Headscratchers / The Legend of Korra - Amon

Headscratchers pertaining to Amon from The Legend of Korra. Return to the index for more.

Practicality of Amon's ability on a large scale

• Amon can de-power three benders in about as many minutes, and that's impressive, but there are millions upon millions of benders in the world. Amon is one man. Are the Equalists planning on rounding up the benders up gulag style, straping them to an assembly line, and carting them past Amon one at a time 24/7 so he can de-bend them?
  • The hilarious thing is, this is exactly what happens in the finale.
  • Those were only the police and white lotus who defended the temple during Amon's raid
  • He'll find out a way, and likely that involves teaching others how to de-bend people.
  • If he doesn't do that to start, even one or two select kidnappings or assassin-style infiltrations into prominent bender's homes to depower them would be a good kickoff to instilling terror in the bender populace and destabilizing government, generally.
  • Not to mention, there's no reason to believe he won't start encouraging his followers to round up and simply kill benders.
  • In all honesty, Amon depowering Benders one-by-one doesn't seem so outlandish, even if we assume that he can't teach Energybending or whatever process he uses to other people. Keep in mind that the reason it took him as long as it did to depower those gang members was because he gave them the chance to fight to keep their bending, presumably to make a more impressive demonstration of his power to the audience. If he stopped bothering with the fighting and just kept them tied up and possibly chi-blocked as well, he could probably disable three, four, maybe five people per minute. Having his followers line Benders up like cattle to the slaughter and then depowering them, one-by-one, would be time-consuming, yes, but its also dramatic and cruel, which seems to fit his character perfectly. On top of that, even if it would likely take years to fully enact, Amon seems willing to do whatever it takes. In short, yes, it would take a long time, but is it beyond reason, given Amon's characterization thus far? No.
  • But he only let Lightning Bolt Zolt fight to keep his bending. Bolin and the other benders weren't afforded that opportunity and just shoved in front of Amon after being untied so that he could take away their bending. It's clear from how long it took him to take away their bending that de-bending takes some time, but the point still stands. It would just take way longer.
  • Being untied and shoved in front of Amon = being giving the opportunity to fight (in the Equalists' minds, anyway). I think we saw some others try to fight him. Bolin was too scared.
  • Maybe his solution doesn't involve de-bending at all. However, there is no evidence (yet) that he's THAT evil.
  • Or maybe he plans to make Republic City the center of a World War - Equalists vs. the rest of the world. Everyone will be forced to fight as the 3 nations decide Amon can't be stopped by a flat out war. Now if Amon plans to win despite such opposition and if he does keep winning for a while, he could take mass POWs and de-bend them all, what he calls 'purification'. He could start by taking over the city, taking over the Government and ordering the arrest of all benders and then removing their bending one by one. It takes only a few seconds for him, so he could de-bend thousands of people a day if all works in his favor. The finale promos have some hint in this direction.

Amon as a hypocrite?

• He's the leader of the anti-bending faction, and yet he can energybend. Energybending is a form of bending...Hitler expy much? Once some mook figures it out, what will happen to him? Will they just ignore it or will there be a faction in a faction? It's definitely something to think about.
  • The badguy might be hypocritical? Gasp and alarm.
  • If it is energybending, then he is a hypocrite, but then we can't be sure it actually is. Only the Avatar should be able to do it. There's more to Amon than what we've seen. We need more answers to make a proper assessment.
  • There's nothing to indicate that only the Avatar can energybend. The ability was given to him by a Lion Turtle, who implied that people in the distant past had the ability.
  • Actually, the Lion Turtle flat out states energybending predates the Avatar circle, and the other four forms of bending. So Tenzin saying only the Avatar could do it was most certainly a misconception based on the fact the only KNOWN energybender ever (since there seems to be no recorded history from the times before the Avatar) was Aang.
  • I imagine he and his followers have an "ends justify the means" type of thing. They don't see themselves as hypocrites because they feel that unlike the water, earth, and fire benders, that they aren't abusing the power. But, yeah, that still makes them hypocrites, assuming that he even considers his ability a form of bending.
  • It's clear that what Amon and the Equalists are actually against is not bending, but benders abusing their powers to rule over and terrorize the common people, i.e. non-benders. However, they don't seem to think this problem can be solved by trying to get rid of the bad apples among benders, probably because they feel every bender has the potential to be corrupted by his power. Since all energybending can do is take away one's bending, it cannot be used to rule over non-benders, so Amon isn't actually hypocritical.
  • Whether Amon is hypocritical or not is yet to be seen. The Equalists definately believe that Bending itself is a bad thing that destroys the balance of the world and causes wars and discrimination, which is why it has to be removed from the equation to create true equality, but they don't seem to have established attitude towards the almost unknown Energybending. It's possible that Amon considers Energybending to be the true, "pure" form of Bending, a primal, uncorrupt state from which the "lesser" forms of Bending originate. If this is the case, then he wouldn't see himself as a hypocrite, but we still don't know enough to determine what his actual beliefs and motivations are.
  • It's not necessarily hypocritical. Just because we define it as a form of "Bending" doesn't mean that he has to (like the Vegetarians that eat fish, for example, don't view it as hypocrisy, but an exception with a reason.)But really, this is just a technicality. Energybending can't be used as an advantage over non-benders. If only Energybenders were left, there would still be equality.
  • It's worth to note that Amon might not be aware that energybending is a form of bending. After all, only four types - if not three, depending on how well known airbenders are - of bending are known, and whoever gives energybending can easily lie about it's nature, so...
  • I second the above and whether he's energybending or not (I actually vote not with the limited info we have) It should be noted that apparently in the original notes Bryke did for the series that I think appear in some back story book about the series' creation Bryke hadn't worked out exactly how Aang was going to resolve the Ozai conflict without killing him and used the placeholder of "A skill that only the Avatar could use." This likely belongs in WMG but I always thought that the reason the Avatar was the only one left who could energybend was because he was the only one who could actually recognize the lack of separation between the bending arts and meld the knowledge back into Energybending.
  • Most likely neither Amon nor his followers consider it bending, and if you remember, so far nobody has called it that. Amon, and everyone else, simply refer to it as "the ability to take bending away", and Amon claims to have learned it from a spirit, much like Aang learned it from the lion-turtle. It's entirely possible that whatever spirit taught him didn't refer to it as bending, and may not have even told him what it really WAS at all, just taught him how to take someone's bending away with it. And yes, Amon is a hypocrite, because energybending is not inherent to the Avatar and can potentially be learned by anybody. But who has Amon taught? Nobody. Why? Because then he'd have to share his super-special anti-bender power. Just like every Communist dictator, Amon's all for equal so long as he's the most "equal" of them all.
  • Amon isn't a hypocrite at all. His problem is with benders using their powers to control and harm others, particularly non-benders, not with bending as a concept. Energybending can't be used to hurt non-benders that we know of and he has been very deliberate in only debending people who he could reasonably assume were causing serious harm with their powers. There's no indication that everyone can learn energybending either, Tenzin was shocked when he heard that someone other than an Avatar was using it and Aang doesn't seem to have taught anyone to do it (unless Amon learned from Aang).
  • For one, if you were listening to the lion-turtle's explanation in the first series, energybending can absolutely be used on and by non-benders, since it predates all other forms of bending. It's just that for some reason the knowledge was lost (which is a whole other WMG); Aang being the Avatar wasn't what let him learn it, it was the fact that his teacher was a being ancient enough to even know about it in the first place. Secondly, it can most definitely be used to hurt non-benders, since "energybending" actually isn't the most appropriate term for what it does; "spiritbending", I think, is more accurate, since you're basically using your own spirit to bend someone else's. What Aang did to Ozai, and what Amon's doing to benders (assuming his ability is not something totally new) is using spiritbending to alter their spirit in such a way that they lose whatever qualities of their spirit allows them to bend, so it could very likely be used for other things (very terrifying, Fridge Horror kinds of things, actually). In fact, it pretty much HAS to do something aside from take away bending, since again, it predates bending. And finally, we have very little solid evidence of any of Amon's inner workings or true motivations. While he might genuinely believe in what's he's preaching, it could go either way; he could very well be targeting criminals and abusers of their bending for the simple fact that it's good publicity and he gets to portray himself as the hero, instead of a would-be dictator using anti-bending sentiment for his own gain (it certainly wouldn't be the first time someone used a despised scapegoat to seize power).
  • As of the season finale, this turns out to be a moot point. Amon is a hypocrite, but not because he's an energybender. He's secretly a waterbender and bloodbender.
  • Amon is a hypocrite, but from his followers point of view. Even though he was taking bending using bending, he needed the non-benders support. To rally an anti-bender faction. As such, he was manipulative of non-benders, and an hypocrite only to them, but he always stayed true to his goal. Generally speaking, this trooper does not consider him a 'complete' hypocrite, if the expression serves.
  • He's a hypocrite not just because he's a waterbender, but because he's using bloodbending in his quest to purge the world of bending, while lying to his followers and the world about his past.

Amon is holding an Idiot Ball in the finale.

• So, when Tenzin, Korra and co. escape, Amon goes after Korra. Without any backup. Alright, I guess that isn't too bad though I'd have expected better from him. So then he... bloodbends them. In the middle of his base. Which leads to the Liutenant finding out he's a bender. OK, then, that was pretty stupid but I guess he had no other choice. And then he debends Korra and is knocked out the window when she spontaniously develops airbending powers. And this is where the real stupidity starts. Amon JUMPS OUT OF THIS WATER ON A GIANT PILLAR OF WATER IN FRONT OF EVERYONE, EXPOSING HIMSELF AS A WATERBENDER. Yeah, his mask got knocked off. Why didn't he just put it back on? Or swim away? That water was deep enough that no one would notice him swimming away, and Korra was powerless to stop him, being unable to airbend water and all. I'm sorry if I sound upset, but I really expected better from a great character in a great show written by some great writers.
  • Him bursting out of the water at the end was a panic reaction—he was unconscious, found himself underwater (and probably starting to drown) and just reflexively got himself out of the water the quickest way he knew how. News flash: People who are just jolting into consciousness after being hurled out of tall buildings and into freezing cold water usually do not, in fact, have the presence of mind to analyze and account for every possible consequence to determine the statistically favorable outcome.
  • Yeah, I guess but... it's Amon. He's always been cold and calculating, never panicking. He didn't even flinch when a giant fireball exploded behind him! But you're probably right. I'd still sort of like an explanation of those other things as well if anyone has one.
  • In all those other instances, there was one thing going for him that he did not have here: he was conscious. "Fireball coming, better look badass," is what he thinks when he's making his grand exit. "Oh shit, drowning, waterbend," is what he thinks when he wakes up underwater and unable to breath. Context.
  • That's still weird and unsatisfying payoff, though. Instead of planning a trap or cleverly exploiting one of Amon's personal weaknesses based on his personality or training or such, Korra just beats him up until he randomly makes a mistake. You could argue that Amon gradually got more scared of Korra, hence his panic (despite still having an army at his disposal), but that requires some thorough headcanon interpretation of Amon's state of mind.
  • Amon, like Tarrlok, is someone who's always been in control and really can't handle it when he loses that control. He's not holding an Idiot Ball so much as Korra's uncovering of his origins, the suspicion of his most loyal followers, being forced to show vulnerability and weakness (ie. the fake scar) to regain their trust, and the embarrassing loss of the airbenders on-stage in front of an audience of thousands all come together to drive him to the point of utter desperation (and, due to his personality, lashing out with vindictive cruelty). He only gets more desperate as the fight drags on and he loses even more control of the situation due to his growing recklessness (first when the Lieutenant shows up, then when Mako electrocutes him, then when Korra regains her airbending, and finally when Korra overcomes his bloodbending to kick him out a window); by the time Noatak wakes up drowning, there's nothing of the cold and calculating Amon left.
  • The giant waterspout also could've been subconscious on his part - Katara originally freed Aang from the iceberg he was trapped in due to an argument she was having with Sokka, and considering Amon was powerful enough to bloodbend without a full moon, his base waterbending could've been strong enough to create a waterspout just by him scrambling to the surface. And remember, this wasn't just that he was running out of air - we see him inhaling water before he outs himself. At that point, it was either breach, or drown.

Why did Amon have Korra almost killed in episode 6?

• In the end of episode 4, Amon says he's not gonna kill Korra yet, he doesn't want her to become a martyr, he will save her for last. But in episode 6 the Equalists tie up Korra, Mako, and Bolin under the arena, no doubt under Amon's orders, even though they're about the blow up the whole place soon. If Pabu hadn't saved them, Korra probably would have died in the explosion. So, if just two episodes ago Amon didn't want to kill Korra and was gonna save her for last, why did he now have his men put her in a situation where she was likely to die?
  • It's possible that this is in fact Foreshadowing to a rift inside the Equalists. The Lieutnant was responsible for tying Korra and the others up under the exploding arena. Maybe he doesn't agree with Amon's assessment that the Avatar should be saved for last. Though it also doesn't seem that the lower parts of the arena were damaged in the explosion; we never see Mako and Bolin hop in the water to save themselves.
  • That explosion clearly wasn't a danger to Korra or her team. It goes off right above them and the underside isn't even touched. The explosion just took out the ring elevator. A hardened structure like that would take much more than the minor blast used to bring it down.

Does Amon not know where electricity comes from?

• Everyone can have a shiny new tazer glove once they're useless due to us removing the ability that fuels them. So come join the Equalists today!
  • City power is generated by benders. Those gloves obviously use an independent power source, just like the Lieutenant's backpack.
  • Which of course leads to the next question: Why don't you just waterbend at the guys with lightning backpacks? Either they backfire and shock themselves, or they at least short out. Really it seems like kind of an easy win. Also it'd be interesting to see how these guys fight against real masters like Paku or Iroh from the original series. Dodging is all well and good until the guy is 40 feet in the air firing a tidal wave which then freezes instantly at you. All the new guys seem to be of the pro-bending school of "fire a small fist sized burst" style of fighting, which is exactly what the chi blockers counter.
  • Korra tried that. The Lieutenant had the advantage of surprise and beat her to the punch. If it happened, though, it could damn well kill him. Those gloves likely don't have the juice for a fatal blow, but that big rig of his would provide more than enough. There hasn't been another situation yet where waterbending was a feasible option for those under attack.
  • I bet Amon has his own personal coal-powered generator to power up his gloves, but once he gets rid of all benders, that can't provide for the whole city.
  • They can adapt, though. If power generation is possible on a small scale, it can be made to work on a large one.
  • It's in fact possible that most of the city's power is produced through mundane means, and the lightningbenders just provide emergency help when voltage drops low, or if there's a problem in the system. Remember that it doesn't take long to tire a Bender out in normal circumstances, so it would take an absurd number of lightningbenders to keep the city running 24/7.
  • The Welcome to Republic City flash game doesn't mention any mundane means being used at the power plants. Its entry on firebending makes it seem like an army of firebenders is providing for all of Republic City's electrical needs.
  • They have cars, which are presumably powered by an IC engine and not a midget firebender under the hood. They don't lack mundane means for generating power, they are just likely not used when you have people who can generate electricity from thin air. Or heck, even firebenders who can generate heat to power a generator of our standards without having to burn coal. Just because they aren't wasting coal/wood/oil when it isn't needed doesn't mean they can't if they needed to.

How do ex-benders fit in Amon's worldview?

• Tahno and Zolt (and the gangsters) are people who are despicable for what so this hasn't really come up yet but not every bender is like that. Once a bender who is a decent human being loses their powers how are Equalists supposed to treat them? Do they count as benders to be despised? Are they supposed to be welcomed?
  • Amon calls them "purified". In other words, "you're one of us, now." Taking their bending sticks them on the other side of the fence. Now they have to survive as non-benders.

Amon blimp

• An airship is kind of a conspicuous getaway vehicle, how come nobody saw where it was heading? To a cop who just heard the attack on the radio, a giant unauthorized blimp coming from the direction of the arena should have looked suspicious.
  • The officers inside the arena had been knocked out, and the officers outside wouldn't have been listening to general radio channels when guarding against a possible terrorist attack. Then, judging by how the ships were already on fire, it's very likely that Amon sent chi-blockers to take out the ships first, so that the airship wouldn't be stopped.
  • I just went through the Welcome to Republic City thing on Nick.com, and discovered that the blimps are manufactured by Future Industries. It's certainly probable that Hiroshi Sato could have designed them so that there were secrets that only the Equalists would know, or even provide Amon with his own personal blimp.

Amon is either an idiot or the ultimate Magnificent Bastard.

• We know that Tarrlock is Yakone's son, so we know that bending (especially unusual types of bending) is at least part genetic. We know that spirit-bending (or whatever Amon is doing) only removes the person's bending, not anything else about the person. What is stopping the de-bendified benders from just having kids? Unless Amon takes over the world entirely and de-bendifies every child at birth, there is no way that he can wipe out bending entirely. So, he's doing one of two things: either A) he's wiping out people's bending because he's an idiot who has no idea how bending works, and is doomed to fail once more babies are born, or B) he's playing the long game and has some plan involved that doesn't involve the total eradication of bending.
  • C) He's a fanatic who actually does think he can wipe bending out, starting with Republic City.
  • Or maybe Tarrlok's mother was a waterbender too.
  • Well, yeah, de-bending babies and children is probably what Amon is going for.
  • On top of that, Tarrlok's age confirms that the de-bended can still have bender offspring. He was born five years after Aang took away his father's bending.
  • One of the above tropers pointed this out already, but that doesn't really confirm anything when it comes to the De-bended having bender children. We only know the identity and bending status of one parent. the other parent may have been a bender. As for Amon status as an Idiot or Magnificent Bastard, we'll have to wait and see. I'm betting there's more to his overall plans than we know.
  • Still, what are the odds that they somehow found another woman who had the same bloodbending abilities? Korra specifically said that Tarrlok was able to bloodbend without a full moon because his father was Yakone, who possessed this ability before he was de-bended, and Tarrlok doesn't deny this as the reason for his bending abilities. Furthermore, we know it's possible for non-benders to have bender children, like Katara and Toph. So who's to say that non-benders who weren't de-bended won't have children or grandchildren who can bend in the future?
  • She doesn't have to be a bloodbender, just a waterbender. Bloodbending is a skill you can learn. Presumably, Yakone taught Tarrlok. As for why it works during the day, I'd assume that Hama (and Katara) mistakenly believed it worked only during the full moon. Hama was in an incredibly frail state and needed the power boost. Katara never tried it and took Hama's word for it. Yakone, a healthy guy, heard about it, tried and out and realised he doesn't need a full moon. Or maybe he was so keen on practising it that he trained for a long time to be able to do it during the day.
  • None of the above is supported in the show. Yakone's lawyer explains what bloodbending is, namely an ability only a few waterbenders are capable of. Katara was something of a prodigy, she had the ability to learn it, but most waterbenders couldn't no matter how much they trained. Yakone possessed an even rarer, perhaps unprecedented ability, bloodbending without a full moon (or perhaps during any time except a full moon).
  • Actually Amon is pushing an idea. Rather than practically debending everyone, he wants to start a revolution in empowering the nonbenders so they that fight back (and possibly suppress) their bender equivalents. This way, even after he dies or debended people have children, the very idea of bending=evil will be ingrained into their minds and people will be discouraged from teaching bending or learning it. There's more to it than the physical side of bending, and that's the emotional-psychological or spiritual side.

How did Amon know where Tarrlock was?

• See title.
  • By spying on him. He had blamed them for kidnapping Korra, and Lin and co. had just made off with a bunch of prisoners. Not to mention tracking him in the snow would be ridiculously easy as long as they had eyes on his car when it left.
  • Maybe they were planning on dealing with him for framing them (and all the non-bender oppression) and snuck into his car. Tarrlok probably left in a hurry and might not have noticed them.
  • And now I'm picturing the Equalist's awkward glances as Tarrlock stops for drive through, or sings along with the radio.

How did Amon know that Korra was trapped in a box?

• Amon orders the Lieutenant and his chi-blockers to "electrocute the box and knock her out" before opening it. Yet... How did he know that was how Korra was being subdued? That is oddly specific.
  • Remember, Korra is the Avatar and can bend three of the four elements. The only realistic way to keep her restrained would be to lock her in a metal box.
  • Amon no doubt got there first and scoped the place out first, then the Equalists hid until Tarrlok entered the basement so he had nowhere to run.
  • So, Amon scoped out a place he doesn't know about, getting there before Tarrlok, the person who owns the place, whilst keeping the smoke and tracks of his own vehicles hidden from view. That raises questions of its own.
  • Tarlock is a well known member of the ruling council and has been the one pushing for all the overt actions again the Equalists, not to mention has passed laws discrminating non-benders, ie the exact sort of Bender Amon would want to make an example of. It wouldbe stupid of Amon not to have had some of his equalists scope out every piece of property Tarlock owned. And all they had to do was come across the house anytime that day and find Korra; once they found her they would know he would have to come back soon to at the very least give her something to eat or drink since if he was going to kill her he would have done it already.
  • Why would Tarrlok advertise this particular house? If he's going to kidnap someone, he's not going to use a house that's in the public record. If Tarrlok can keep his parentage a secret, he can keep his hostage-stashing house a secret, too. Amon would have had to have followed him, not "scope out every piece of property" he owned.
  • Additionally, if Amon came up to the house in the middle of the day, he would have simply taken Korra from the box and put her in the Equalists' truck. There's no reason for Tarrlok and Korra to chitchat. Just collect Korra, wait for Tarrlok to show, then take him out, too.
  • There is a reason; Tarrlock is a water bender and there is a lot of it in the snow around the house. If Korra wasn't there Tarrlock would immediately freak out, and there has to be another way to get out of that basement since he got the huge metal cage in. By keeping Korra in the box, Tarrlock won't think something is amiss and will come back up to the room that is completely empty of his element and is cornered, which fits Amon's MO of never fighting someone who has any advantages. Imagine if Tarrlok had pulled that "water-bubble" move he pulled on Korra. No Equalist could have touched him. Hell, for extra protection, he probably could have just frozen the bubble and then rolled away like a hamster.
  • Same troper as above, the two-part finale revealed the truth; Amon and Tarrlok were brothers. With that in mind, wouldn't Amon want to know every little thing about his brother who he knew was a bloodbender in his own right?
  • He must have followed him from City hall. They would have hidden along the route and followed him. As for the box, they could have figured it out from the dialogue.
  • I thought he would have glanced down the stairs while the camera shows his mooks getting up. Seeing a metal box in the basement makes a safe bet it's Korra's cell.
  • They were on the floor right above Tarrlok and would have easily heard him talking to Korra and her slamming against the box.
  • Pretty much this. He hears the word "hostage", there's banging on a metallic substance and there's a couple of seconds in which he's offscreen while his mooks get up, so he could have simply looked inside and saw a box in those two seconds.
  • What bothers me in this context is that Amon didn't even try to whisper when telling the others to electrocute the box. Didn't he think Korra could hear? And why wasn't he right there? I'm honestly thinking he let her get away on purpose.
  • She got lucky. In most situations, anyone trapped in a cage like that wasn't going to escape. Amon had no reason to whisper because, as far as he was concerned, they had Korra at their mercy.

Does Amon have some sort of immunity towards bending?

• In Episode 6, he didn't even flinch against Korra's fireball that blasted all his mooks out as they boarded his airship. He just stood facing the flames. And now he has considerable immunity to Bloodbending and got Tarrlok while he was still using it. Does he have some spirit power to resist bending and cancel it's power (which might explain why it's impossible to bend in the spirit world? Or is it that suit he wears that has some sort of shield against bending. Or are his limbs still organic (read Darth Vader)? Perhaps he uses cybernetics to augment his speed and agility.
  • Watch the show. You'll learn when the rest of us do.
  • It didn't seem like he was immune to bloodbending...the sound of his muscles being rent was there, and his movement was hindered a bit. I think Amon just beat it through sheer willpower and forced his body to keep moving. If this theory is right, it's kind of horrifying. Amon is so dedicated to destroying benders that even his body being destroyed from the inside barely slows him down...
  • I'd agree if it weren't for the fact that, at least briefly, the others were actually knocked out. If it had been just a force pushing him back, I could buy "having the willpower to resist". But he can't "will" his blood to keep flowing normally.
  • His blood wasn't flowing normally though. When it zoomed in on Amon's limbs, the bloodbending sound was still there, and his movements were a bit shaky at first. He may have some kind of resistance to the bending, but he definitely wasn't flat out immune.
  • Alternately, Amon himself is a waterbender. Katara was able to power through Hama's control, despite having only just been introduced to the knowledge of bloodbending. She states outright that she did this because she was a much more powerful waterbender than Hama.
  • The above turned out to be true shockingly enough.

How come Amon's energybending is different from Aang's?

• The way Aang takes away bending is different from Amon's. Amon presses the head chakra and the Amon pressure point behind the neck, while Aang puts his fingers against the head and heart chakra.
  • Ditto to the above.
  • That's part of the mystery. FYI, the pressure point he touches on the back is called Amon. Make of that what you will.
  • Because he's doing something different from Aang. Aang uses the Anahata (the chest/air chakra) and the Ajna (the forehead/light chakra), while Amon strikes at pressure points behind the neck (and possibly also the Vishudah, the throat/sound chakra) and the Ajna. The Anahata is the chakra of compassion/love, and the Ajna of intuition/truth; what Aang is doing is not just blocking bending, but infusing the bender with guilt (after all, both his targets were sociopaths). Amon doesn't need to do that; all he wants is to block bending. Therefore, he does so in the quickest and most efficient way possible: he strikes at the pressure points in the back of the neck to paralyse the victim, and then strikes at the Ajna to energybend while the victim is paralysed. It's a crude method for a person more interested in pragmatism.
  • Another way to look at it is that Aang is using true Energybending, while Amon is just using a highly-advanced form of Chi-blocking. Aang simply removes a person's ability to bend, while Amon's actions permantently seal the chi-paths in the person. Either way, it has the exact same result: a complete loss of a person's ability to bend.
  • Except chi-blocking already has issues in dealing with minor pressure points. Dealing with chakras would be absurd when you can't even do that (granted, Ty Lee's method did come close, but even then it was curable). Furthermore, it'd be extremely stupid if the exact same chakras had to be used. The only reason there's consistency in using the Ajna is because somehow that blocks bending.
  • The chi-blockers strike from the outside. Amon most likely uses bloodbending to get at them from the iside of the body. It's not impossible; we already saw that physical trauma can block chakras when Azula fried Aang and leaves enough vague wiggling space to say it might last so much longer than normal touch-based chi-blocking so as to be called permament... And doesn't kill you, like lightning.

Has no one tried to earthbend Amon?

• Amon is a good dodger and can avoid fire blasts and water. So why not just earthbend a wall in front of him? Or better earthbend four to trap him?
  • Jumping over an earthbent wall is a pretty easy feat for just about everyone in the setting. And raising the wall takes time enough for him to dodge out of the way anyway.
  • Amon basically never lets a fight draw on long enough for the enemy to use any gamebreaking tricks.
  • Boxing him in is a useless tactic as you'd need a ceiling for the cube to keep him from climbing or hurdling the sides, and that might take too long. Still though, why does noone put a sinkhole under him or pull a tube of earth? That is a relatively basic move and could be done pretty quickly by skilled Earthbenders in both series, he'd be immobile, and yes, I know that all cases were against a stationary or off-guard foe, but watch Amon's fight scenes, you'll see he only makes sudden moves when grappling or ducking projectiles, so catching him flat-footed with this move is feasible.
  • He's light on his feet, though, so he might have time to bounce away if he saw the attack coming. What that technique would be useful against is the mini mecha.
  • Or just make an earth tent around him to pin him like Aang did to Yakone.
  • Maybe the "winning move" will be exactly what Aang did to Yakone, encase him in earth. Although I think I'd prefer ice, since Korra is a waterbender, and for the sake of variety.
  • As per the finale, the real answer is that Amon Bloodbends his opponents to stop them from using this tactic.
  • It is highly likely that Amon has a 'blood-sense' and can detect the movements of a person without looking at them. Also, considering the magnitude of Amon's goal for a bender-less world, it's beyond obvious that he has extensively studied all sorts of benders. Thus, he could very well know exactly what a bender is trying to do with just their motion (without even looking at them), and have plenty of time to dodge. It has been explicitly stated in the series that Amon is a water bending prodigy, and may even be the most powerful bender even.

Why hasn't Amon fired the Lieutenant?

• I believe he would have drawn the line if he saw Jinora send him flying over a roof.
  • Given just how unbelievably badass the Lieutenant normally is, I'm inclined to believe that Amon would forgive him for being sneak attacked by a bender he has no experience fighting.
  • It's just not just Jinora though. Though he could forgive a sneak attack, as they happen, the Lieutanent got bitch-slapped by a polar bear-dog in mid-air... it's not looking good for him.
  • Give the guy some slack. He was never trained to fight airbenders or large animals. He's single-handedly won almost every fight against fire-, water- and earthbenders.
  • Basically this; he's not incompetent, he just has really bad luck about who he gets stuck fighting.
  • We're moving into the endgame. The name of the episode is even "Turning the Tides". The first three episodes were spent establishing the Equalists as a threat, culminating in the reveal of Amon's debending power. The last three are about their gradual defeat. The threat level of their mooks is declining (witness the agile chi blockers standing motionless when the kids attack) and the power of the heroes has been increasing.
  • The Lieutenant's fighting skill is mostly our invention given how badass looks. He's only had a few fights and won none of them through straight up combat prowess.
  • He did take down Lin remember? Still, as badass as she is it didn't entirely make up for losing against Jinora and Naga. I half expected Pabu to come out swinging for his final appearance.

How in the world did Amon get Tenzin and the kids?

• They were going to the South Pole weren't they? Sooo...strongest waterbending in the world and a master airbender are incapacitated and are later shown to be no worse for wear? And it ain't like Sato's new aeroplanes could to anything against a master airbender like Tenzin...
  • They didn't say. I'm betting this question will be answered with Word of God. I'm betting that Tenzin didn't make it to the South Pole.
  • This one's easy to answer. The airships are faster than Sky Bison. Sure, Lin sank one and forced the other to turn back, but they had plenty of others. They might have even surrendered to avoid Rohan getting netted or electrocuted with the Bison.
  • I'm pretty sure the Equalist biplanes in "Skeletons in the Closet" are much faster than the airships and the sky bison.

How did Amon survive Lightning?

• No One Could Survive That!. Wasn't it a one kit KO back in ATLA? Amon was not even weakened?
  • Mako probably set it to stun. But then again, Amon might have been wearing some sort of electric vest in case any of his minions tried to use one of their gloves on him.
  • As confirmed by Word of God in the last series, intent is required in order to kill someone with bending. Hence why Toph can use the same attack on Zuko that Long Feng used on Jet without killing him; Long Feng intended to kill Jet, while Toph didn't. As for not being weakened, Made of Iron. It ties back to his backstory of surviving in the North Pole after running away without any form of supplies. Amon is just that tough.
  • I have a theory that ties this in to why so many random Firebenders can Lightningbend now. Basically, sometime since the end of the previous series, someone had come up with a way to Lightningbend that was safer and easier than the usual way, but is considerably weaker. For one, with electrical devices like radios and the Equalists's taser gear, it's obvious that people in the Avatar-verse have a much better idea of how electricity works now, and so are likely better able to come up with something more scientific and straightforward than the spiritual "clarity of mind" thing in the first series. However, a technique that puts such a disconnect with the spiritual side of bending seems like it would be much weaker than the real deal, more Electricitybending than full-on Lightningbending.
  • In the finale, Tarrlok specifically explained that Amon was somehow using his bloodbending to weaken the bending of those who fought him. That's why powerful bending attacks didn't faze him in earlier episodes, and that's why Mako's lightning didn't do serious harm to him. Korra's airbending caught Amon by surprise, because he didn't think Korra had any bending left in her, so he didn't have the time to try weaken it. Also, weakening different forms of bending probably required Amon to use different bloodbending techniques, and he didn't really have much experience fighting airbenders, so Korra was able to gain the upper hand on him.
  • Electricity kills by disrupting the beating heart, stopping blood flow (it also burns, but the burns themselves aren't usually fatal). A psychic bloodbender as skilled as Amon could probably bloodbend his own blood and heart at the moment the electricity strikes and survive (it would be like performing CPR/cardiac massage on himself).

How could Amon be beaten so fast and Korra become fully realized in no time?

• After 10 episodes of buildup, arguably the greatest Magnificent Bastard in Western Animation and all his plans were ruined in 10 minutes or so?
  • No chain is stronger than its weakest link. All of Amon's success hinged on his mind games - the fundamental fact that everyone assumed his story was true. He also made a big mistake in debending Tarrlok, and possibly never believed that his brother could have had a Heel–Face Turn and betrayed him. Also the Equalists' style of fighting had a weakness towards Airbending.
  • Or that Korra could now Airbend.
  • There was a bit of foreshadowing at the final rally. Amon dodges all the other bending attacks, but had no way of dodging or blocking Tenzin's attack.
  • Maybe the fact that Amon/Noatok attempted to murder his own sub-commander and then promptly outed himself in desperation could have had something to do with it. Sure, it all came crashing down for Amon and friends, but face it, they had a lot of help. Besides, it's rather critical that thanks to Asami and Bolin, they lost their air superiority, allowing the UF forces to promptly rout the confused, chaotic insurgency at their weakest, which ironically is exactly the tactic they used to gain the upper hand in the first place.
  • Amon is also even more vunerable to airbending than the rest of his men. His combat style relies on throwing off their forms using subtle bloodbending, which relies on him at least understanding those forms at a basic level. Notice he tries to blood bend Korra at the end, but she just flowed with it and unleashed her attack anyway.
  • Plus, each time Amon was fighting an airbender, he didn't have much space. While fighting Tenzin on the stage, Mako and Korra were also throwing attacks at him, leaving him too distracted to focus on Tenzin's air gusts. When fighting Korra's airbending, he was in a very tight hallway, leaving him no room to doge or use his signature chi blocking attacks, thus he was thrown around like a ragdoll.
  • Also, Amon's way of overpowering people involves dodging their bending attacks to get close to them, but he has to see those attacks in order to dodge them. We, the audience, can see the air as it's bent because it's a visual medium, but there's no indication that airbending makes the air visible in-universe.

What the heck was up with Amon's skin tone?

• Amon being Tarrlok's brother was a common fan guess right after the whole bloodbending thing was revealed. However, many people thought Amon and Tarrlok couldn't be brothers, because Tarrlok had the brown skin of the Water Tribe, whereas Amon's skin was clearly lighter. See this image◊ for an example: Amon has a notably lighter skin tone than Korra, whose skin is the same colour as Tarrlok's. Then Tarrlok revealed Amon was indeed his brother. Okay, maybe Amon was just born with a ligher skin tone than his brother? Nope, when we see the flashback to the their childhood, Amon has the brown skin◊ of the Water Tribe, the same as Tarrlok. It can't be that Amon used some kind of a make-up to change his skin tone, because even after the sea water had washed away his fake scars, Amon still was light-skinned◊. So it seems the makers of the series deliberately cheated the viewers and changed Amon's skin tone with no in-universe explanation, just so that people wouldn't guess who Amon really is.
  • We did see Yakone somehow able to get darker skin from plastic surgery. It's also possible that Amon/Noatak spent a lot of time inside and that just made him pale.
  • Except this isn't like a white person having a tan and then staying indoors for a long time. This is the skin color that's been consistent for the entire race, and skin color that's naturally that dark wouldn't change so drastically just from not getting enough sun.
  • Yeah. Maybe there is some good in-universe explanation for Amon's skin change, but since the writers didn't explain it in any way, it just feels like cheating.
  • There is a such thing as skin whitening cream's as well as other methods of artificial skin whitening.
  • In our world, yes. There's no reference to them existing in the Avatar world.
  • It has been shown that they wash and dye their clothes, so yes, the same chemicals would exist in the Avatar world.
  • You ever not gone outside much? You quickly have people saying you're pale, and might need to go outside... depending on how long he wore that mask, Amon hasn't gotten any sunlight to produce body reactions, hence his face slowly lightening over time. And why does eveything need an in-universe explanation, you feeling cheated or otherwise? (This is what Fridge, WMG and Headscrathers are for.)
  • Er, that's not how melanin works. Light-skinned (white) people can get paler if they stay indoors and their skin loses the tan it normally has. But people born with a darker skintone (like Tarrlok and Noatak) can't have their skin so radically lighten because lack of sunlight. And having an in-universe explanation would make the story better, because it's an important detail that was inexplicably inconsistent. Good writers have in-universe explanations for such inconsistenties, bad writers try to pretend they don't exist.
  • Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, on the matter of in-universe explanations determining the quality of a show; it's not a clear-cut idea, it's different between individuals. When done badly, they just drag down the quality of the show, damaging the emotions we're supposed to be feeling. Besides, some of us find it fun to think about the answers ourselves (especially if the in-universe ones don't suit what we wanted), outside of the target's universe.
  • Okay, if you are brown-skinned and you stay indoors for long enough your skin will lighten. You won't turn white, but a brown person can pretty pale. In fact, there's an issue with people from tropical climates living in far northern climates because the lack of sunlight can be harmful for us in the long run, just like too much sun can be harmful to a light-skinned person.
  • Maybe waterbenders just tan really well. Yakone had relatively light skin himself, until he went to the pole and started getting out more. The Foggy Swamp Tribe has light skin, and they're just waterbenders that left the poles, and live in a very shady environment. Noatok stays inside all day, and covers almost every square inch of his skin to boot. It's unsurprising that he would lose his tan, unlike his brother, who is also athletic but presumably is free to get out more. Also? Tahno. Just look at that guy, he's very pale. The closest he looks to have gotten to the sun is under the arena lights.
  • Swampbenders presumably moved to the swamp countless generations ago, so their skin tone has slowly changed via evolution, just like white Europeans are descended from black Africans. As for Tahno, there's no indication he is from either of the Water Tribes, he was probably born in Republic City. Maybe one of his parents or grandparents was a Water Triber, but most likely he has other nationalities in his heritage too, which would explain his lighter skin. And it can't be just that Water Tribers "tan really well", because the poles get less sunlight than other parts of the world. If the brown skin was just tan, Tarrlok in TLoK as well as Sokka and Katara in AtLA should've become more tanned when they left the pole and started living in sunnier places, but that clearly isn't the case.
  • Actually, when you live in an area that is snowy for most of the time, you can get a decent amount of sun exposure because the sunlight bounces off all the snow.
  • That doesn't change the fact that on the poles the sun stays out for long periods; the snow can't reflect the sunlight if there's no light to begin with. So the sun exposure you get on the poles would still be smaller than what Katara and Sokka got while they were travelling the world, especially since they were staying outdoors for most of the time. Also, remember the case of Hama from "The Puppetmaster"? She was kept inside a cage with no sunlight exposure for years, possibly decades, yet the flashbacks in that episode showed no significant change in her skin tone during that time.
  • Okay, several things. First, Hama DID lose her tan. Look at her and Katara!◊ Second, you're acting as if you can't get tanned on the poles, and that Noatok had absolutely no tan to begin with, both of which aren't true. Third, just look at Yakone and Noatok.◊ Their skin tones are essentially the same, from low exposure. This whole thing is completely overblown, it's not like he went from being black to albino.
  • It's true that Hama had a paler skin when Katara met her, but that was when she was an old woman who'd spent decades living in normal sunlight. If you look at the flashbacks where she's in prison, her skin tone isn't that different from the she was before she was captured, even though she spent years in that cage. So maybe it was old age or something that made her skin pale, but it certainly wasn't lack of sunlight. And it's also true that in some scenes in the finale the unmasked Noatok appears to have the same skin tone as Yakone, but that doesn't change the fact that in earlier episodes he had a much paler skin than in the flashbacks to his childhood, and there's no explanation for this. Maybe the makers of TLoK decided to colour the unmasked Noatok somewhat browner than the masked Amon so people wouldn't notice their cheating, but they couldn't make him as brown as he was as a kid because then the discrepancy would be really obvious and the cheating would be exposed anyway.
  • Ok, so Hama is old and that makes her pale or whatever. Couldn't the same apply to Noatok? Particularly in conjunction with his utter lack of sun? And you exaggerate amon's previous paleness, as you can see from his unmasked scene◊, and from his art, his skin tone hasn't changed at all. The mind has a tendency to exaggerate things in the past based on our assumptions. You thought Amon was pale all along, your mind conveniently forgets his more moderate skintone. Thus, it's more of a shock when you see that he isn't that pale.
  • There's no indication that aging makes Water Tribers go pale in general; all the other old and middle-aged members of the Tribes we see in AtLA and TLoK still have brown skin. So Hama was a special case. And the picture of masked Amon you posted is not a still from the show, it's a promo pic with some weird lighting. Look at the scenes in the actual series where Amon meets Korra; hell, look at even the scene where he debends Tarrlok – Amon is clearly coloured lighter in those scenes, even though the flashback scenes show Noatak had the same skin tone as Tarrlok and Korra.
  • If Hama was a special case, why not Noatok? Seriously, when is the last time he had ANY exposure to the sun?! And Amon is emphatically NOT colored differently in those◊ scenes,◊ you're just misremembering them.
  • Amon is a bloodbender, and a ridiculously skilled one at that. He can alter human physiology in intricate ways. He could have deliberately done some bloodbending plastic surgery to himself. Also, while this is WMG, it seems that all bloodbenders are unusually pale for Water Tribe members; this seems to imply that using the power a lot will change you physically. Hama, Yakone and Amon all became unusually pale over time.
  • Except Hama was always paler◊. That means that however small, there could be a minority of pale-skinned waterbenders.

Amon's plan was doomed to fail in the long run. What were his true motive?

• There is no way Amon could have hoped to get rid of bending. Even if he somehow debended an entire generation of benders, it's certain that their children and future generations would still be born benders. Even Energybending cannot stop that. Amon cannot divulge his secret to any one and sooner or later and after him bending would anyway make a resurgence. Of course, this is not accounting the sheer impracticality of tracing down every bender in the world. Even the fire nation couldn't do that with Water and Earth benders or even Aang given 100 years of tyranny and a nation's worth of manpower. So what was his real motive? Was it revenge against the Avatar for debending Yakone? Was he carrying on his father's goal of taking over Aang's beloved city just like Tarrok? Did he really want to destroy all bending? Or had all that bloodbending muddled his mind and resulted in a bit of Joker-ish insanity? (This is a little Fridge Brilliance that carries on from all the similarities and Shout Outs to Batman we've seen among our characters and their backstories).
  • His true motive was advancing his own power, and living up to his father's pressure to avenge him.
  • He definitely wasn't avenging his father, he hated Yakone.
  • My theory is that Amon really did hate bending, and thus hated himself too, and wanted to eventually die as a martyr for the Equalist cause, probably at the hands of Korra. Their leader being killed by the Avatar would've given the Equalist movement a strong impetus to carry on, so even if Amon wasn't able to debend everyone, his legacy of anti-bending would've lived long after he was dead. If Korra had not found out about his true identity, all this might've actually worked.
  • It feels that his motive was power and a chance to impose his views. All that bloodbending affected his mind and filled him with lust for more power. Look at the way he gets the wolves to bow down to him. He hates his father and accuses him of being weak. To him, the most powerful ability of all was the Avatar's ability to remove bending, which had defeated even his father's psychic bloodbending. So he made up his mind to make himself more powerful than the Avatar and acquire the ability to remove bending himself, and then beat the Avatar with Aang's own ultimate technique. But on the other hand, his hatred for bending stemmed out of how his father was biased against Tarrlok because he was the better bender and the Training from Hell that they were put through. History lessons probably reinforced the feeling that bending leads to discrimination and Republic City was the perfect place to pitch his views. It would give him a chance to use the bending removal technique he believed was the most powerful ability of all, while also satisfying his desire for Equality. By debending the Avatar, he would succeed where his father had failed, and establish himself to be more powerful than the avatar, master of the ultimate ability, while simultaneously becoming a symbol for equality.
  • Why does his motive have to be anything different from what he said? Just because it's realistically unattainable doesn't mean that it isn't honestly his goal. Lots of people have goals that they think they can pull off that are just about impossible, on every level imaginable.
  • After de-bending the Wolfbats, Amon declares that any bender who stands in his way will meet the same fate. Once the Equalists take over, Hiroshi's speech says that the first thing they did was declare bending illegal. The benders lined up for the "public execution" scene were mostly in uniform - cops and White Lotus members; in other words, people who were fighting the Equalists during the coup. It seems the plan was to rule mostly through fear, with Amon acting as his own Sword of Damocles: "Live like the rest of us and you'll be left alone, but get caught practicing your perverted bending and it's straight to Amon for you." That way Amon doesn't have to spend the rest of his life hunting down benders to De-power, and if all goes well the bending arts will die out because no one will dare teach them. There would, of course, be a hard-core group of holdouts, but they'd be easy to demonize via propaganda.
  • On whether or not Amon really was genuine in his desire to destroy bending, there's an extremely strong piece of evidence in favor of that in episode 11: Tarrlok saying it was so as part of an Exposition Dump on Amon's true backstory. It's exceedingly rare for information reveal that blatant to turn out to be false, and even then, in virtually every known case of that happening, the fact that the Info Dump was false is made very, very clear, and the fact that we can still call Amon Ambiguously Evil (ambiguous as to how evil he was) shows that there was no such denouncement of Tarrlok's exposition, so we can safely say in my opinion that Amon was at least partially genuine about his cause. That said, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he was lying to himself about how much of it was really for the people, and how much was about personal glory or upstaging his father.
  • Amon's plans couldn't realistically be brought to the world-stage—he probably wouldn't even survive the inevitable uprising of depowered benders—but those were never really the stakes the show presented. Amon is a threat in the framework of the story because he endangers Republic City's benders, Korra and her friends, and the last remaining air benders. He had the potential to do catastrophic damage, even if his plans had no long term or global viability.

Amon and Tarrlock's fate

• So, did Word of God confirm that they were both dead? Because the show didn't say it. I thought that it was intentionally open ended in case the show got Screwed by the Network.
  • Mushroom clouds arent usually intended to be ambiguous.
  • Yeah- I doubt there's anything in even a master bloodbender's arsenal to survive being right in the middle of an explosion. They were about as explicit as could get without showing the charred corpses, which they'd never have gotten away with anyway.

Does Amon have a bloodbending based "chi sense"?

• How did he find Korra and bloodbend her out even though she was well hidden, and at the one moment where she let down her guard, but not Mako? This man is the greatest bloodbender who ever lived. Is it possible that all his years of bloodbending has given him a "blood sense" like Toph's seismic sense? Think about it. Similar to Toph, that give him an advantage in predicting his opponent's moves, by sensing their muscular movements? It would also explain how he could sever the chi paths in a bender, he senses where the chi is flowing using this ability and then destroys those chi paths. He'd need the sense because his bloodbending would need surgical precision for that.
  • What's interesting is this theory would also explain how Korra could still airbend. Amon has never had any experience debending an airbender, so he might not know exactly where the air paths were. After using his technique he would have detected zero chi flow and concluded that he had beaten Korra. Since Korra's chi paths connected to the Air Chakra were not active, he couldn't sense them, so he would never know the difference. But then her Air Chakra opened (it's opened by love), and she could airbend.
  • Tarrlok pretty much says this when he's talking to Korra.
  • If you listen carefully Korra lets out a sigh of relief once Amon has walked past her, then she gets bloodbent out. Amon just heard her breath and figured out where she was.
  • It could be that benders (especially water and earth) all have an intuitive sense of where their element is around them, even if they're not actually manipulating it at the moment. Toph refined hers to the point of Disability Superpower, but many benders have shown the ability to bend without looking to see where their element is first. If you're a powerful waterbender, and you sense a collection of water under a table when you're looking for someone who's hiding from you, what do you think it could be?

Amon doesn't hold anything against Tarrlok for foiling his plans?

• He must know that Korra learned his true backstory from him, since that's the reason why he imprisoned him separately in the first place. Yet neither of them bring it up when they reunite, and Noatak is so genuinely happy to be with his brother (the one who directly contributed to the defeat of the movement he invested years of time and effort in) that I must have forgotten myself, considering it took so long after the finale for me to realize this.
  • First of all, even if Noatak realized Tarrlok had helped bring him down, at that point he had no one else left. He had spent years, possibly decades, living as Amon, and almost all his worldly connections were made with the Amon persona. When Korra effectively destroyed the Amon persona, all those connections were severed. After that Noatak tried to grasp his last straw, the only emotional bond he had left that that preceded him becoming Amon: his connection with his brother. Secondly, just like Tarrlok did, it's possible that at the moment of his defeat Noatak realized that he had actually continued his father's legacy, even though he had intended to rebel against it. Yakone had cruelly molded him as a vessel of his revenge, and Noatak had rebelled against that by trying to make the world see all benders were power-hungry despots, like his father was, but in the end he had tried to do exactly what his father had wanted: defeat the Avatar and become the ruler of Republic City. So it's possible Noatak actually felt remorse for the things he had done as Amon, and that he came to realize, like Tarrlok did, that Yakone's evil legacy had lead them both astray. If this is true, Noatak probably felt more sympathy than hate towards his brother.

Why use fake scars?

• So the whole reveal with Amon at the end. I can buy that groupthink could reasonably lead to "He has a scar, just like he said, this proves his entire backstory true," but then it just ends up being face paint? Really, Amon? Couldn't be bothered to spend 30 seconds actually scarring your face?
  • Do you really, seriously think that "30 seconds" is all the inconvenience there's going to be from burning your face off? That is really, really not how it works. Burning his face off would have been one of the stupidest things Amon could have possibly done. You're saying he should have crippled himself for life.
    
    Let's start from the top—his eyes. If he wants a scar that would justify wearing a mask, we're talking a really bad scar covering his face. This would mean cooking his face, and you may not realize it but fire isn't a precision tool. There's no way he's going to get that big, that horrific a scar without burning out his own eyes.
    
    Next, his nose and lips—he's saying goodbye to his sense of smell at best, and without lips he's not going to be much of a public speaker. Then there's the recovery—maybe Amon is capable of healing, but could he concentrate on that when he's in maddening pain from literally cooking his own face?
    
    Facial burn scars aren't just some cosmetic thing you can just slap on and move on with your life. They're a crippling disfigurement.
  • Fire may not be precise, but this is also a world with firebenders (Which granted fire's uncontrollable nature is one of the key points of it, but they're able to achieve SOME level of precision with it). And obviously it would hurt, but I dunno, there's something decidedly disappointing about a villain who's not willing to go through excruciating pain for his cause (Death to the benders! I just hope none of those firebenders hit me, cause that stuff is like seriously hot, you gaiz). Hell, it doesn't even have to be that disfiguring, he just needs a scar to be like "See, that thing I said totally happened." Or he could have made up a different backstory that would be less painful to corroborate. I'm just saying, even if the villain is supposed to be wrong, it'd be nice if he'd at least commit (Even springing for face paint that isn't going to come off in water, especially given how large crowds plus underground steam vents generally equals wet).
  • He needs to have some alleged facial disfigurement to justify the mask. If he said he just wore it to avoid being recognised, or to hide a small scar, his fellow equalists may get suspicious if they NEVER see him with the mask off. That way, he has a sympathetic reason for this. Furthermore, actually hurting himself would be very impractical. Not only for the reasons mentioned above; without his mask, he can just disappear in a crowd. Nobody knows what he really looks like, and nobody expects him to not be disfigured. If something goes wrong, he removes the mask and the make-up and he's gone. I'll give you that, though, the face paint did come off rather easily.
  • I dunno, one of my friends did a Joker style cosplay for a con, and based on how long it took him to do the relatively tiny mouth scars, I would think that creating such a detailed and convincing scar every morning as part of a Xanatos Roulette (Not only on the off chance that someone calls him out on it, but even then banking on his followers being frothy enough to not actually stop and think about it) doesn't seem all that practical. Though I guess the ability to disappear in a crowd makes sense.
  • Depending on how often he went out scar/mask-less and how often he took his mask off to "prove" himself, he probably didn't need to do it every day. If he lived alone, he would have had to do it rather infrequently. I can see him easily leading the Equalist movement via telephone/telegram/letter, without the need to wear a mask every day or even put on makeup. I can also see him just appearing to live life like the average non-bender, perhaps even using his real name. Hell, he might not ever have used makeup until he captured Tarrlok, who very quickly figured out who he was and might have betrayed Amon long before Korra found him.
  • He's not going to use a Firebender, because that's either one person alive who knows the truth (which is one more than he would want), or someone he's going to have to kill to prevent loose ends—both of which are still more work and complications on top of, once again, cooking his own face.
    
    And his make-up wasn't "detailed and convincing." If anyone had taken more than a cursory look at it, especially someone who had seen real facial scars, like Zuko's, they'd have been able to tell it was false. For one, his nose isn't at all misshapen, his eyebrows are still there, the skin itself isn't deformed at all except for upper lip—it was enough make-up to fool people from 15 or so feet away for 30 seconds before he put the mask back on. And more importantly, to fool people who were largely inclined to believe him in the first place—it was what they expected and wanted to see. Notice how the one person close enough to see the real details—the Lieutenant—actually does apparently begin to suspect immediately.
  • Besides, he wears a mask everyday. Painting on the scar could have been a one-time deal.
  • Having real scars would prevent him from using a Plan B or even just going incognito with his scarless face if he ever needed to.
  • He should've just blood-bent his face so it'd look deformed. That'd solve everything!
  • Bloodbending is probably how he got his lip to look disfigured, which is the only part of his "scars" that he couldn't fake with makeup. It'd also be a nice, convincing touch that, if done well, would draw people's attention so they don't focus on the fakeness of the rest of it.

Amon's abilities

• How can Bloodbending take away bending? Or work essentially like Energybending? Chi is not in the bloodstream, as far as I know. Or if it is, it was never established.
  • It can't. Aang could take away bending but couldn't bloodbend. The simplest explanation is that any bender is capable of energybending but few have the skill to master it. Or the necessary strength of will.
  • We've seen Chi-Blockers block Chi and thus temporarily negate bending. Amon's Bloodbending probably works like that except more viciously, attacking the various Chi points from within, permanently screwing them up. If anything, we might have discovered a more mundane way of permanently removing bending, through the use of complex and probably unethical surgery.
  • Presumably, Amon has worked out exactly which parts of the brain control bending, and then he physically cuts those parts out of the brain with bloodbending. Basically a lobotomy.
  • We know form Azula electrocuting Aang that physical damage can absolutely block chi paths. I doubt the lobotomy idea above, but just like in the real world chi tends to be related to certain points of the body in the Avatar universe, so he just needs to thoroughly mess up those points.

News of his death

• We know Amon is definitely dead, but does anyone else in the show actually know? No one saw him and Tarrlok die, and I doubt that explosion left much in the way of remains. In book 2 he's barely mentioned despite the possibility of him being alive poses a massive threat to Korra.
  • As of Book 4 Varrick knew and nobody shows any shock so at some point it became common knowledge though it's impossible to know when or how that may have been.
  • Alternatively Varrick always thought Amon was a zombie.
  • While Amon was a threat in himself, his real power came from being the leader of a fanatical extremist sect — even as a bloodbender of his talent and skill, the threat he poses as a singular person is drastically reduced. I mean, what's he going to do? One person can't take over the city, and as she is a fully-realized Avatar now, he's not really a threat to Korra anymore. As shown in the flashback, Avatar State beats Bloodbending.

Did Amon really deserve to die?

• Rewatching the Legend of Korra, I'm actually very surprised why Amon had the most violent and sudden end out of all of the villains. Looking back, Amon was probably the most moral out of the villains, and actually did little actual evil within the show. Firstly, he is the only villain to actually not have attempted to kill Korra. Unalaq, Zaheer, and Kuvira were all ready to put an end to her, while Amon, even though he LITERALLY HAS THE MOST POWERFUL BENDING OUT OF ALL OF THEM, shows restraint and seeks to take care of her non-lethally, even when she's seconds away from revealing his identity (remember, he could have just crushed all of her internal organs through her blood several times during their final fight but doesn't, even when his own life is in danger. That takes nerves and a moral code of iron). Mako, Lin, and even Korra have violated the no-kill rule, but Amon, in all his time as a villain, never actually kills anyone, only debends them, something which loses it's weight when you find out that the Avatar can restore it (besides the Fire Nation forces, but to be fair, they attacked first and we don't actually see any of them dying onscreen). Compare this to Zaheer who committed regicide, threw an entire kingdom into anarchy, where no doubt dozens, if not hundreds of people lost their lives or had their possessions taken from them, or Kuvira who killed thousands of people with the Spirit cannon, if not more given that her attack came a week early and people didn't have time to leave. Unless all of the buildings she destroyed in her rampage were conveniently empty. Yet she gets redeemed because of an incredibly lame Freudian Excuse, but nonetheless, even though she went on a genocidal rampage, Korra forgives her because they're similar people. Somehow. Yet Amon, the most peaceful and restrained villain with a better moral code than most heroes, deserves to die.
  • Yes, Amon deserved to die. He took the bending away from many innocent people and misled the other Equalists into rallying for his hypocritical cause. Granted, this troper hasn't seen the other villains in the series, but by no means is it just to judge him based only on how evil he was compared to them...Not to mention, it was his brother who brought about his violent death. We can assume he would've been killed or imprisoned for life had he been captured and returned to Republic City, so it was really a foregone conclusion at that point.
  • Amon did deserve to die, at least according to the only person whose opinion mattered at the time.

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