Avatar: The Last Airbender Recap: All Three Books

Four nations used to live in balance: Water, Earth, Fire and Air. In each nation some people can bend their element. Only the Avatar can bend all four, and when an Avatar dies, the next one is born in the next nation along. A hundred years ago the Fire Nation started a war, and the Avatar was never seen again.

At the South Pole, a waterbender named Katara and her brother Sokka find a boy frozen in an iceberg with a giant flying bison. He’s Aang, and he’s an airbender. He has no idea how long he’s been asleep.

The light from the iceberg breaking open is seen by Zuko, a banished prince of the Fire Nation. His father won’t let him come home until he brings back the Avatar, so Zuko grabs Aang, and that’s when Aang admits he’s the Avatar. He gets away on his staff, and Katara and Sokka pick him up on Appa.

Then Aang takes them to his old home, the Southern Air Temple, and there’s nobody there. Among a pile of Fire Nation armor he finds the skeleton of his teacher, Gyatso, and it sinks in that the airbenders were wiped out while he was asleep. The grief sets off the Avatar State, where he glows and the power of every Avatar before him comes through at once, and Katara has to talk him down. He leaves with a new pet lemur, Momo.

The plan is to go to the North Pole, where Aang and Katara can find a waterbending master. On Kyoshi Island, Sokka gets beaten up by a group of fighters in face paint, all girls, and swallows his pride to train with their leader, Suki. Zuko attacks the island, and Aang leads him away.

In Omashu, Aang finds his childhood friend Bumi, now a 112-year-old king and a very powerful earthbender. Katara gets herself arrested to free a town’s earthbenders from a prison at sea and talks them into fighting back. She loses her mother’s necklace, the last thing she has of her.

At the winter solstice, Aang crosses into the Spirit World and learns he can speak to his past life, Avatar Roku, at Roku’s temple in the Fire Nation. They get there just in time. Roku tells him Sozin’s Comet returns at the end of summer, and with it the Fire Nation’s firebenders will be strong enough to win the war. Aang has to master water, earth and fire before then.

Katara steals a waterbending scroll from pirates and learns from it, and gets jealous when Aang picks it up faster. Zuko turns up holding her lost necklace, and by the end she has it back. They meet Jet, a charming teenage rebel who fights the Fire Nation with a gang of orphans. Katara likes him. Sokka figures out Jet plans to flood a whole town, Fire Nation and civilians together, and helps get people out in time.

In a storm, both main characters’ pasts come out. Aang was told he was the Avatar at twelve, was going to be separated from Gyatso, and ran away. A storm froze him in the ice. On Zuko’s ship, his uncle Iroh tells the crew Zuko spoke out of turn in a war meeting, was challenged to a fire duel by his own father, refused to fight him, and was burned and banished.

Admiral Zhao, a Fire Nation officer who looks down on Zuko, captures Aang. A masked swordsman called the Blue Spirit breaks him out. It’s Zuko. He gets knocked out on the way, and Aang carries him to safety and asks if they could have been friends. Zuko answers with a fireball.

They also meet a fortuneteller who tells Katara she’ll marry a very powerful bender, and Bato, a warrior from Katara and Sokka’s father’s fleet. Aang hides a message about where their dad is. When it comes out he apologizes, and they stay together.

Aang convinces a Fire Nation deserter, Jeong Jeong, to teach him firebending. He’s impatient, loses control, and burns Katara’s hands. She finds out she can heal with water. Aang decides he doesn’t want to firebend again.

At the North Pole, Master Pakku won’t teach girls. Katara challenges him to a fight and loses, but he sees her grandmother’s necklace on her. He was once engaged to her grandmother, and he agrees to teach her. Sokka falls for Princess Yue, who is already engaged.

Admiral Zhao invades with a huge fleet. Aang leaves his body to ask the spirits for help, and Zuko sneaks in and carries it off into a blizzard. Katara and Sokka find them.

Zhao kills the Moon Spirit, a fish swimming in a pond in the city, and the waterbenders lose their power. Aang merges with the Ocean Spirit and destroys the fleet. Yue was given life by the Moon Spirit as a baby, and she gives it back to become the new Moon. The Ocean Spirit drags Zhao under. Zuko and Iroh escape on a raft. Back home, Zuko’s father sends his sister Azula after him.

Now Aang needs an earthbending teacher. An Earth Kingdom general tries to force him into the Avatar State to use as a weapon, and it almost goes very wrong.

Azula is the opposite of her brother: a firebending prodigy who lies easily and wins. She tries to bring Zuko and Iroh home as prisoners. They get away, and with nowhere left to go, they cut off their topknots and become fugitives. In Omashu, which the Fire Nation has now taken, Azula recruits her old friends Mai, who throws knives, and Ty Lee, who can block bending with a jab.

The group stops in a swamp where everyone sees visions, a sign that everything is connected, and gets put on trial in a town that blames Aang for something a past Avatar did. Zuko, frustrated with Iroh’s calm, leaves to travel alone.

Aang saw a blind girl in his swamp vision. They find her winning an underground earthbending tournament. Toph Beifong sees through vibrations in the ground, and her rich parents treat her as helpless. She leaves home to teach Aang.

On his own, Zuko helps a farm village fight off bullying soldiers. When he says who he is, they turn on him. We see the night his mother disappeared.

Azula catches up. Zuko, Iroh, Aang and his friends all corner her in a ghost town, and she hits Iroh with lightning before she escapes. Iroh heals and teaches Zuko how to redirect lightning instead of creating it. Toph teaches Aang that earthbending is about stubbornness, not avoiding things.

In a buried desert library, Sokka finds out a solar eclipse is coming. For a few minutes, firebenders will lose their power. It’s the chance to invade. While they’re inside, sandbenders steal Appa.

Without Appa, the desert nearly breaks them. Aang loses his temper with the sandbenders who took him, and it’s frightening. Iroh and Zuko are saved by Iroh’s friends from the Order of the White Lotus, a secret society that ignores borders.

The group crosses a narrow pass with Suki’s help and gets a family across safely, and a baby is born on the way. Zuko and Iroh take a ferry to Ba Sing Se, the last great Earth Kingdom city, and meet Jet on the way. At the outer wall, the Fire Nation brings a huge drill. The kids stop it from the inside.

Inside Ba Sing Se, a smiling guide named Joo Dee won’t let them say the word “war.” The city is run by the Dai Li, secret police under a man named Long Feng, who keep the war hidden even from the Earth King. Zuko and Iroh work in a tea shop. Iroh’s tea is a hit.

In one episode of short stories, Iroh sings at a tree on the birthday of his son, who died in the war. It’s one of the most loved moments in the show.

Jet has been brainwashed by the Dai Li. He leads them to Appa, held under a lake, and is badly hurt in the fight. Zuko gets to Appa first, as the Blue Spirit, and lets him go, then comes down with a fever. They finally reach the Earth King and tell him the truth. Long Feng is arrested. Meanwhile, Azula and her friends have come into the city disguised as Kyoshi Warriors.

Aang trains with a guru to master the Avatar State. The last step is letting go of what he loves, and he can’t let go of Katara. Toph is captured in a metal box and invents metalbending to get out. Sokka and Katara meet up with their dad.

Azula takes over the Dai Li and the city without a battle. Zuko and Katara are thrown into a crystal cave together and almost become friends. Then Iroh asks Zuko to choose, and Zuko sides with Azula. Aang lets go of Katara and enters the Avatar State, and Azula shoots him with lightning. Katara saves him with special water from the North Pole. Ba Sing Se falls, and Iroh is arrested.

Aang wakes up weeks later on a Fire Nation ship. The world thinks he’s dead, which is useful. Zuko is home and treated as a hero, because Azula told everyone he killed the Avatar. He’s afraid his father will find out the truth.

The kids hide in the Fire Nation in disguise. Aang goes to a local school, Katara helps a polluted river town as a legend called the Painted Lady, and Sokka trains with a sword master and forges a sword from a meteorite. On a beach trip, Zuko, Azula, Mai and Ty Lee find out none of them are happy. Zuko and Mai start dating. Zuko also hires an assassin to make sure Aang is really gone.

Roku shows Aang how his friendship with Fire Lord Sozin ended. Sozin wanted to expand the Fire Nation, Roku said no, and later Sozin let Roku die in a volcano. Then he used the comet to wipe out the airbenders. In prison, Iroh tells Zuko that Roku is his great-grandfather on his mother’s side, so both sides of the war are in his blood.

Toph runs a con, gets on a wanted poster, and fights with Katara. An old woman named Hama teaches Katara bloodbending, controlling a person through the water in their body, then uses it on Sokka and Aang. Katara beats her with it and hates that she could.

Aang can’t sleep the night before the invasion. Zuko finally has a seat at his father’s war meetings, and he still isn’t happy.

During the eclipse, their dad’s warriors, old friends and a bunch of earthbenders storm the capital, only to find the palace empty, because the Fire Lord knew they were coming. Azula keeps Aang and Sokka busy until the eclipse is over.

Zuko uses those minutes to tell his father everything he’s done wrong, Iroh and the scar included, and that he’s leaving to help the Avatar. The eclipse ends, his father throws lightning at him, and Zuko redirects it. The invasion fails anyway. The adults surrender so the kids can escape on Appa.

Zuko asks to join them, and nobody trusts him. It doesn’t help that he accidentally burns Toph’s feet, and Katara tells him she’ll end him if he hurts Aang. He gets in by saving them from the assassin he hired himself.

Without his anger his fire has gone weak, so he and Aang go looking for the ancient Sun Warriors and meet the last two dragons, who show them what fire is really supposed to be. After that, Zuko is Aang’s firebending teacher.

Sokka and Zuko break into the Fire Nation’s most secure prison to get Sokka’s dad out, and Suki turns out to be in there too. Mai saves Zuko on the way out, Ty Lee turns on Azula to save Mai, and both of them end up locked up.

Katara still won’t forgive him. So Zuko helps her find the soldier who killed her mother. She doesn’t kill him, and that’s when she forgives Zuko. After that the group catches a play about their own adventures, which gets most of it wrong.

The Fire Lord names himself Phoenix King and plans to burn down the whole Earth Kingdom with the comet’s power. The consensus is that Aang has to kill him, which a monk really doesn’t want to do, and the night before, Aang’s just gone.

Aang wakes up on an island that’s actually a lion turtle, a creature from before the first Avatar. The rest of the group finds Iroh among the Order of the White Lotus, and Zuko apologizes to him. Iroh tells him he was never angry.

Once the comet arrives, the White Lotus takes back Ba Sing Se, and Sokka, Toph and Suki bring down the Fire Nation’s airships. Azula is coming apart right as she’s about to be crowned, and she challenges Zuko to a duel. He takes a lightning bolt meant for Katara, so Katara ends up beating Azula by herself.

Aang’s fight with the Fire Lord turns when a rock hits his old scar and sets off the Avatar State. He nearly finishes him, and then stops, and instead uses what the lion turtle taught him, energybending, to take the Fire Lord’s bending away. Zuko is crowned and promises a new era of peace, and in Ba Sing Se, Aang and Katara kiss.