For a lot of Avatar: The Final Airbender, waterbending looks like essentially the most restricted of the 4 components for one sensible purpose: Its wielders want entry to water. Firebenders generate their very own flames. Earth is in every single place, and air is much more readily accessible. On her journey with Aang, Katara is nearly by no means separated from her water pores and skin for this very purpose. A waterbender within the desert is about as helpful as a badgermole cub in a swimming pool.
Partway by way of The Final Airbender’s ultimate season, nonetheless, that limitation turns into the idea for one of many present’s most horrifying revelations. Water is in every single place. You simply need to do one thing horrible to entry it.
Nineteen years in the past at present, on Nov. 9, 2007, “The Puppetmaster” launched bloodbending, which permits a waterbender to control the water inside one other individual’s physique. Together with that excessive model of waterbending, we additionally realized that it’s doable to attract the water out of dwelling issues, and even the air itself.
These implications would ultimately provide a few of The Legend of Korra’s most scary villains with their signature bending talents. However its most annoying achievement is what it does to Katara. In some ways, she’s essentially the most virtuous of Workforce Avatar’s members, but beneath the sunshine of the complete moon, she’s pressured to study arguably essentially the most evil type of bending in existence.
“The Puppetmaster” turns Avatar right into a horror story
“The Puppetmaster” opens with the gang telling horror tales round a campfire at night time someplace within the Hearth Nation, instantly establishing a decidedly spooky vibe. An older innkeeper named Hama quickly reveals up and tells them that locals have been disappearing through the full moon. She affords them a secure place to remain. The story shortly evolves into one thing of a smalltown homicide thriller the place Toph is the hardnosed detective with Aang and Sokka as her hapless sidekicks.
Regardless of showing a bit creepy and suspicious, Hama reveals that, similar to Katara, she’s a waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe. Given the truth that the Hearth Nation hunted and imprisoned a lot of the waterbenders from the south, leaving Katara as the one one left, Hama instantly turns into the mentor Katara needed for many of her life.
Hama teaches Katara that it’s doable to attract moisture from the air and extract water from crops, however doing so kills the fireplace lilies she demonstrates with. It’s an unsettling however sensible reply to a waterbender’s most evident battle. Instantly, a resourceful waterbender with no qualms about the place their water comes from turns into essentially the most doubtlessly harmful among the many 4 bending kinds.
By this level, Avatar had lengthy since established that bending’s boundaries have been negotiable. Lightning supplied a sophisticated software of firebending that few may carry out. Late in Guide 2, Toph escaped captivity by discovering that steel wasn’t as separate from earth as everybody assumed. These breakthroughs rewarded distinctive ability and a willingness to query standard knowledge.
Season 1 additionally established that sure cosmic occasions can affect bending. Sozin’s Comet dramatically strengthens firebending as soon as each 100 years. Very similar to the tides, the waterbenders power additionally stems from the moon. (It’s slightly shocking that earth and air don’t get their very own cosmic energy increase in the identical means.) That’s essential as a result of the complete moon permits Hama to make use of this base idea of manipulating water inside dwelling issues to its darkest potential.
On the night time of the complete moon, Hama reveals that she had been imprisoned by the Hearth Nation for years with just about no water. Over time, she developed bloodbending and practiced controlling the rats in her cell like puppets earlier than making use of the approach to her captors. She’s been abducting members of the Hearth Nation as a type of revenge for the years of torture. The Hearth Nation practically worn out the Water Nation’s tradition, so Hama sees it as their shared accountability to return the favor. Katara refuses, which prompts an epic combat between the 2 the place they each have to attract the water out of their environment to maintain going.
Katara is in a position to withstand Hama’s use of bloodbending on her, however after Aang and Sokka present up and are put in grave hazard, Katara has to make use of it herself on Hama out of desperation. Even with the ability increase from a full moon, bloodbending requires an amazing quantity of ability. A feat like this solidifies Katara’s place as certainly one of her era’s biggest waterbenders and is parallel to Toph discovering metalbending. The episode ends on a downer, nonetheless, with Katara bursting into tears out of remorse as Hama cackles with delight that her legacy lives on.
The Legend of Korra makes bloodbending everybody’s drawback
A long time later, through the period introduced in The Legend of Korra, numerous superior types of bending change into much more prevalent than they have been beforehand. Republic Metropolis’s police power consists of grasp metalbenders. Firebenders generate lightning to offer electrical energy to town. And one significantly scary crime household masters bloodbending in methods which can be far past what even Hama may have dreamed.
Guide 1’s major villain is a masked revolutionary referred to as Amon who has the ability to strip an individual of their bending talents. At first it seems to be a feat much like the power bending approach that Aang makes use of on Ozai, however it’s ultimately revealed that Amon is definitely a Northern Water Tribe waterbender named Noatak who, like his brother, inherited the power to make use of psychic bloodbending. That meant they may bend an individual’s blood with out the complete moon and with out using hand gestures. Noatak took it even additional and developed a approach to sever an individual’s inner power paths, thereby stripping them of their bending altogether.
Towards the top of the season, we study that Noatak’s father, Yakone, was a lethal crime boss who hid his powers for years. After he was sentenced to life imprisonment, he used bloodbending to subdue Sokka, Toph, and even Aang. However within the ensuing confrontation, Aang used the Avatar state to overpower Yakone and strip him of his bending.
Yakone later had sons, Noatak and Tarrlok, and compelled them to follow bloodbending on animals and ultimately one another. Like Hama, he treats the youthful era’s potential as devices of revenge. As adults, Noatak assumes the alias of Amon to steer an riot whereas Tarrlok secretly infiltrates Republic Metropolis management to ultimately change into the chairman of the United Republic Council. Whereas they weren’t working collectively (Amon even went on to take Tarrlok’s bending away), they each used bloodbending to enact their father’s vengeance in very other ways.
Curiously, after Amon succeeds in taking away Korra’s water, earth, and firebending, it’s Katara that makes an attempt to revive them by way of therapeutic. A long time after Hama pressured the ability of bloodbending upon her, she comes head to head with the worst harm it could actually trigger. After all, season 1 ends with one of many franchise’s most uplifting scenes as Korra lastly connects together with her previous selves and Aang is ready to restore her bending absolutely. However seeing the Avatar practically powerless due to an obscure extension of bloodbending is among the scariest and boldest narrative selections the collection has ever made.
All of this stems from one remark a tortured previous lady made: Water exists inside dwelling issues. That made the aspect usually related to therapeutic change into a method of domination. Nineteen years later, Katara’s response nonetheless unsettles me greater than the approach itself. We’re used to cheering when heroes stage up and uncover a brand new energy. However when that energy is as scary as bloodbending, it’s sufficient to make you wish to cry.