Part of what makes Avatar: The Last Airbender work so well is that many of its disparate elements fit perfectly together. Its sense of childish innocence and adventure combines with mature themes and morally complex questions. Despotic sociopaths loomed in the background ominously while silly gag characters exclaimed over their cabbages. But one piece that doesn't seem to fit is perhaps the strangest of all. He's the Combustion Man (Sparky Sparky Boom Man, if you're nasty), and his addition is a perfect example of what made Avatar so amazing.

The mercenary is perhaps the character most shrouded in mystery, with nothing but a nickname to refer to him, and no clues in the series itself to his background. He shows up in the final season, never speaks a word, and utilizes a combustion-bending ability that no one else demonstrates until the sequel series, The Legend of Korra. This behemoth, with a "third eye" tattoo that explodes anything under its gaze, proves to be more a force of nature than a character.

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At first, it's easy to feel that the Combustion Man's presence is out of place. Combustion-bending has little resemblance to the martial arts of most other bending disciplines. Aside from Sokka's comedic nickname, there's no air of levity surrounding the character, either, whereas most every other villain in the series had their moments of either making fun or being made fun of. It's almost as though Combustion Man wandered in from another show entirely.

Combustion Man from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

 

And that's exactly what's perfect about him. Combustion Man's place in the story is as an assassin, hired by Zuko early in Season 3 to hunt down and exterminate the Avatar. Princess Azula reported to their father, the Fire Lord, that Zuko killed the Avatar in Ba Sing Se, knowing that if Aang were revealed to have survived, her brother would suffer grave consequences. Although Zuko eventually completes his path of redemption, hiring the Combustion Man comes just prior to that, during a stubborn moment of clinging to the "might makes right" belief system of the Fire Nation.

If the Combustion Man feels like a force of nature, that's because it's exactly what he's supposed to be. He's the past, an embodiment of Zuko's darkness thundering forward on two legs, ceaselessly tracking the Avatar as Zuko himself once did. His eerie silence and unique talents further alienate him from the other characters, and the result is a genuinely enjoyable tertiary antagonist in a season where Azula and Fire Lord Ozai's menace needs no competition. Perhaps best of all is that the Combustion Man's presence ties in perfectly with his origin, which most fans never saw.

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Although the details of Combustion Man's past were never disclosed in the show proper, Avatar's official website at the time provided scraps of information on the characters that helps to flesh them out. The entry for Combustion Man contained the details that the mercenary discovered his powers at an early age, but prior to mastering them, he blew off his own arm and leg in an accident that necessitated his metallic prostheses. Feeling alienated from those around him is the whole point of the character, and helps to explain his stony silence and amoral determination.

A similar tale repeats later with P'Li in The Legend of Korra. The only other known combustion bender in the franchise also experienced alienation as a child, as P'Li reveals to Zaheer that she was kidnapped as a kid by a power-hungry warlord who wanted to exploit her abilities. Both P'Li and Combustion Man provide subtle and efficient displays of storytelling and characterization emblematic of the series. There may not seem to be much to Combustion Man at first, but when you look a little deeper he's actually pretty mind-blowing.

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