Since this post has gotten so much attention I figured it’s time I tell you how I really feel about Hama.
She is one of my favorite characters in the whole of ATLA. In one episode they manage to construct an incredibly compelling, nuanced character who you can love and hate. Even as a child, watching The Puppetmaster for the first time, I felt sympathy for Hama until the bitter end. I hated that she went back to jail.
Hama defended her tribe up until the final moment. She was the last man standing and she didn’t surrender until she was. At least that would keep the nonbenders safe for a little while
Hama was ready to fight all these mfs! She only didn’t to protect her tribe!
She spent years fighting to protect her people while her fellow waterbenders were taken away for no good reason and she kept on fighting. Hama is a damn warrior.
She was held in a prison with horrendous conditions. She was chained each time she was given water and held in a cage. Any sign of trouble was met with cruel retribution. Hama was locked away with her brothers and sisters, tormented, and treated as less than human. And for what? Because the Fire Nation thought of themselves and their people as supreme?
There were rats in such abundance in the prison that Hama could easily practice on small armies of them. Those are the conditions that she spent years in, locked in a cage.
She watched her fellow benders die in that prison. She watched her people being wiped out from inside those walls. You’re damn right she’s going to find a way to escape. Hama was an innocent. She had done nothing to warrant being locked away for years, suffering and watching people she loved be tortured and die.
Something people don’t mention when they consider Hama’s crimes following her escape is that she still showed more mercy and humanity to her victims than the Fire Nation did to her.
The people that Hama imprisoned lived. Yes, what she did was wrong. But even in avenging her fallen friends, Hama was not merciless like the Fire Nation was. She could have easily killed thousands of people in the Fire Nation. And she didn’t. She did what the Fire Nation did and she locked away innocents. (In seemingly better conditions than she faced, as well)
Hama had to develop an entirely new form of bending to escape her captors who kept her caged like an animal for years and she still retained more humanity than the Fire Nation or the Southern Raiders.
That ^ is fucking impressive and indicative of the sheer strength of Hama.
It’s heartbreaking that the end of Hama’s arc leaves her back in a Fire Nation prison. It’s just not fair. I wish the Gaang had found another solution besides sending Hama back to the very thing she fought so hard to escape.
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