“It was not his place to speak out and there were dire consequences.”
“I wanted to speak out…but I’m ashamed to say I didn’t.”
This parallel always breaks my heart. Three years after being shamed and burned by his father, Zuko finds himself in the same room, under extremely similar circumstances, and he freezes up. He remembers what happened the last time. He knows that, if he speaks, he’ll be injured. He could be killed, this time. His voice is literally stripped away from him. Even worse, he realizes that, despite the changes he went through in those three years, his father hasn’t changed at all. The Fire Nation is still planning on destroying innocent lives for the sake of their own imperialist vendetta. Nothing’s changed. That’s why Zuko realizes that he has to leave.
What gets me is when he says, “I’m ashamed.” He was ashamed that he didn’t speak out in that moment, even though doing so would have cost him everything. The very next day, he took advantage of the eclipse, packed his things, and confronted Ozai one last time.He was an abused child who saw the right opportunity to escape, lest he be injured again (or worse), he went on to help save the entire world, and he still remarks that he was ashamed because he didn’t speak/fight sooner.
This is what we mean when we all say that Zuko is one of the best fictional characters that’s ever been written. It isn’t just that he goes from being the villain to being the hero. It’s that every single second of his life is filled with complex moral choices, often at the risk of his own life, and that the consequences of these choices has left him with, let’s be honest, a form of posttraumatic stress disorder, which causes him to question, doubt, and despise everything about himself so that, even when he tries to do good, he still feels ashamed because, in his scarred eyes, it’s not good enough. On that note, Ozai didn’t just scar Zuko’s eye; Ozai scarred Zuko’s sight. He scarred Zuko’s ability to see himself in a wholly positive light.
I’d like to believe that some of these triggers faded away as Zuko got older, but that’s the thing about being a child in a traumatic situation—some triggers never leave. (Believe me, I know.) Still, there’s a reason (multiple reasons) why the last song in the series is ‘Peace’. In that moment, when Zuko smiles and hands Iroh that cup of tea, he’s as close to peace as he’s ever been. It’s hard to say whether he’ll be able to reach that wholly positive sense of worth, but if there’s one thing Zuko’s story exudes, it’s hope…
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