i re-watched the origins of the avatar episodes from korra for the first time in a long while.
And I can say that my thoughts from this post remain true.
The story of Wan is incompatible with the avatar storytelling style for several reasons:
1. The nature of spirits
Spirits in the last airbender are described as belonging to certain aspects of nature. Hei Bai is the spirit of the large forest near that village. Tui is the spirit of the moon and La is the spirit of the ocean.
In other words, spirits are the souls of living and nonliving things found in nature. They exist in another plane of reality but can interact with the world on strongly spiritual days.
Wan's story presented them as almost alien like. And many scenes were a rip off of studio Ghibli films, without really understanding the depth of cultural background within them.
2. The dichotomy of light and dark
The idea that light is good and kind while darkness is evil and cruel is a very western concept.
And a specifically Christian one at that.
Many of the naturalist beliefs that the avatar lore is based on do not have this concept at all.
Even in my own traditions of Judaism, light is merely the known and darkness is the unknown. Neither are good nor evil.
By having a Satan-eque character, Wan's story moved away from these themes of nature and how morality is very open ended.
3. The avatar as a "better" human
One of the major themes in last airbender was that although aang had the capacity for great power, he was still a human being (particularly a child) and that was the part that needed to be nurtured.
Wan's story presents the avatar as a someone better than the rest of humanity simply because they have great powers.
Yes, Wan is himself a good man and tries to help people. But much of the language used about him is very self advocating to the point that the rest of humanity are very nearly the villains of this story.
That goes completely against the messages of last airbender which were about the goodness of humanity and that humans usually make bad decisions because they are in a bad situation.
Again to bring up studio Ghibli films, their message was that nature is beautiful but so are people. People are complicated and that's okay. Because we have the capacity to choose to be better.
