I feel like everybody and their mother has screamed about the crystal catacombs scene in Crossroads of Destiny, but… I haven’t done it yet, so ha!
I think my absolute favorite thing about the entire episode is this exact moment:
Zuko, the boy who has spent the past two seasons pulling back from and pushing away any offers of friendship or understanding, reaches out first.
Up until this point, I was half inclined to write Zuko off as a jerk who didn’t care much for other people and who really didn’t want to make connections with anyone his age (to be fair, my first introduction to the show was The Western Air Temple, so when I went back to watch the whole thing a few years later, pre-redemption Zuko annoyed the heck out of me. I knew he was going to switch sides all along, so dang it, I just wanted him to be good already). He had a string of virtual strangers reach out to him with offers of friendship only to push them away, and for the longest time, I chalked it up to Teenage Angst ©.
But then this scene happens, and Zuko is thrown into a dungeon with an enemy girl who rages against him and his nation, and rather than raging back, he finds a thread of connection between the two of them and grabs onto it with both hands. Because at his core, Zuko isn’t the dark, cynical angstlord that some of those earlier interactions would paint him as. He’s a boy who deeply, desperately wants those connections, who wants someone to understand him without all the pretenses that come with living as a refugee under a false name in a foreign country.
With Katara, there are no unpleasant secrets to keep hidden. Unlike Song, Jet, and Jin, she knows exactly who Zuko is. She knows that he’s on the wrong side of the war, she knows that he’s the son of the Fire Lord, and she knows that he’s spent the past several months trying to capture Aang. And unlike Aang, who still clings to century-old ideas about the world, Katara knows the worst of what the Fire Nation is capable of, and she harbors no illusions about the Fire Lord’s real intentions in the war. Katara, like all the others who have tried to befriend Zuko, has plenty of reasons to hate him. The difference is that she already knows it. There’s no danger of an accidental revelation turning her against him because Katara already sees him as an enemy.
And all of that makes the moment when he turns back to Katara so much sweeter to me. He has nothing left to lose in that moment and exactly zero expectation that his apology will bring anything but more yelling and hatred from her (why would it, when she knows all the worst things about him?). But he does it anyway. And rather than throwing it back in his face, Katara listens.
What makes this scene so remarkable to me isn’t the fact that Katara reaches out to Zuko. Her offer to heal his scar is incredible and it gets me every time, but she isn’t the first to offer him kindness, nor is he the first person she tries to befriend against steep odds.
What makes it remarkable is the fact that Katara is the first person who Zuko reaches out to.
And that rather than turning the other way, Katara reaches back.
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