All 8 episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender ranked from worst to best

7. Episode 8, "Legends"

That's right, the finale of the season was one of my least favorite episodes. And the most disappointing part is the culmination of Aang's character arc, or lack thereof. Throughout the season, Aang has been learning about his destiny from previous Avatars, who have been telling him to learn the four elements and save the Northern Water Tribe from destruction.

But after spending the entire season procrastinating his waterbending lessons — even though he's traveling with a waterbender, mind you — when he gets to the Northern Water Tribe, he doesn't learn any waterbending despite waterbendings all around him. Yes, there was a Fire Nation invasion days away, but at the end of the episode the group decides to leave the place where all the waterbenders are even though Aang hasn't learned anything.

These are fairly minor parts of the episode but they stand out to me as colossal writing mistakes. It made this version of Aang feel much less like a naturally gifted Avatar like we were told in the beginning of the show, and more like an impetuous child who just gets lucky a lot.

6. Episode 5, "Spirited Away"

"Spirited Away" sees team Avatar journey into the spirit world for a somewhat interesting adventure. But this episode continues the annoying trend of things happening in this show for the sake of them happening. For example, when Aang meditates into the spirit world, he brings Katara and Sokka with him on accident. The show's explanation for this is the line from Aang where he says, "Somehow I brought you with me." This is another thing that could have been a straight adaptation from the original show, where the spirit Hei Bai kidnaps Sokka along with people from a nearby village. Why not have Hei Bai take Sokka and Katara into the spirit world instead of breaking the original canon rules about who and how someone can enter the alternate dimension?

This would have given Hei Bai more of a role, because in the live-action show he basically just has a cameo. Even though villagers are being kidnapped, it's unclear if Hei Bai was the one taking them, because Aang rescues them from a different spirit named Koh later on. That begs the question: why was Hai Bai even included if Koh was going to be the main adversary of this arc anyway? I chuck all of this into the massive bucket of sloppy writing mistakes that are way too prevalent in this show.

The set-up aside, I think the meat of this episode is pretty good. Katara and Sokka have to face their most painful memories and their character arcs improve because of it. Koh makes Katara relive the day her mother died, which has been holding back her waterbending abilities all season. Katara grows as a character and becomes more powerful because of this vision from Koh. Meanwhile, Sokka is forced to relive the day he heard his father Hakoda talk behind his back about him being an incapable leader. I think this was a great set-up for Sokka to gain more confidence in his leadership abilities; unfortunately, I don't think the show did a good job paying this off before the season concluded.