Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the many iconic shows of our generation. On the surface it is a fantastical children’s story full of magic, mythical creatures, and amazing adventures around a new and exciting world. But underneath, the show has very real messages in its hard-hitting themes of genocide, war, and loss. At the center of it all is Aang, who is no stranger to these awful things, and, as Avatar, is tasked with fixing them and bringing the world back into balance.
This is a lot to place on the shoulders of a 12-year-old boy, but luckily he has his group of friends, one from each bending nation, to help teach him all that he needs to know. He also has his connection to the past Avatar cycles, who guide him along the many struggles and triumphs of his journey. Aang is already raised with the gift of Air-bending, growing up with the nomads in the monastery, and slowly over time, learns to harness the other elements, moving through water and earth until he reaches fire. Fire is the last, and arguably hardest to control, as the Nickelodeon-turned-Netflix show demonstrates.
Fire is difficult to control because it is more unpredictable than the other elements, but also because it must be generated within and around oneself — unlike the other elements, which are more readily available. Earth can be found in the very soil beneath one's feet, in the rocks and the mountains and the sediment that goes right down to the core of the earth. Likewise, water can be found in all the rivers and the streams, from the vast oceans to the tiniest beads of condensation in the air all around them. And air is self-explanatory, for it is everywhere, in every single space of life, in the breeze and the water, and in all living things. Fire, on the other hand, must be generated, it must be sparked into being by some form of friction or energy that creates heat. This is both its greatest strength, making it unbelievably powerful, but also its biggest complication, because it makes the element unyielding and temperamental.
As with all the elements, there are several things that can get in the way of the character's abilities to bend. This concept is drawn upon much more in the Legend of Korra, the Avatar sequel series, but the beginning can be seen in The Last Airbender. For example, when Katara is unable to find a source of water, she must resort to bending her own sweat. On another occasion, Toph is locked in the metal cage to prevent her from reaching the earth, but then she realizes that there are particles of earth within the composition of the metal. Fire-bending’s source is slightly different though, as it comes from the very energy of the universe, the energy that is passed down from the sun, and provides life to the host of plants, animals and beings in the world.
This is why Fire-benders must learn to channel the invisible energy around them, using their bodies as the conduit through which enough friction can be created that it lights the spark. This is incidentally what allows them to channel lightning in rare, extraordinary circumstances, because lightning causes this same explosive energy as fire, only twice as potent and potentially deadly to the person wielding it. This is what gives the fire-benders the advantage they need to wipe out the air-nomads, because their powers are essentially amplified by the presence of Sozin’s Comet, which the Fire Lord uses to obliterate and wipe out his enemies. The excess energy in the environment created by the comet acts as a powerpack to the fire-nation, and Aang (being frozen in ice beneath the sea at this point) is not there as Avatar to balance it out and stop the massacre.
This concept of fire-bending being created differently than the other elements is explored in the episode "Day of the Black Sun," in which an eclipse blocks out the sun for a few moments, rendering the fire-benders weak and unable to use their abilities. This gives Aang and his friends the tactical advantage they need to infiltrate the fire nation and defeat Ozai before he can carry out his evil purges in the rest of the world. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go to plan, and Aang finds Ozai’s throne empty, thus ruining their best chance of defeating his whilst he is powerless. Instead, Aang must rely on his old enemy Zuko’s teachings to help him master this unruly element, and snuff out the fire nation's control once and for all, returning the world to a state of peace…for now.