1/ i said my peace about ursa already, but i will say one last thing about ozai and then i am leaving this topic where it stands personally. ozai is the inheritor of hundreds of years of Fire Nation imperialism and self-glorification. he is the very embodiment of that system.

2/ He hangs over the story like a phantom, a one-dimensional form of evil that manifests itself across the world but most importantly within his children, Zuko & Azula. Ozai was born with a particular capacity for evil, but it is his through his actions that he truly became evil.

3/ In Zuko and Azula, he left the scars of child abuse and PTSD. He tried to shatter any goodness in Zuko. He may have favored Azula but only because he saw her as a weapon of war for his own gain. Both spent their early lives haunted by him, tortured by his malicious presence.

4/ When Zuko rebelled against the evils of the Fire Nation, he undid hundreds of years of generational malicious conditioning. Azula’s great tragedy was realizing her own complicity in the system that weaponized her rather than uplifted her as an individual human being.

5/ It cheapens Zuko’s personal and national redemption and Azula’s monumental tragedy to say that Ozai was either born evil or became evil. He is a physical embodiment of the Fire Nation itself. The evil resides in horrific action.

6/ That is why Aang’s final decision not to kill Ozai has always remained the right one. Aang found the strength to overcome Ozai’s (and the Fire Nation’s) tremendous forms of violence and evil while remaining in accordance with his non-violent principles.

7/ In defeating Ozai, Aang defeated Azulon and every other Fire Nation leader & enabler that desecrated the inherent value of all life too. It’s important we see none of the FN leaders as individuals but as actors upholding an evil system. Aang & Zuko changed that system.