Editor's Note: The below contains spoilers for Netflix's 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' and the Nickelodeon cartoon.
The Big Picture
- Azula's cunning makes her Avatar: The Last AIrbender 's most formidable villain.
- Azula's downfall in the cartoon needed more foreshadowing, but her breakdown stems from childhood trauma, which makes her a complex character.
- Netflix's live-action Avatar introduces Azula earlier than the cartoon and sets the stage for both her future triumphs and her emotional collapse.
By default, adaptions welcome change. Successful ones know that breathing fresh life into a story requires innovation and purpose; for example, expanding the universe and filling in blanks. Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender does this on a large scale, reinterpreting the Nickelodeon cartoon's worldbuilding and narrative focus. Take things more granular, and no character benefits more from this "peek behind the curtain" approach than Azula (Elizabeth Yu). The Princess of the Fire Nation, Prince Zuko's (Dallas Liu) younger sister, and the apple of her father Ozai's (Daniel Dae Kim) eye, Azula contrasts with Zuko. The clash between her deliciously wicked, wholly Machiavellian nature and his emotionally volatile moral righteousness often leaves collateral damage. Demonstrably, no villain looms over Avatar more than Azula, and she relishes doing so. Except, as with every character in this franchise, she possesses more shades than "just" a villain. Azula scoffs at definitions.
Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024)
10A young boy known as the Avatar must master the four elemental powers to save the world and fight against an enemy bent on stopping him.
Who Is Azula in ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’?
CloseIn Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender, Azula doesn't truly appear until Season 2's premiere. Between the series' cohesive writing and actress Grey DeLisle's performance, Azula swiftly evolves into one of television's most entertaining, chilling, effectively deployed, and gleefully evil villains. Avatar rarely shows Ozai (Mark Hamill), and that restraint renders him one-dimensional. Fair enough for a murdering colonizer; we learn enough about him from his children. Ozai is more symbol than character, a living example of everything wrong in the world that Team Avatar needs to overcome.
With Azula fulfilling the antagonist role as seamlessly as if haute couture fashion had sewed her into the narrative, Avatar doesn't need Ozai to be more than the final video game Boss Battle. Between Azula's ruthless cunning, her unparalleled bending abilities, her scornful sadism, her dog-with-a-bone efficiency, and how she helps ground the series' emotional themes, she's Team Avatar's most formidable opponent by a mile. She can weaponize everything and mold anyone into an unwitting pawn. She almost kills Aang (Zach Tyler Eisen), Katara (Mae Whitman), and Zuko (Dante Basco). If Zuko burns hot as a meteor before finding balance, then Azula burns bare skin the same way arctic ice does.
Until she doesn't, that is. The only hiccup with Azula is her arc's conclusion. In Avatar: The Last Airbender's final episodes, Azula's effortless assurance and intellectual savvy crumble to reveal the traumatized child hiding underneath. It's only here we learn that Ozai emotionally abuses both of his children. He's subtler with Azula but equally nefarious, and equally damaging. As the golden child, Ozai demands perfection from Azula to the point that perfect loses meaning. Whatever exists past flawless is where Azula reigns. She can never fail, so she ensures she never does. Orchestrate a coup from within? Done. Capture the Avatar? Here's one better: she shoots lightning through Aang's heart. Not even one hair can be out of place. Her self-possession is that fragile. Azula's eventual breakdown shows the cost of her pushing herself beyond the pale to earn her father's recognition and approval. She never earns his love, because Ozai is incapable of selflessness. To compensate, Azula surrounds herself with Mai (Cricket Leigh) and Ty Lee (Olivia Hack) as echo chambers to reinforce her superiority.
Netflix’s ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Introduces Azula Early
No matter how natural her sociopathic tendencies (which is why she makes such a delightful villain), Azula is love-starved. "My own mother thought I was a monster," she reveals. After a beat, she defuses this shocking vulnerability by drawling, "She was right, of course, but it still hurt." The chuckle-worthy moment still makes Azula's psychology less opaque. She knows she's a virtuoso by default, but rejection stings. She's jealous of Zuko because her mother seemed to love him more. Without her mother to act as a barrier, Azula had no protection against her father's influence. She internalizes Ozai's manipulation and spits it back out, asserting her domination through cruelty. She's callous, she craves power, and she bullies others for her lackadaisical amusement. And she's always walking on cracking ice. When Mai and Ty Lee betray her, it proves she can never be good enough. Her precarious foundation evaporates because she's already fundamentally broken. Avatar implies this from Azula's debut, and her fall from grace is authentic and tragic. The hints getting there needed consistent clarity.
Admittedly, the live-action Avatar series is over-crowded. Still, introducing Azula early is a one-two punch that gives her future decline room to breathe. Ozai praises his prodigy daughter only to poison her with critiques that cut her down to size. He threatens her status, which diverges from the cartoon; Azula was Ozai's clear favorite. The two's interactions flesh out Ozai into a heartless conquerer who believes he's doing the best for his children even as they remain tools for his ultimate goals. That means he forces Azula's hand. She responds with desperate competence. She trains long into the night, almost screaming with frustration. Only the most elite Firebenders can bend lightning, so nothing less will satisfy Ozai. Azula's arrogance is real. So is the mask hiding a terrified child.
Netflix’s ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Could Do Azula’s Arc Right
Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender wastes no time establishing Azula's strategic guile, either. Her infiltration of the resistance group foreshadows a future disguise that enables her to overthrow Ba Sing Se, the Earth Kingdom's last stronghold against the Fire Nation. That's something not even her Uncle Iroh could do. Likewise, she's the true power behind Commander Zhao (Ken Leung), an inclusion so organic I had to confirm it wasn't canon to the cartoon. Azula is the type to play puppet master from the shadows, watching and learning how to ensnare her prey. She's a shrewd manipulator from a distance and up-close. These scenes set the stage for her future victories.
RelatedWhy 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' Has Endured for Years
"I believe Aang can save the world."
Elizabeth Yu, previously seen in May December, is a phenomenal fit. She slips into Grey DeLisle’s gigantic shoes with a sly presence that fills the room to its edges, even against Daniel Dae Kim. She captures Azula's unique mannerisms and filters them through her individual approach: the droll wit, the biting cruelty, the smug smirks, and a glee boarding on vile when Ozai burns an innocent man alive. Although Azula's menacing edges and intense capability are more palatable, it's a fine compromise for now because showing her vulnerability underscores her mental health. The stakes are higher this way. Yu gets to play a character who's perhaps not as instantly fun as DeLisle's incarnation, but she has the potential to grow into a well-rounded triumph strong enough to steal the show from her peers.
Because of these steps, if Netflix renews Avatar: The Last Airbender for a second season, Azula joining the wider narrative won’t be abrupt. The cartoon's first season didn't need her; withholding their secret weapon was a stealthy move of which Azula would approve. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of Azula's story is that Zuko, who once defined himself by his pain, learned how to allow his grief to pass through him. By the series' end, his experiences have changed him, but he controls them; they leave him unharmed. Azula becomes one of her generation's greatest benders to appease her father's impossible expectations, and doing so rots her to her core. She is a villain by choice even while she's inescapably defined by her trauma. Zuko has Iroh. No one stands by Azula. She becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, a shooting star of a girl who vaporizes in her own atmosphere. Elizabeth Yu's Azula deserves nothing less than the best version of this harrowing arc.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is available to stream on Netflix.
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