Katara: How Destiny is Defined as a Purpose (not a Person)
I know there are many other ATLA meta essays describing how “Katara had so much potential than just marry Aang and be a housewife/mom after ATLA” and I wanted to explore this topic with the focus on Destiny.
We all know the laundry list of characteristics she demonstrated in the show:
- Katara is a diplomatic, inspirational leader. She got herself arrested and helped Earthbenders fight oppression and reclaim their dignity.
- Katara is a hardcore, non-apologetic feminist. She challenged an elder in the Northern Water Tribe and broke their centuries of tradition to give female water-benders the opportunity to become soldiers as much as healers.
- Katara is resourceful and holds people together through hopeless times. She directed the Gaang through the Si Wong desert on her own.
- Katara has a strong, impeccable sense of work ethic. Without the luxury of having a teacher for most of her life, she managed to master water-bending in less than a year through sheer discipline.
- Katara is a believer of good virtues, and doesn’t abuse others with her extraordinary power. Despite mastering the technique for Bloodbending, she chooses not to practice it.
- Katara practices positive reinforcement. She knows how talk Aang through emotional obstacles, how to boost Sokka’s ego and make him feel like the “smarter” sibling, how to encourage Toph without being bossy, and how to reassure Zuko that his emotional growth has earned forgiveness.
- Katara is an environmental activist and encourages the less fortunate to fight for a better life. She defended a small Fire Nation village from sickness and oppression, teaching them to help themselves rather than “wait for a hero to arrive.”
With all of these traits and characteristics, there was quite an array of potential that Katara could explore for herself at the end of the war… but it seemed as if her character and story arc faded behind the Avatar’s bigger narrative.
What really bothered me about the episode “the Fortuneteller” was that, rather than describing the amazing things Katara would accomplish in her life, Aunt Wu only seemed to imply that Katara’s destiny was established as the person she would eventually marry (”a very powerful bender”).
It bothered me because it really set a precedent to just how little power the creators/writers of the show wanted to give Katara by the end of the show. It was as if to say “no– she would not lead her own story and be remembered as Katara of the Southern Water Tribe. History would only remember her as someone(most likely the Avatar)’s wife.”
There’s an additional layer to Katara’s character that makes this problematic to fix: Katara is a character deeply enveloped with hope, faith, and believing in the unbelievable… and her greatest belief was that the Avatar would save the world. She had so much hope that the Avatar would return that deep down, she failed to realize that it was because of her that the Avatar is even back in the first place! Aang didn’t return to the world on his own; he was found frozen in an iceberg. Katara’s blessing and curse was that she grew up with a deep spiritual faith, and of emotional attachment due to the loss of her mother. Finding Aang and realizing he’s the Avatar would be something out of a fairy tale for her, and she would idolize Aang for the rest of her life. The idea of a spiritual person “letting go” of their spiritual idol in order to chart their own destiny would be very, very hard.
While there is a small hint in the finale, thanks to Zuko holding Katara back from going to an upset Aang after a conversation of whether or not to kill the Fire Lord… Katara never realized she eventually had to “let go” of that emotional attachment to Aang.
She never learned to separate her spiritual devotion to the Avatar from her friendship with Aang, understanding that the two relationships could be mutually exclusive from one another.
She never learned to let Aang’s destiny be defined by this kid’s own choices, not always relying on her personal influence on him.
This is were I strongly believe the writer’s could’ve done better: Katara’s destiny is indeed entwined with Aang’s, but that didn’t mean that her life’s purpose was to follow Aang wherever he went.
Aang is the Avatar. He is meant to travel all over the world and maintain spiritual peace and balance. That is his destiny. Of course, any kid would feel alone and overwhelmed by that amount of responsibility, but let’s remember how destiny can be shaped as needed. Aang might feel alone in the world, but the world is also his home, and without changing who he is, Aang can make friends wherever he goes to help him successfully realize his role as the Avatar.
The problem was that Aang interpreted this flexibility about destiny as something else: that if he loved her enough, Katara would always be at his side.
What Aang should’ve understood about destiny is this: Katara is her own character, with her own defined values, needs, wants and drive. Her destiny may have been entwined with Aang’s, but it was never actually Aang.
Since the start of the show, Katara is very much a self-reliant, compassionate character with the goal of becoming a master water bender. Rather than waiting for the men of her tribe to return, Katara wanted to play an active role and fight to end the great war, helping people in need along the way. Traveling with Aang and training him as the Avatar helped to fulfill these goals.
Once the war is over after Sozin’s Comet arrives and Ozai is defeated, there’s no reason that Katara’s personal drive and initiative would slow down. She wouldn’t want to simply go auto-pilot and appease to where Aang would ask her to go. Katara would listen to her heart and her instincts, and find the courage to travel to wherever the world would need her most after the war.
Based on the various characteristics and traits that she demonstrated through the show, Katara’s destiny (in my own humble opinion) was to help rebuild the Southern Water Tribe with water benders and travel on her own to the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation as a peace councillor, using her knowledge, experience, and water-bending mastery on behalf of Avatar Aang’s peaceful agenda. She would be the Avatar’s greatest supporter without actually having to be at his side all the time.
Katara’s destiny should not be to always be with Aang, romantically or platonically. It does not end with finding the Avatar, or helping the Avatar into this unknown war-torn world, or even realizing how much the Avatar loves her. Her destiny continues with whatever it is she wants to do for the world.
Destiny is an ongoing, personal journey defined by a sense of purpose.
The ATLA writers and Bryke didn’t seem to have a problem placing Aang, Zuko, Sokka, and Toph under this definition of Destiny: in LoK and in the comics, each of these characters would have their own goals and stories to later mark in history after the war.
Katara should’ve been no different.
She was not meant to fade behind anyone else’s narrative after the war, and yet writers ultimately placed her story as secondary to Aang’s. It was as if to say, if Katara’s story did not involve the Avatar, it was not worth telling… and this became a huge disservice to her character.
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