This is one of my favorite episodes of the Avatar series. It has a different tone than the other episodes, much darker and scarier, which I liked so much. The story, like many episodes recounting the past in the series, is really intriguing as well. Another great thing about it is that it opens up the boundaries of the fictional world created, by introducing the advanced water bending technique, blood-bending, which is a very clever extension and you can't just get not excited watching it (the mentality that leads to invention of blood-bending is also very smart, creating water out of thin air, using the flowers etc.). Of course, the ending is a killer. Katara is real happy to learn that Hama is of her own tribe at beginning, she relates to her, she embraces her as a Master, she learns something that she deems inhumane from her and realizes that she is not the ideal water bender she thought she was and she immediately needs to use this cruel technique, in a way to become a little like her, in order to get rid of her. It is realizing that she has to be cruel and violent in the world that is created by Fire Nation, that leads her to cry. At the end, she relates to Hama's wicked ways, in a way, too. It is heartbreaking, yet so powerful of an ending.
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