"It's my old friend, the Avatar..."
Passing by a random village near a forest devastated by the Fire Nation, Aang learns some of the locals have been abducted by an angry spirit. In his efforts to find the spirit and make amends, Aang accidentally draws Sokka and Katara into the Spirit World with him.
Episodes adapted from the original series:
- "The Winter Solstice, Part 1: The Spirit World"
- "Bato of the Water Tribe"
- "The Siege of the North, Part 2"
- "The Southern Raiders"
Tropes:
- Adaptational Early Appearance:
- In the original series, Koh the Face Stealer did not appear until the end of Book 1, while Wan Shi Tong debuted in the second season. Both of them make an appearance in this episode, roughly halfway through the season.
- The Fog of Lost Souls is an area that first appeared in The Legend of Korra, a sequel series to the original animated show.
- Adaptational Nice Guy:
- In a very specific sense; June's still a merciless bounty hunter, but she's got the nicer disposition toward Nyla of her appearance in "Sozin's Comet", rather than as in "Bato of the Water Tribe".
- Iroh's weirdly out-of-character Dirty Old Man feelings towards June are gone. Instead, he treats her with completely professional respect while she is the flirting.
- Adaptation Distillation: This episode combines events from the episodes "Winter Solstice, Part 1: The Spirit World", "Bato of the Water Tribe", "The Swamp" and Katara's flashback is taken from "The Southern Raiders".
- Ambiguous Syntax: The fox spirit Sokka sees first says "pain", which Sokka assumes is referring to him having scratched his hands falling over. She clarifies that she means Hei Bei's pain.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Inverted. Ozai hears out Azula's case for promoting Zhao from commander to admiral for his "achievement" of finding the Avatar. And then when he dismisses her, Ozai points out that it was Zuko who did that, not Zhao and that Zuko did it through determination, not through trickery and flattery. He's basically telling her that she shouldn't try and deceive him into making her the heir before Zuko.
- Composite Character: Koh the Face Stealer is associated with the Fog of Lost Souls, where in the original Avatar and The Legend of Korra, the two had no connection.
- Consummate Professional: Iroh defends hiring June this way, over Zuko's objections, since as a bounty hunter she's required to do the job to the best of her ability or she doesn't get paid.
- Deadpan Snarker: Zuko lets loose some almost Azula-worthy vitriolic sarcasm on Lieutenant Jee when he fails to report something.
- Eldritch Location: The Spirit World, even more than prior depictions. Here it's utterly alien to any human who sets foot in it, even without the less friendly locals.
- Everybody Knew Already: Zuko is incredibly mortified to learn that the Avatar’s return is not the well kept secret he was working so hard to keep it as, when all the patrons in some tavern in the ass end of nowhere are already aware of the fact.
- Evil Sounds Deep: Koh is more actively malicious than previous depictions, and accordingly voiced by George Takei, making his voice deeper than the original animated Koh.
- Exact Words: Zuko tries bribing a barman into telling him whether he's seen any waterbenders lately. He hasn't... but he has heard rumors the Avatar's been sighted with some waterbenders.
- Failed a Spot Check: Invoked by Zuko in how, after being told to "look for anything unusual," a soldier didn't find it odd to hear about kids playing with ice in a forest.
- Family Relationship Switcheroo: June assumes Iroh is Zuko's father, rather than his uncle.
- Fantastic Foxes: After getting separated from the others, Sokka meets a talking, multi-tailed fox in the spirit world. One with silver hair, and the voice and demeanor of a young woman.
- Handwave: Aang manages to drag Katara and Sokka into the Spirit World with him by accident. No-one's quite sure why — Aang theorizes it may due to them being in the presence of immense spiritual energy and that Katara and Sokka came along for the ride once he went under. Katara suggest that, because she's spiritual, the spirit world let her in, but neither have any idea how Sokka got there too with that trail of logic.
- Hesitation Equals Dishonesty:
- In Sokka's flashback, when Bato and Hakoda are speaking about Sokka's trial, Hakoda momentarily pauses before giving his response.
- When Aang says he and Gyatso will meet again once he's rescued Katara and Sokka, Gyatso notably falters and doesn't directly answer Aang's question.
- I Let Gwen Stacy Die: An additional point of grief for Katara is that Kya didn't shoo her away, simply hiding her from the raiders. Katara tried waterbending, but failed, which drew Yohn Rha's suspicion.
- In Medias Res: The episode begins with Aang, Sokka and Katara running through a forest from some Fire Nation troops, apparently the end result of Sokka trying to romance a girl who turned out to be a Fire Nation spy.
- Invisible to Normals: In the Spirit World, Sokka sees footprints of something following up behind him, which disappear the minute he gets Aang and Katara to turn around.
- It's Personal: In addition to Koh's history with stealing the face of Avatar Kuruk's love, apparently Avatar Roku went and stole something from him.
- Jump Scare: Katara gets spooked by a vision of her younger self, immediately sending her into an illusion of her past.
- Kick the Dog: Sokka's worst memory? Being dubbed a warrior by his father, only afterwards to hear his dad talking down about him. It's bad enough that even years later Sokka's reduced to tears watching it.
- Kick Them While They Are Down: Azula, angry over her treatment from Ozai, beats her sparring partner into the ground, then continues attacking. Mai has to leap in to stop her going further.
- Mythology Gag:
- Azula gets so angry that her firebending momentarily burns blue.
- To try and reassure the scared little girl he meets, Sokka tries telling her it "rhymes with okkah!" (No word on whether he rocks yah.) He also tries naming her doll June Pipinpadalopsicopolis the III.
- Even in an alternate continuity, Wan Shi Tong doesn't like Sokka.
- Gyatso choosing to (albeit only temporarily) reject the cycle of death and rebirth and reside in the Spirit World to guide Aang recalls Iroh being revealed to have done the same in The Legend of Korra. However, Gyatso is strongly hinted to about to be moving onto the afterlife after Aang leaves whereas Iroh was able to remain in the Spirit World presumably forever.
- On their reunion, Monk Gyatso does a bit of cheating at Pai Sho, as he was shown doing in "The Storm".
- Some patrons at a bar talk about how Aang and his friends met pirates, fended off canyon crawlers, and stopped an active volcano from erupting. Whether those events actually happened off-screen or are mere rumors is a little unclear. The pirates incident is a full-on Noodle Incident if it indeed happned, as in the original series Zuko was present for that event and it involved acquiring the Waterbending scroll which Katara received from Gran Gran in this version.
- Iroh tries telling Zuko about how the pai sho in the village they're in seems to work differently than pai sho back home. The Legend of Korra established that actually there is no one set of rules for the game, and that everywhere has its own variation.
- The depiction of Roku seen in Zuko's book is his appearance from the original series. The next episode shows Roku looks a little different.
- While Ozai never treated as The Faceless here like in the animated series, the framing of one shot near the beginning of the episode shows him from the neck down as if the show were trying to hide his face.
- Nice Guy: Bato at least legitimately tries to defend Sokka's record, until Hakoda shoots him down.
- "No. Just… No" Reaction: Zuko, when he realizes Iroh has gone ahead and hired June.
- No-Sell: The Fog tries working on Aang, but he's immediately able to see through it.
- Not His Sled: In-universe, previous flashbacks to Kya's death showed it happened in daylight. The recreation Katara lives through has it happen at night.
- Oh, Crap!: Zuko has been trying to keep the Avatar's return as quiet as possible in order to avoid having too much competition in capturing him. When some regular folk in a backwoods village tavern start openly talking about the Avatar's rumored adventures, he is horrified to realize the secret is out, and that someone could beat him to the one prize that would let him return home.
- Ominous Owl: Ominous, but not actively dangerous. Wan Shi Tong appears before the team in the Spirit World to give Aang some advice and warning.
- Pick on Someone Your Own Size: While protecting his sister from Hei Bai, Sokka tells it to pick on someone its own size only for it to turn towards him, even as Sokka tries pointing out that's not what he meant.
- Proverbial Wisdom: Iroh tries to impart some on Zuko, via pai sho and its various rules, and how it justifies hiring a bounty hunter.
- Psychological Torment Zone: The Fog of Lost Souls forces people to relive their absolute worst memories. Then Koh comes and eats them.
- Race Against the Clock: Aang learns that Koh the Face Stealer has kidnapped Sokka and Katara in the Fog of Lost Souls. At the end of the episode, he must find what Avatar Roku had stolen from the primal spirit before he devours his friends' faces (and their souls).
- Shout-Out: When Wan Shi Tong flies off after warning Aang of the dangers ahead, Sokka utters, "Bye bye, birdie."
- Silver Fox: June thinks Iroh is cute. Iroh seems pretty alarmed by this.
- Something Only They Would Say: At first, Aang believes that the Monk Gyatso in front of him is just an illusion created by the Spirit World, until the latter cheats at Pai Sho, after which Aang embraces his old mentor.
- Tactful Translation: Aang leaves out some of Wan Shi Tong's warnings about the Spirit World, though Katara quickly pegs on anyway.
- Tempting Fate: The universe does love proving Sokka wrong. Just as he says they're fine if they stay on the path, they hear the growl of an extremely angry Hei Bei.
