Powers
Time to talk about Esteban and Zias powers cause they’re either overlooked or misunderstood
Sun summoning
The first magical ability is quite obvious, it’s literally in the theme song. Esteban has the power to control the sun, but hold on! He doesn’t have complete authority on the sun! Here’s what he can and can’t do:
Can:
Disperse cloud or fog that may be blocking the sun
Can’t:
Influence day/night cycles
Influence eclipses
Where does he get his powers from? I will assume it’s from his Atlantean heritage (ie, his mother’s side). I’m not saying his mother has magic powers (but she was a priestess so maybe!) nor am I saying that all Atlanteans or Muans have powers (Tao doesn’t, for example). But maybe they used to? That could be interesting to think about.
How do his powers work? I made a post talking about this particular aspect, but in general, let’s just say it has something to do with confidence and mood. The sun will listen to him easier if he believes he can control it.
Telekinesis
Next is Zia’s special ability. She’s able to move objects around with her mind. This can be physical objects, like people, but also immaterial things, like fire. This wasn’t explained but I’m gonna guess that the larger a thing is, the harder it is to move it. She can make rocks float pretty easily, for example. When she lifts people it looks like she needs to concentrate.
Where do her powers come from? She’s a child of the sun, just like Esteban, so let’s assume it’s from her Muan heritage again. Is it from her dad or her mom? We don’t know. It looks like her powers were “awakened” after using the crown from sundagatt. The crown lets anyone use telekinesis.
How do her powers work? It looks like the crown makes the job easier (she can make complex shapes with the golden cubes while wearing it). Without the crown, it’s harder and she needs to practice her skills, as we see in the scene where she makes pebbles float.
Animal telepathy
Another of Zia’s powers, closely linked to the first, since they’re both related to brain stuff.
Where do her powers come from? I’m gonna give the same answer as before. Her powers might be from the Muans. But we can be even more specific. Some people have noticed that Zia looks similar to rana’ori (this is most likely due to the artists’ limitation in character design, lots of faces get reused). Rana’ori also has a pet lion, while none of the other nacaals have pets. So we might like to headcanon that rana’ori could understand animals, and therefore so can Zia. This power wasn’t “awakened” like telekinesis was. It’s vaguely hinted at in season 1, where Zia says she took care of a baby condor. In another scene, they wave goodbye to some animals and Esteban remarks that it seems like Zia understands them.
But how does it work? From my understanding, animals don’t “speak” to her in languages humans can understand. She doesn’t interpret growling as words, for example. Instead, she can feel the animals drives, impulses and desires, then interprets a meaning from them. For example, she didn’t talk to the tiger in India. She understood that it was thinking about its kittens and wanted to protect them. In season 4, when they meet the gorillas, she uses her powers and can sense their intense drive to kill them, which is why she gets scared. It’s so strong, that she can’t even reason with them. I say that, because she is also able to make animals understand how she feels. For example, with the jaguar in season 3. It understands that she has no bad intentions and comes in peace, which is why the jaguar lets its guard down.
Precognition
The third of Zia’s powers, which, again, has something to do with mental abilities. Sensing a pattern here. This one shows up before the other 2, and only gets stronger as the series progresses. As the name suggests, she’s able to predict future events through her dreams, or small glimpses if she’s awake.
Where does this come from? The Muans were able to predict a lot of things so it might not be too far fetched to say it might come from them (again).
How does it work? She’s actually able to do it in three different ways. Firstly, she gets random glimpses into the future, like when they’re in Japan during the earthquakes. Second is when she wears the bako. She’s the only one who can do that (cause she’s the child of the sun, but does that mean Esteban could as well?). When she puts it on, she can see events from the future, but in metaphorical ways, because, magic, duh. The third way she can see the future is through dreams. After she faints from saving Esteban and tao from the rocks falling on them, she has a dream related to the Bako, predicting her finding it and wearing it. As if it was calling to her. Very theatrical.
Intuition
This is a power that’s actually shared between Esteban and Zia. It’s mentioned only once, when Yu Chunhe asks them to pick a jar out of 7 seemingly identical jars. The ones Esteban and Zia pick contained lotus flowers (symbol of purity) while the ones they didn’t pick were filled with sand. According to Yu Chunhe, it’s not a coincidence. They were never able to explain this phenomenon further, but I think it might have some link to some magical abilities.
Where do they get it from? Since they both have it, I’m guessing it’s a special child of the sun power.
How does it work? It an innate ability that doesn’t really get better or worse with practice. It’s just something they can do.