Song I’m listening to while writing this: New Star Song by the Mountain Goats
(Avatar: The Last Airbender spoilers ahead. And also spoilers for that movie Holes that came out in like 2003. Pick your poison.)
By now, a lot of my friends know that I have a rather strange affinity for villains in movies, games, shows, etc. It’s less like “oh they are so evil and cool”, and more like “You deserved to succeed because you deserve to have something good happen to you”. Let me offer an example.
If you’ve watched the movie Holes starring Shia Leboeuf, you’d know that the main conflict in the movie comes from Stanley (played by Shia beefboy) going to juvies and getting caught in an old generational conflict. The warden Walker (played by Signourney Weaver) was trying to find a fortune that Kate Barlow, a 19th century outlaw, had hidden in the desert. It wasn’t really about the money, though. Walker’s ancestors killed Barlow’s lover, and so she retaliated by hunting them down and stealing their fortune, so they devoted their lives to hunting her down. Well, maybe it was partially about the money. But the money they were searching for wasn’t the Walker fortune, it was the fortune of Stanley Yelnat’s ancestors. Why this money got stolen is beyond me, probably because Barlow was an outlaw and did whatever she wanted.
Either way, at the end of the money, Stanley finds the fortune in a hole he digs. Walker finds him and is about to kill him, but she opts out of it since he quickly gets surrounded by venomous lizards, and figured those will do the trick. Stanley gets out because he’s a mad lad, and the police show up for some reason and arrest Walker for trying to kill the children and for trying to take the fortune that is apparently now Stanley’s. I don’t completely remember all of the pieces to this story because I watched it as a kid, but you get the gist.
What is important to note is that, towards the end of the movie, as the warden is getting arrested, she is crying and begs “Stanley, won’t you just open it? Won’t you just let me see what is inside, please?” in regards to the treasure chest that her family has spent generations looking for. And Stanley replies “Excuse me?” as he shuts his car trunk and the police escort Walker away. While this was a moment of triumph for Stanley, and most kids who were watching this movie, I genuinely cried for Walker. Because I get it, she was bad, she left Stanley to die, and it wasn’t her money. But her family spent their entire lives looking for this money. It wasn’t her fault that she was dragged into this generational conflict, and forced by her parents to hate Kate Barlow and search for the treasure. And as she was finally seeing the end of having to carry this torch for her family, she sees everything washed away. And that’s really freaking sad.
And that idea of understanding the place that so many of these villains were in, led me down a path where I genuinely loved the villains in shows I watched. Because they weren’t inherently bad, they just had life circumstances they could account for. Another example is the Lion King. Wouldn’t you be upset if your brother was named Mufasa, which means “king” in Swahili, while you were named Taka (Scar’s original name), which literally means “garbage”? I am not condoning their behavior, only saying that their sentiments are totally justified. Which brings me onto the point of Azula.
With the addition of Avatar: The Last Airbender to Netflix, I have seen a lot of people talking about the characters in the show. As someone who loved the show as a kid, this brings me nothing but happiness. But one thing I see so often is the quick demonization of Azula, Zuko’s sister. And again, I get it, she helped her father try to destroy the world, she tried to kill her brother (on several occasions), and she was downright manipulative. But people forget that Azula had a terrible childhood just like Zuko did. While Zuko witnessed his father shrug him off while compared to his sister, and watched his mother flee their family to save him from dying, Azula was always forced to be as perfect as her father was, while her mother told her that she was a monster to her face. Azula was turned into what she was by her father, who was the only one that gave her the affirmation she wanted. I mean, she used to play games with Zuko when they were young, but when their mother left, Azula was totally nonchalant about her father threatening to kill Zuko, and went as far as to tease him about it. That is a clear sign that she was being shown what to feel and do, and for the first part of her life this worked great because her father was winning his war.
But it’s clear as ATLA continues that the damage done to Azula as a child left some deep scars in her. When something didn’t go her way, she wouldn’t be too upset about it, but when Mai disobeyed her at the Boiling Rock, Azula was furious. How dare someone I trusted wholeheartedly just let me go for my traitor of a brother? Even worse, does this mean that anyone can leave me if I mess up, even my father? This was one of Azula’s biggest breaking points. The other, of course, is the agni kai with Zuko. And at the end of the agni kai, I wanted to be happy for Zuko’s long deserved win, but I couldn’t help feeling nothing but sadness for Azula. Because she didn’t ask for this, in the same way Zuko didn’t ask for it. She didn’t ask to become fire lord, she didn’t ask to be abandoned by her mother and overworked by her father. She was told she was perfect and undefeatable, yet the inferior brother she was told to hate was able to beat her. Everything she knew to be true (her perfectness, her friendships, everything) disappeared almost instantly. She rolls around and screams out fire as she sobs to herself in the final scene of the agni kai. She has lost everything that held her together. And now she has nothing.
It is unfair that Zuko’s redemption arc was completed while Azula’s was not, and that Zuko’s childhood trauma is used to justify his terrible deeds, while Azula’s deeds are deemed unjustifiable even though she had the same trauma that Zuko did. Who knows, maybe the writers never planned on writing her a redemption arc. But she deserved one, because she wasn’t inherently evil. And she deserved more.
Yours,
Oswaldo.
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