Netflix Avatar: The Last Airbender Episode 3 Review: Why Is She Even Here?

The third episode of the Avatar: The Last Airbender live-action adaptation from Netflix opens with a failed assassination plot against Fire Lord Ozai and the reveal of Azula. But why is she even here? In the Nickelodeon cartoon, Azula is briefly shown in Book One but doesn’t get involved until after the events at the Northern Water Tribe. For a series attempting to streamline the episodic adventures of Avatar, the showrunners seem intent on wasting time focusing on characters wholly irrelevant to the plot.

When Azula was introduced in the cartoon as an actual character it was during Book Two where she goes to hunt the Avatar after Zuko’s failure to capture him. We get to see how twisted, cruel, and manipulative she is when she recruits her ‘friend’ Ty Lee by making her do a trapeze act over an active fire. But in the episode, she’s already hanging out in the Fire Nation with Ty Lee and Mai while practicing with a bow and arrow.

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There’s a bit more about getting Commander Zhao to leak intel to her on Zuko, but it could all be removed, and the pacing would have been far better. Not to mention that the actress came across as whiny and lacked any of the flare Azula had in the cartoon. Azula is a great character, and she’s the main villain of Book Two, but she has no place in the first part of the story.

All that aside this episode not only decided to add in Azula but is combining three different episodes into one. The episodes are The King of Omashu, The Northern Air Temple, and Jet.

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The gang arrives in Omashu chasing after someone they see flying, believing it to be an airbender. In reality, it’s a boy named Teo whose father is called The Mechanist and, in the Netflix Avatar show, is supplying inventions to the King. The show still follows the plot from the cartoon of him supplying inventions to the Fire Nation, but it doesn’t really make sense. In the cartoon, he and his son lived in the Northern Air Temple and had no protection from the Fire Nation, but in the Netflix show, they live in the safety of Omashu.

Jet’s role is roughly the same as he works with Katara to beat up Fire Nation spies after the two catch the Mechanist selling secrets to the Fire Nation. His actor was alright. Definitely gave a better performance than Azula’s actress. Given the more serious tone the show was going for, it would have probably been better to give Jet his own episode or separate it from Omashu’s plot, at least.

While Katara is getting her character growth, not-Sokka is being encouraged to become an engineer and use his head more than fight. It’s a good moment, given that the past two episodes butchered Sokka so much that he’s not Sokka now.

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And while not-Sokka is finally given something to work towards, Aang and Teo discover the source of the explosions. Which turns out to be Jet following along with his ideology that the ends justify the means. And anything done to eliminate the Fire Nation is worth it.

Katara fights with not-Sokka on who is really bad, Jet or the Mechanist. It’s both. And eventually, Katara goes to Jet, only for him to reveal he is going to blow off the King and the Mechanist. Had he not been so brazen with his plans and revealed them to a stranger he’d only just met a day ago, the events of the show would have had a very different ending.

The gang goes to stop the bomb, but Aang is sidelined by Zuko in the market. The fight between them is actually fun since Zuko can’t use his bending for fear of being captured. Aang could end the fight very fast, given he’s not afraid to use his bending, but decides not to. It doesn’t matter since Zuko eventually freaks out and uses his bending anyway, which leads to chaos in the city.

Iroh gets captured because he stays behind to let Zuko escape. While Aang puts out the fires started by Zuko, he, too, is captured by the army. But Katara and not-Sokka manage to stop the bomb! After roughly three hours of this show, one might have been hoping the bomb would just explode then and there.

But alas, there are still five more of these to go.

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The final rating for the third episode is 2/10.

The showrunners really need to comprehend less is more. And they also need to stop shoving their personal crushes into the show when they have no place and no relevance in the story at this point. And if you are going to do that then you better execute it properly.

Azula is a fan-favorite character, so it’s easy to understand the desire to include her early, but it felt like every scene of her in the episode was pointless filler that could be cut out. Had they done that, there could have been more time spent focusing on Jet or The Mechanist. It gives off the feeling that the showrunners expected people to already know the twist with these characters, so they just didn’t care about exploring them at all.

This episode is very frustrating to watch because it feels like had the showrunners not tried stuffing so much into it, then it might have been better. Not by much, but definitely more than what we were given.

What do you think of Netflix Avatar: The Last Airbender so far? Leave a comment and let us know.

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