Line Together
Fire Lord Ozai and Uncle Iroh were brothers, but you’d never know it. Not only do they not resemble each other in the slightest and have a serious age gap between them, but they never share a line of dialogue. They don’t even share a scene together. Both characters talk about each other, but never to each other. It seems like a shame when there could’ve been a powerful confrontation between them to establish their brotherly struggle as well as give Ozai some much-needed backstory.
7 Poor Disguises
It’s safe to say the only time Aang, Katara, and Sokka had good disguises is when they were hiding in the Fire Nation. In season one, they had downright poor disguises. Sokka and Katara kept their Water Tribe clothes in the Fire Nation colonies, and Aang kept his Air Nomad garb.
Furthermore, there were downright poor ways of Aang hiding his arrows.
One episode saw him lift his shirt over his head, while others had him wear a goofy hat where his tattoos would still be visible.
6 Aang “Not Existing”
In “Sozin’s Comet,” Aang disappears with Momo, leaving the rest of the team wondering where he went. After getting June to help them, she states that her pet, Nyla, can’t find Aang, stating that he “doesn’t exist.” The problem with this is that Aang is still clearly somewhere in the world; he’s just camping out on the back of a Lion Turtle. He should still be able to be found and tracked across the world. It’s never explained why Nyla couldn’t find him anyway.