I love Azula (my favorite villain in ATLA and second favorite in the franchise), but, like, if Azula got a show, she would need all four seasons of CONSTANT work to be redeemed. I feel like she COULD have gotten it, if she truly broke down in the ATLA finale (and I don’t mean like cried. I mean full on mental break), but even in the comics afterwards she’s... I don’t want to say the same, exactly, but she’s not better.
The only way Azula could have come out even halfway as decent as Zuko is if she had a different father. She’s borderline psychopath and Ozai nurtured all those traits, while Ursa and later Iroh nurtured Zuko’s soft heart. Azula could have grown up into a formidable warrior who doesn’t get along with her brother and doesn’t quite connect with her mother, but once Ursa left (not Ursa’s fault), Ozai was free to encourage all Azula’s worst qualities.
I don’t ever see Azula, in any universe, being as kind and compassionate as Zuko unless she was a completely different person. The way she acted as a kid, when Ursa was still around, proves that. She and Zuko got along sometimes, but she was a pathological liar (“Azula always lies”) and everything she said or did to Zuko was meant, deep down, to unsettle him or hurt him. She wasn’t above hurting her friends for her own amusement (Mai was freaked out when Azula lit an apple on fucking fire on top of her head) and the only reason they were friends at all is probably because Mai and Ty Lee’s parents were important nobles/members of government and the girls were considered acceptable playmates for her. She also abused animals enough for Zuko to have noticed (“hey mom, want to see how Azula feeds turtleducks? *chucks rock at duck*), which irl almost always means a child is pretty fucking mentally disturbed.
If Azula had been IROH’s child, he may have been able to contain her worst traits. But she wasn’t. She’s Ozai’s. And Ozai is an unhinged version of his grandfather Sozin. You know he 100% did that thing in the Kingsman movie where he gives Zuko and Azula both a puppy and tells them to bond with it and after a year tells them to kill it, and you know Azula would have killed that puppy, just because Ozai wanted her to. She’s a carbon copy of him, and Ozai didn’t get redeemed either.
Zuko got a redemption arc because even from episode one, he knew the difference between right and wrong. Sure, it was a little skewed, but the kid never tried to kill anyone or even seriously injure them. He had morals. Every shot Azula ever fired was 100% lethal from day one.
origamiaround
gamechangershow
titsay
stormborns
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
romaincrisis
