25 moments Netflix’s remake of Avatar: The Last Airbender MUST get right

Hama and Bloodbending

Avatar: The Last Airbender plays with a lot of different over its run, but they’re often variations on “action” or “comedy.” It doesn’t often delve into the realm of horror, except in the Book 3 episode “The Puppetmaster.”

In this episode, Team Avatar hides out in the Fire Nation with a kindly old Waterbender named Hama. But she has a secret: Hama was brought to the Fire Nation as a prisoner long ago, and the cruelty she suffered at the hands of her captors has shaped her into a dark, twisted person. She even teaches Katara an unspeakably terrible new technique: Bloodbending, controlling the water in someone’s body to make them do whatever you want.

The whole thing is pretty ghastly, and could be very effective in a live-action setting, when real-live actors can use their faces to sell the full horror of what’s happening to them. Then again, there’s a reason the show didn’t go to the horror well too often. This is, at bottom, an optimistic story, and while Hama’s tale of horror is good as a novelty, the show won’t want to lean on stories like this.