LogFAQs > #941013743

#24: The Southern Raiders (3.16):

If The Runaway previous episode the heartwarming part of Katara and Sokka growing up without a mother, this one is the dark part.

It's the classic "revenge is bad" story, but it's very well done. We start with Katara hating Zuko for being, well, Zuko. He wants to get in her good side, and he figures out the best way to do that is to help het get revenge for her mother. Aang tries to warn them it's a terrible idea, but Katara is too mad to think and Zuko has the emotional intelligence of a rock, so they leave. We then get the flashback where Katara's mother was killed, and it's pretty well done, while also revealing the one they were after was actually Katara.

We then get a cool chase sequence where Katara goes around screaming at people and threatening to kill them. It also features the obligatory mention of bloodbending so said mechanic isn't wasted, but it's still almost wasted because the scene Katara uses it is only the penultimate stage of the chase so she doesn't learn anything from it. It's just used to show how much she has gone off the rails.

The last sequence is very good, though. Katara finds the guy who killed her mother and damn, he's scum. He literally offers his mother's life in exchange of his own. The show makes no attempt to redeem him. But in the end, she can't pull the trigger, because she doesn't want to become as bad as him. She makes a speech about how she will not forgive him, and you can feel how much Katara is missing the catharsis in that scene. Next, she goes back, and has a heartwarming talk with Aang as she realizes that catharsis may not have been worth getting anyway, because of who it would turn her into. Revenge is not usually worth getting, but damn, does it hurt not to get it.

It's a solid and mature revenge story, and a very good job they did in one episode's length.