i don’t think i’ve rewatched atla since becoming a committed pacifist and i just finished what was probably my tenth rewatch and i have never loved aang more. i've seen it so many times but i still came away with a new appreciation for the way the end of the story was handled. aang is the only survivor of a genocide and he is clinging to the last remnants of his culture and religion, and everyone is telling him the only way to save the world is to kill the dictator whose regime is responsible for the genocide, but to do so would abandon the deeply held beliefs of his people. if aang goes against his beliefs and kills ozai, his people's way of life dies completely and sozin wins.
aang knows it would be wrong but he can't see another way out so he prays for an answer, and the universe hears him and the spirits send out the lion turtle, and the creator answers him. and here's the thing that i never put together before today: aang would not have been able to energybend ozai if he had given in and wanted to kill him. the lion turtle tells aang that only the incorruptible can bend another’s energy, or else they will become corrupted themselves. and i think that aang, because of his love for the fire nation as he had once known it, was never corrupted by personal hatred for the fire lord or the fire nation. he was able to expertly hold two conflicting beliefs in harmony better than any adult could, the belief that ozai is a horrible person and the world would be better off without him and that he's still a human being with a life that is sacred.
and i don't think it's a matter of selfishness like some people make it out to be. aang is not some immature little kid who doesn't want to kill because killing is for bad guys. he's an incredibly wise and spiritual person who was shaped by airbender beliefs and upholds airbender beliefs, and he can see beyond the scope of this war. the balance of the world depends on the existence of the four nations, and aang does not just represent the air nomads, he IS the air nomads. he's all that's left.
despite many people’s interpretation of the four past avatars’ advice, none of the past avatars outright tell him to kill ozai. they tell him to be decisive, to bring justice, to be proactive, to be sacrificial. but none of them tells him definitively to kill him. he doesn't disobey or ignore their advice, he follows their ancient wisdom while still staying true to his beliefs. yangchen actually comes the closest to outright telling him to kill ozai (even more than kiyoshi, surprisingly) but what she fails to account for is that aang is not just the avatar, he is the last airbender, and being the last airbender is far greater a burden than being the avatar. no matter what happens, once he dies, there will always be another avatar. but if he is not careful to preserve the airbender way of life, there will be no more airbenders. yangchen could sacrifice her air nomad way of life for the sake of her duty to the world because there were thousands of other air nomads to continue their traditions. aang has no such privilege.
and it's not that he doesn't want to kill, it's that he actually doesn't think he can do it -- both that he won't be able to emotionally bring himself to kili someone, and, prodigy that he is, he doesn't have the raw bending skill to overcome a comet-powered master firebender. and then it turns from 'i don't think i can do it' into ‘i can’t do it.’ and when the avatar state gives him enough power to actually do it, he changes the answer to ‘i won’t do it.’ he overcomes all the combined power of his past lives to say no, i have found another answer and i will remain incorruptible. to kill is to maintain the power struggle of the fire nation and to reject air nomad wisdom and without airbenders the world CANNOT be brought into balance.
the only thing ozai cares about is power, and that's what the entire fight with ozai is about, physically and ideologically, because ozai only sees power in terms of force, fear, threats, and violence. to ozai, aang (and his entire people) are weak and undeserving of life because they are largely pacifists, but he fails to see the magnificent power that the airbenders do hold, spiritual wisdom and mastery of the self and contentment and joy and harmony and a deep understanding of the world that a man like ozai could never obtain. to kill ozai would ratify ozai’s worldview that power as he defines it is the most important pursuit in the world and the only way to assert one's right to be in the world is to be cruel and violent like him. i think to ozai, becoming powerless might be worse than being dead. he wants power, or he wants death, and aang gives him neither. it upends everything he believed in. aang, the avatar, but more importantly, the last airbender, armed by his past lives' power and his people's love and the spirit world's blessing and the lion turtle's omniscience (and toph's mastery of true sight through neutral jing), ends the war 100 years to the day after the air nomad genocide, in the way that his people taught him, with power that goes beyond force and violence, with spiritual wisdom, with an incorruptible soul, with mercy -- mercy that is not weakness, mercy that brings justice.
