The Secret Histories of Avatars Future
Avatar Yangchen was a great and powerful Avatar who was loved by all four nations. But because she tended to favor humans more than she did spirits, her solutions were all unbalanced and created chaos for herself and her future lives. And even though it wasn’t explicitly said in her books, I believe that Avatar Yangchen felt the weight of her own mistakes. Spirits had no problem approaching her when something was wrong. So, I doubt that they wouldn’t approach her again when the treaties she made were broken by her people.
Now that we’ve established the secret history Kyoshi was told in her lifetime, I’d like to explore the effects of this history after her death, and how F.C Yee was able to fit this history in with the rest of the already established Avatar timeline.
Major Spoilers Ahead!
Avatar Aang
In the Avatar the Last Airbender TV series, Avatar Yangchen told Aang on the back of the lion turtle that she would have done anything to maintain peace. In my opinion, she only said so because she was now able to see, in death, the long term consequences of biased treaties and unethical humans based on the past F.C Yee created for her.
As an author, F.C. Yee was able to create a history for Avatar Yangchen that would make an airbending Avatar reject her beliefs for the sake of the rest of the world, like she did in the TV series. She saw that Avatar Aang faced an unethical man, Fire Lord Ozai, in his life time. This was something she was met with in her own lifetime but now on a greater scale. Fire Lord Ozai was a man who would definitely take advantage of Aang and would drop the world into another 100 years of war and colonialism if Aang presented a peace treaty to the Fire Nation as a solution to genocide. In an attempt to learn from her mistakes, Yangchen decided to be harder on her future self and demand that Aang deal with Ozai by any means necessary. Only because she did not know what else to do. She is only human, and she is now dead. In death, she did not find the solution the lion turtle gave him, which is why the lion turtle stepped in.
For context, the Lion Turtle is an ancient and sacred being that gifted humans with the ability to bend the elements. The lion turtle that approached Aang gifted him the ancient practice of energy bending the same way a Lion Turtle gave early humans element bending.
In my opinion, the Lion Turtle gave Aang a heightened version of a skill that Aang had already mastered--restraint, neutral jing. Energy bending gave him the ability to humble those who cannot control themselves so that they may live with their fellow humans without enhanced power, so that they cannot enact enhanced violence.
This was a super-natural solution to a very human problem. The Lion Turtles stepped in, possibly because planet wide destruction was at their doorstep. But this eventually only delays the inevitable. It is seen as a tool but used as a band aid by Aang.
We see Aang use energy bending to take someone’s bending away in The Legend of Korra TV series. He takes Yakone’s bending away because Yakone tried to physically force his will onto others through water bending. Yakone tried to blood bend everyone into submission. But Aang’s solution was not the end of Yakone’s rage. Yakone losing his own bending didn’t stop him from teaching this technique to his water bending sons, Tarrlok and Amon.
Because Aang didn’t prevent Yakone from furthering his agenda, the cycle of violence was not broken and so it continued.
I can understand the possibility of F.C. Yee not agreeing with Aang’s use of energy bending and disagree with him, but I can’t say that his opinion is wrong. As the Avatar’s get older we can see them make mistakes that affect the future. Kyoshi created the Dai Lee and they eventually became corrupted and evil. We can see that kind of mistake with Aang. Yes, he used energy bending to prevent war in that moment, but what happened to Ozai after that? Why didn’t he stop Yakone from furthering his agenda and keep him from teaching this technique.
As leaders, Avatars have to consider not only what they must do in that moment, but how to handle their decisions after, what the consequences are and what the reactions could be.
Avatar Korra
The last couple Avatar cycles have been grim. While there was great triumph in each Avatar’s lifetime, there was also failure. That’s because each and every Avatar is incredibly powerful and incredibly flawed. But there is a silver lining. Korra found a solution.
In many ways, Avatar Yangchen’s conversation with Kyoshi was not only a reflection of the Avatar’s failures, but of Korra’s achievements as well. Korra was the only Avatar that was able to open the spirit portal after Wan closed them and chose to take responsibility for the human-spirit interactions from that point on. She took the title “The bridge between two worlds” literally and forced humans to address what they already knew, that they are not that much different than spirits and that they are not the only “dominant life” form out there. Greed and corruption are diseases that hinder human growth and cause suffering in this world. Both are caused by entitlement and individualistic thinking. And Korra had to knock these humans out of these patterns because it was just not sustainable.
Korra was the Avatar that went back into her history through Wan and Raava, the first Avatar and the Spirit of Light and Peace, and learned from their mistakes. She found the balance that the world was missing. Too many Avatars forgot about their duties to the Spirit world and so their training was incomplete. Korra was influenced by Aang’s beliefs and honored the idea that all life is sacred, including spirit life. She learned to respect their lives’ as much as any human’s life. Many of the Avatars duties are focused on the people, and the Four Nations. Korra was the one that took responsibility for her past lives ignoring the duty that is being the bridge between two worlds and made it right.
We still haven’t answered if Korra found a solution for the violence the villains in her lifetime enacted. Well for one thing, Korra’s story seemed as if they were leaning toward the possibility planet wide prison reform. Each of the villains Korra had to defeat were humanized. You can clearly see why each villain did what they did, and maybe they even convinced you that they were right. The problem was that they went too far, chose a radical path, and harmed innocent people to get their way. Korra learned from each villain she fought, and as the seasons progressed, she found a way to protect them and teach them the error of their ways.
In the third season of The Legend of Korra, Zaheer was defeated and imprisoned again, but he eventually taught Korra how to heal from the trauma he inflicted onto her in order to stop Kuvira from taking over the entire Earth Kingdom. When a spirit tried to kill Kuvira with her own blaster, Korra redirected the blast and transformed the energy into a spirit portal, saving Kuvira’s life and created something useful out of something dangerous. Kuvira was forced to stop her conquering and see the error of her ways. It’s not clear if Zaheer and Kuvira are ever going to be freed from prison, but the first steps to reform have been set in motion.
F.C. Yee used the emphasis The Legend of Korra placed on spirits as a catalyst for the conflicts Avatar Yangchen created in the past. Because his audience was now familiar with the importance of human and spirit relationships, he was able to dive deeper into the conflicts they may have had before Korra, when the spirits were understood more as a tool and other worldly, rather than neighbors in the physical world.
Yee also creates a more realistic understanding of how long an Avatar’s solution can last. Avatar Wan, the first Avatar, closed the spirit portals, essentially locking spirits out of the physical world. But Avatars are not omnipotent, which means their rules can be broken. Spirits in all lifetimes affected the physical world, regardless of whether or not a spirit portal was active. There’s Koh the Face Stealer in Kuruk’s lifetime, Father Glow Worm in Kyoshi’s lifetime, Hei Bai the forest spirit in Aang’s lifetime, and Vaatu in Korra’s lifetime. Each one of these spirits found a way in and made huge impacts on the physical world and human life. Korra’s opening of the spirit portals was going to happen eventually, and Yee wrote a past that solidified an explanation for future events.
All in all, I think this history is wonderfully written and fits perfectly into the Avatar Universe. It’s obvious that he did a ton of research when writing Kyoshi’s novels and I loved the nods to very specific scenes in both Aang’s and Korra’s TV series. If I ever write a story big enough that I’ll need to write a past from several generations ago, I’ll definitely use The Shadow of Kyoshi as a reference :)
As always, this blog post is available in audio form on my podcast, Everything Has A Story. You can listen to this post and catch up on old episodes here. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts.
What did you think of F.C. Yee’s writing? Are there any plot holes that you found that I missed? Let me know in the comments below, I’d love to hear from you!
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