Villain Therapy — ZUKO from Avatar: The Last Airbender

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I love the scenes where Zuko visits Iroh in prison. Iroh is imprisoned, but the angles make it look like Zuko is behind bars. Ach... ✨cinema. ✨

Oh God I want an Iroh episode so bad. That man was the uncle/father figure we all needed.

this show is over 10 years old and Zuko still has one of, if not, THEE best redemption arc in any story i’ve seen

A lot of people missed the early hints of who Zuko really is. In one of the first episodes he promises to leave the watertribe alone if Aang comes with him. Aang does and they leave. Ozai or Azula wouldn't have kept their word. The reason Zuko got the scar was because he spoke up against it when they were planning to use young soldiers as cannon futter. So in his heart he was always good and caring. He was punished for it every time.

One of my absolute favorite Zuko moments is his apology to Iroh. Not just the fact that he aplogizes (which he absolutely needed to), but the fact that he's so confused by Iroh's forgiveness. It's not something that he's accustomed to, but it's something he absolutely earned.

a detail I love about Zuko's integration in the Gaang is that different people start to trust him at different rates because of their history. Toph is the first to trust him, because she wasn't there when he was hunting Aang and she had that conversation with Iroh. Katara takes the longest to trust him, because she put her trust in him before anyone else and he betrayed that trust.

There’s a really subtle lore detail in Zuko’s burning. You might notice that there really aren’t any other burned firebenders, to the point where it helps him hide in the Earth Kingdom because no one thinks it’s POSSIBLE for a firebender to be burned. And that’s generally true. For a firebender to be burned, they have to let their guard down completely. Zuko LET that happen. It’s not just that his father humiliated and scarred him in front of a crowd. Zuko thought he deserved it.

I feel like the scene with the farm girl is more significant than we would initially think. “The Fire Nation has hurt you. But you’re not alone. They’ve hurt me, too.” I think it’s the first time someone outside the Fire Nation connected with him through the pain he’s been through, giving him physical proof. His burn doesn’t mark him as the banished and cursed prince but as an enemy of the State. This was such an emotional episode. Thanks, guys. I’m tearbending.

What I love most about the scene at 25:04, is that despite the fact that Iroh is the one in the cell, it’s Zuko that is shown behind bars. In every shot of this scene, Iroh is shown whole, but there are always the cell bars in front of Zuko’s image. Iroh may be in the cell, but it’s Zuko who is locked away. It is such a visual masterpiece.

THE SCREAM THAT CAME OUT WHEN I SAW THE NOTIFICATION

One of the contrasts I always loved about Zuko and Azula is how their scapegoat/golden child dynamic plays out. So often, in abusive households where one child is rewarded and one punished, the golden child appears to outsiders to be normal and well adjusted, and the scapegoat tends to have a lot of issues. However, this hides a lot of the insecurities the golden child has, and then can come spilling out REALLY FAST when the status quo changes. A lot of the time, the scapegoat child has to work to figure out how to have value in themselves, because they aren't going to get it elsewhere. Whereas the golden child has not have much experience with adversity at all, so when it comes and the parents who promote this are unable to enforce the dynamic, or change their mind, or the scapegoat leaves, or whatever, they find they don't have anything to really fall back on. The line that Azula says to her father when he is going to leave her behind, "you can't treat me like Zuko!", is so telling. Especially the rage and fear in her voice at that moment. She is both mad at the indignity of losing her status, AND scared that she might get treated how Zuko gets treated, which would be an awful life.

One of the best scenes of the show was actually where Zuko came back to his father and told him he was going to join the Avatar. I’ve never seen such a good example of calling out an abuser and saying definitively that what they did was cruel and wrong. He also showed his growth and understanding of the propaganda of the fire nation. Such a perfect scene. The beach therapy is a great Azula moment too. It's a kind of interaction with Zuko she never has. She smiles at the beginning, but she even suggests he's mad at her. She doesn't push him down deeper as she usually does. Her friends being around doesn't change much, that's exactly why they turned on her. One scene that definitely stuck with me was in the last season, when he brewed and was serving tea to Sokka, Aang, and Katara. That one scene, of Zuko being in a position of servitude to others, would have been UNTHINKABLE just seasons prior. That was one heck of an understated scene to show the changes within him. There are so many great details about Zuko's character development just in the show's background. For instance, after meeting with the Sun Warriors, Zuko no longer grunts when he firebends. Because he's not fueling it with anger. And when talking to Iroh in the prison, we always see Zuko through the bars and never Iroh because it's Zuko who is really trapped and imprisoned

Mai saying "that doesn't excuse the way you've been acting" is one of the best moments. The Beach is such a brilliant episode

Something especially cruel is that as no one had seen the avatar for 98+ years and there was no reason to believe it was possible for Zuko to ever find him. He gave him an impossible task so that he could never come home, and yet Zuko still hadn't given up on it, and after 3 years his efforts and tenacity were finally rewarded with the reappearance of the Avatar, reinforcing the sentiment that if he just keeps fighting things he will make it in the end. He can't recognize how cruelly he's been treated.

28:16 "Are you bad at being good? Or are you bad at being somebody else's definition of good" is such a good way to look at something when you think your not good enough. I love that

"Having trauma doesn't make you a villain. YOUR CHOICES will make you a villain" so true.

How AMAZING is it that CT has gone from going “we can’t do ATLA or any TV shows because they’re too long” to a half-hour villain therapy on Zuko, one of the best arcs in TV history?!!

“All hail Fire Lord Zuko” is probably one of the most cathartic lines ever written 😭

It's sad to me how Zuko doesn't realise his father meant to give him an impossible task. No avatar had been seen for a century, so he probably didn't expect him to succeed and return and didn't want him to. Yet Zuko is so determined to please his father and regain his honor, blinded by pride