Many fans ofAvatar: The Last Airbendershare the opinion thatZuko is the best character on the show. Despite his at-times petulant attitude, and his privileged upbringing, Zuko has a dark past, which left him both emotionally and physically scarred. He is a constant disappointment to his father, the Fire Lord Ozai, because he is neither cruel nor ruthless enough to live up to the evil Fire Nation precedent that his father has set for him, and for the whole world.
But subsequently,Zuko’s redemption arc is one of the best ever, as he goes on a journey of self-discovery, and realizes that he has the power to turn the tide of the war, and help the Avatar restore peace and balance to the world that his grandfather and father broke.
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And this redemption arc starts surprisingly early in the show, earlier than many fans think. Even in the first series, which focuses on Zuko’s determination to capture the avatar, there is a hint of the friendship and loyalty that will eventually develop between them, in the episode ‘The Blue Spirit’. At this point in the series, Aang has been captured by a general in the Fire Nation, who is keeping him prisoner until they can transport him back to the mainland.
A mysterious figure in a blue mask infiltrates the fire nation and helps the captured Avatar escape. The two make an amazing team as they fight to protect each other, facing the enemy back to back with their bending and their sword-fighting skills. However, Aang is devastated at the end of the episode to find out that the person behind the mask is Zuko, who has been hunting him and his friends for weeks. So why would the prince help his mortal enemy escape?
The reason that Zuko convinces himself, andhis Uncle Iroh, another fan-favorite character, is because he wants to deliver the Avatar personally to his father, to restore his honor and be welcomed back into his family. After it was seen that he had challenged and disobeyed authority in the past, Zuko’s father cruelly burned him and banished him to be scorned from the royal family forever, with the sole exception of if he ever obtained the Avatar, the Fire Nation’s greatest threat in winning the war.
It may be very possible that his father only set this as an extenuating circumstance because he believed it to impossible to achieve. After all, he had previously sentthe Fire Nation to kill the Air Nomads,and believed that the Avatar must be dead. Nonetheless, Zuko is determined to prove him wrong, and he subsequently breaks Aang out of captivity to prevent anyone else from achieving the task Lord Ozai had set him. He then planned to take Aang captive himself, and finally achieve his mission of the past few years.
However, after this encounter, something changes between them. Not only do they realize that they make a formidable team, and that their fighting abilities and protective instincts are perfectly aligned, but this moment also sets them on a path of a strange form of loyalty to one another. Just as they are about to escape, Zuko is shot in the head with an arrow by one of the Fire Nation guards. The arrow bounces off the blue mask, revealing to Aang that his supposed savior is the same person who has been hunting him for weeks. But despite this, Aang chooses to save Zuko anyway. He later asks the fire prince “do you think, if we had met before the war, we might have been friends?”
After the Blue spirit incident, Aang and Zuko save each other’s lives on more than one occasion, including when Zuko is passed out in the snow and would freeze to death if left there. And Aang does this because it is the right thing to do, because it is his duty to protect all people. And Zuko protects Aang too, still trying to convince himself that it’s to capture him later, but it’s actually because their lives have become bound to one another.
Of course, those who have seen the later series will know that it is actually Zuko who helps Aang to master the final element he must learn in order to become a fully realized Avatar and defeat the Fire Lord, one ofthe best villains in the Avavatr franchise, before Sozin’s comet arrives. Zuko realizes that there is more at stake in the world than him and his small life, and that there are hundreds of innocent people that will be caught in the crossfire, oppressed, and possibly even killed, if his father wins the war and spreads his belief that the Fire Nation is the superior race, becausethey are the only benders who can create their own element.If Zuko had never become the blue spirit, and helped the Avatar escape, he never would have realized where his true purpose lay: in helping heal the damage that his father created.
