Netflix’s ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Is Resurrecting One of the Oldest Shipping Debates
What team are you on?
Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender is almost upon us, with the show’s first season scheduled to drop later this week—and the discourse has been non-stop.
Fans are understandably all abuzz with both anticipation and dread—the former coming from the almost two decades’ worth of love that has been poured into the animated original, and the latter from the declarations made by people in the Netflix adaptation’s production team regarding the characters, their motivations, and their narrative arcs.
Since the release of the first trailer, one unavoidable point of the Avatar fandom’s discourse has once again become relevant: shipping. Now, before we go any further, I’d like to remind everyone that shipping is a very normal part of fandom culture. No, it doesn’t necessarily represent a person’s views and morals in their everyday lives, and yes, everyone can ship what they want.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to it. There are several beloved characters in Avatar: The Last Airbender, all of whom share deep and important relationships. Their narrative arcs intersect, drift apart, and come together throughout the show, so it should come as no surprise that there’s plenty of shipping. It has been there since the animated show first aired, it’s still here now, and it will likely come back tenfold as soon as Netflix’s adaptation drops a live-action version of these characters on us.
**Spoilers for Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra ahead.**
In my many years spent in fandom, I’ve always perceived each fandom as having a few major ships that are inescapable—and more often than not, those ships are in direct conflict with one another. In the A:TLA fandom, those ships are, without a shadow of a doubt, Kataang and Zutara—though Sokka also has a plethora of ships to his name, it should be noted.
On one side, we have Kataang, which consists of Katara and Aang, as the ship’s moniker suggests. Let’s cut to the chase and say immediately that, as we all know, this is the actual canon ship. Katara and Aang get together in the very final episode of A:TLA, and we know from Legend of Korra that they eventually get married and have three children—Bumi, Kya, and Tenzin.
Kataang has always been a very sweet ship to me, starting on the foundation of a very strong friendship and evolving from there, maturing from a childhood infatuation on Aang’s part into full-fledged love. As an avid enjoyer of angst, I have particularly always liked the moment in Aang’s arc when he thinks he has to renounce his love for Katara to become a truly complete Avatar so that he can eventually defeat the Fire Lord.
Then again, I’ve also always felt that while Kataang is very fulfilling for Aang, it doesn’t feel the same for Katara, who’s a few years older than Aang and sometimes steps into a more maternal role rather than one of a peer. I’ve always seen it as a case of “the writers have a soft spot for Aang, which translates into him getting the girl at the end of the adventure like in every hero’s journey.”
Or maybe that’s just because I’ve always been a Zutara girlie at heart. What can I say? There’s nothing I love more than a good old-fashioned sun and moon dynamic—or, in this case, fire and water might fit better—where the characters have opposite powers and opposite journeys and eventually come together for a greater cause. I will admit that it’s also because of Zuko’s incredible redemption arc, which remains one of the best to ever be put to screen. The fact that he does his own emotional labor, going against the trend of having a female character do it for him, is also definitely a plus.
While it’s true that there’s no canon evidence for Zutara—as if that has ever stopped anyone from shipping characters together—they have such incredible moments together. Think of the whole Blue Spirit and Painted Lady episode, their quest to search for the Fire Nation soldier responsible for the death of Katara’s mother, and of course, the final Agni Kai between Zuko and Azula. The fact that Katara is there, that Zuko is shot by lightning to protect her, and that she ultimately defeats Azula and also saves Zuko’s life, mirroring what he has just done for her, is something that can actually be so personal. I have clearly never gotten over it despite it having aired all the way back in 2008.
Now, in my personal experience, the war between Kataang and Zutara was never a war at all—more like a friendly discussion where no one really had any chance of convincing the other side of their reasoning. The whole Korrasami vs. Makorra vs. Masami thing during Legend of Korra? Now that seemed to me like a bloody war. But things between fans of Kataang and Zutara also got pretty heated back in the day, something that hopefully won’t start back up with Netflix’s version. Then again, knowing how things go down in fandom, we shouldn’t raise our hopes too high.
What’s certain is that fans are starting to pick the discourse back up again on social media and similar fandom spaces, and all the material coming out of the Avatar press tour these past few weeks has certainly helped.
So even before the show actually airs, I think it’s safe to say that the Kataang vs. Zutara debate is well and truly back.
(featured image: Netflix)
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
