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

Avatar Day

The only thing more empowering than meeting the Kyoshi Warriors is meeting Avatar Kyoshi herself, and fans get a look into her backstory during Book Two’s “Avatar Day.”

The episode starts with our heroes in a tight spot as Aang and his companions come across a town that despises Kyoshi for murdering one of their leaders. Their hatred extends to Aang, who is her reincarnation come again.

This episode is interesting and important in a subtle way, because it forces Aang to confront several hard truths. For one, even though he’s tasked with keeping everyone in the world safe, not everyone will like him or look to him for help. More importantly, he learns that former Avatars have been forced to make terrible decisions to maintain peace, as when Kyoshi killed Chin the Conqueror to stop his tyranny from spreading across the world. That’s an internal struggle that Aang must work through when preparing to confront Fire Lord Ozai later in the series.

”Avatar Day” is also pretty relevant to our current political landscape. The humor about the injustice of the fictional prison system still lands after all these years, and we can see Netflix underlining the parallels to make them clear.