Honestly, yeah, looking back it was probably the biggest black mark on an otherwise awesome finale. I think the idea behind Spirit Bending is cool and makes a certain amount of sense with the worldbuilding we'd gotten up to that point, but its implementation in the story is pretty poor. And I'm not even just talking about how quickly it was introduced. It just gave Aang such an easy solution to what was set up as a major moral dilemma for him.
Not swaying from your principles is an admirable thing, but in real life, you have to be prepared to deal with the consequences, which oftentimes isn't easy to do (and you could argue that it *only* counts when it's not easy). If Aang wanted to spare Ozai because his principles wouldn't allow him to kill someone unarmed and defenseless, then that's something I can respect even if I don't necessarily agree with him, but the story basically just let him sidestep the issue altogether.
I probably would've been more accepting of it if learning Spirit Bending had required some great sacrifice on Aang's part. Off the top of my head, I think the ending of FMA (manga/Brotherhood) is a good example of this, where Ed achieved something thought impossible, but at the cost of his Alchemy. And I'm not saying the sacrifice had to be his Bending, but that's the sort of magnitude I'm talking about.
Thomas Cruz
Yeah, did even the comics cover that? Like Ozai being alive leads to a bad thing?
Ian Lee
>it was probably the biggest black mark on an otherwise awesome finale
Even more than that stupid fucking rock?
Daniel Reyes
Why Aang only showed reluctance towards the idea of killing ozai in the final episodes?
Luis Bennett
Probably because he didn't really think about it until then. During the eclipse you could at least make the argument he was going to just capture him while he was defenseless or something, and had he had to fight he would have choked
Cameron Mitchell
Duuuude, I completely forgot about that. Aang would've been royally fucked if it wasn't for that huge ass stroke of luck.
Unless he had something like the thing holding down Bumi, that’d be dumb
Elijah Carter
When Aang mentioned that Azula's lightning had stopped up his chakras, I assumed this was setting up some profound spiritual quest to unblock them. I assumed we'd get an entire episode devoted to him recovering the Avatar State, possibly involving some sort of journey to the Spirit World. Or, at the very least, I expected a certain amount of spiritual journeying.
I certainly didn't expect him to get it back through getting smacked in the back in just the right place by sheer dumb luck.
Jeremiah Wilson
I guess the idea is that, without his Bending, Ozai was harmless. He was easily one of the strongest Benders on the planet, and Bumi demonstrated how tough it can be to imprison someone on that level. But this way, Ozai can be jailed and he isn't likely to gain much political support now that he's just a normal guy.
Yeah the rock was pretty dumb, I'd forgotten about that.
Hudson Gutierrez
It was sort of something that didn't really come into the equation in the earlier episodes. Aang's fighting style always seems to be nonlethal, and the Air Nomads were at least quasi pacifistic monks, with no standing army. They always talked about Aang needing to defeat the Fire Lord, but it wasn't until late in the series that they started talking about the fact that that might mean Aang might have to kill him.
