Netflix's live-action reboot of Avatar: The Last Airbender is sure to make changes to the widely beloved animated series, but just which changes it will make is a source of ardent speculation by fans. While some don't want much change, others see the reboot as an opportunity for improvement where the Netflix series could possibly create something even better than the original. At the center of that ardent speculation is the villain Azula, and fans prove divided over whether or not she deserves a redemption arc.

While there is a case to be made for Azula meriting redemption, the Netflix series would actually do better to turn away from it. Rather than redeeming Azula, the reboot is an opportunity to lean even harder into her villainous qualities to make her bigger and badder than ever.

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zuko and azula fire nation

Although her presence dominated the show after her debut, it can be head-scratching to look back and realize that Azula had nothing more than a cameo throughout the first season of the original series. News of Azula's casting indicates that Netflix might bring her into the story much earlier than the animated show, and given her dominating presence, it's easy to see why anybody would want to capitalize on her appeal. While her older brother, the banished prince Zuko, goes through an astounding redemption arc as he turns from hunting the Avatar to joining him by the end of the series, Azula is a firebending prodigy who embodies everything their father, Fire Lord Ozai, ever hoped for in a child.

Though Ozai stands out as the main villain of the original series, serving as the final threat that Avatar Aang needs to face in order to save the world, Azula enjoys far more screen time and subsequent development that makes her a more fascinating character. In flashbacks, the audience learns how her sadism dates back to the earliest days of her childhood, and in private moments, Azula reveals her own festering insecurities over her feelings of neglect from her mother and her own inability to connect with the people she so naturally manipulates. The result of all that psychological complexity is that many fans hope for a story in which, like Zuko, Azula earns her redemption as her sympathetic qualities as a victim of circumstance fuel her further development as a character, but that's the wrong move.

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A redemption arc centered on Azula would feel redundant after the epic and difficult journey Zuko takes through the same process, and her redemption would only serve to undermine the significance of her brother's development. Part of what made Azula's late introduction in the original series work was how starkly she served as a foil to Zuko's character. A perfectionist unsatisfied when a single hair is out of place, and a cruelly effective leader who threatens to drown her crew at sea, Azula quickly establishes herself as everything Zuko never could be. Her psychological complexity helps flesh out her villainous motivations as more than a cartoonish lust for power, but developing that into a generic "anyone can be redeemed" story would undermine the dimension she adds to the world.

If anything, the Netflix series introducing her earlier in the story offers an opportunity to lean into the qualities audiences already know and love about her even more. As a foil for Zuko, Azula waiting in the wings to take over her brother's mission the moment he falters would add an extra layer of tension and pressure to the prince's journey. However, as her own character, Azula would have more space to show off her public persona as a heartless ideal and her private persona as a tormented child. Whereas Azula's breakdown in the finale only began in the original series after her friends betrayed her at the Boiling Rock, the Netflix series could plant the seeds for her eventual descent even earlier.

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Azula lightning Avatar: The Last Airbender

With the story of Avatar so familiar and almost mythic to fans, the adaptation has no need to conceal the uncertainty over whether or not Zuko would fulfill his redemption. The emphasis that goes toward setting him up as the main villain of the first season, dwarfed in villainy only by the forgettable and expendable Zhao, could instead go toward building Azula up as the real and present threat.

Azula's presence in the story allows Ozai to remain in the shadows where he deserves to linger until the finale. In a lot of ways, she's the real main villain because she is the most present antagonistic force that Aang and his friends face. By introducing her earlier, Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender has a unique opportunity to enhance those qualities and make her better than ever. Maybe Azula does deserve her redemption eventually, but what fans deserve is to see her as he villain she was always meant to be.

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