There were subtle bits of more involved character writing nestled within the early fantasy-adventure hijinks of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which celebrates the 15th anniversary of its debut today. The carefree Aang, the prophesied Avatar who had been missing for 100 years, returns to the world after having been frozen in ice and finds it totally, devastatingly changed. And his two eventual friends who discovered him, brother and sister duo Katara and Sokka, are victims of war, their mother killed in a village raid by the Fire Nation and their father off to fight in the war. The show often saw the main trio running into people made refugees by the war, or who had suffered at the hands of the Fire Nation. But the darker elements of the series could be easily brushed past, and often were. It takes until the 12th and 13th episodes of season 1, a pseudo two-parter titled "The Storm" and "The Blue Spirit," that we see the potential for greatness in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
"The Storm" and "The Blue Spirit" aren't written as a two-parter, even though the events of "The Storm" lead straight into the inciting incident of "The Blue Spirit." But the two perfectly complement each other in what they achieve and how they play out. Both episodes are pretty slim on plot and barely feature the main trio together, instead digging deep into nuances and parallels of the show's main foils: Aang and the villainous Zuko.
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