By: Kaiya Irion

Warning!!! Spoilers! Obviously…

As stated before in my review of Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA), I love it. I have very few complaints, but if I do have one, it is the finale. At the end of the show,

the writers suddenly put in the idea that “Violence is never the answer”. Up to this point the entire series was based upon fighting, not only verbally but physically, in order to defend what is right.

The ‘no violence’ idea is inconsistent with Aang’s character. Just before the finale he was completely ready to kill Ozai. Then he becomes hesitant; hesitant to bring justice to a murderer of thousands of civilians. Aang doesn’t seem to consider that Ozai could also still be an influence in jail, especially on Zuko. From my perspective, it was just wrong to have Ozai remain alive.

I suspect, the reason for this idea suddenly coming up, is because the show was originally designed for children. The debate on whether kids should be introduced to the concept of the death penalty I may discuss another time, but my point is the writers should have seen an ending like that coming and could have done something about it that would have made more sense.

There are some things I love about the final episodes though. The music and animation were at their best and made the mistakes in the story bearable to watch. So to quote Sokka, “The effects were decent”.

Please don’t hesitate to leave your own thoughts in the comments. I would very much like to hear them.