Why the Lion Turtle Still Bugs Me

[Winter]

Once again, I need to state that I LOVE Avatar and I'm only pointing things that bug me about it because, well, everything is flawed and I feel the flaws of a work need to be acknowledged, analyzed, critiqued and, in some cases, celebrated because no work is perfect no matter how much we want it to be and ignoring the flaws is, again just My opinion, a mistake because it puts a series up on a pedestal that will inevitable be knocked down from. So, with that all in mind, what is it about the Lion Turtle that bugs me?

Simply put, it's the fact that it's a Deus Ex Machina. It comes out of nowhere with little to no explanation, comes in to give Aang a third way out of an impossible moral dilemma right after learning that he would Have to kill Ozai. I also need to note that the whole should Aang kill the Fire Lord arc is another issue I have because it's only brought up once before the finally and than never mentioned again until Sozin's Comet gets started and is easily resolved thanks to the Lion Turtle.

Now, some of you are likely about to get ready to correct me so let me say this. Yes, the Lion Turtle was foreshadowed throughout the series as we see it in drawings, lawn art and other places s the Lion Turtle itself doesn't come out of nowhere. However, what it can do, how it finds Aang and can give him what he needs to resolve this plot thread DOES come out of nowhere, has no real explanation and then it leaves without having done anything besides this one point that exists solely to get the writers out of a corner they wrote themselves into.

Now, much like why I get why Zuko basically took over the show after he joined the heroes I get why the writers did this. It was to avoid giving Aang more trauma after all the $#!t he already went through up until this point so he could have a happy ending and... yeah I completely agree with that. The kid has already been through enough there's no reason to add more misery to his plate. That's why I don't dislike Kataang even though I'm a HUGE Zutara shipper, after everything that Aang went through I think he deserved some happiness (even if it did end up hurting both Aang and Katara's characters moving forward).

And while the Lion Turtle Ex Machina does bug me the honest truth of the matter is Avatar has ALWAYS used Deus Ex Machina's to resolve their finales. Season 1 had Koizilla, Season 2 the Spirit Water is able to resurrect Aang after literally dying, Season 3 has the subject of this post. Season 1 of Korra had Aang coming in to revive Korra's connections to her elements and Season 2 has at least 3 Deus Ex Machinas with Korra being able to turn herself into a 50 Foot Spirit Woman, Deus Ex Jinora AND one of the villains who are also able turn themselves into Kaiju Spirit Thing-y and Book 3 had Bolin being able to Lavabend.

To date Book 4 of Korra is the ONLY season not to include a Deus Ex Machina of any kind (no Korra bending the Spirit Nuke doesn't count as the Avatar having power over Spiritual Energy has been hinted at and foreshadowed throughout the series as a whole so it doesn't count). Deus Ex Machinas are not the soul result of bad writers as there are many great stories that use Deus Ex Machinas just as much and for the same reasons, because there was a situation where the writers wrote themselves into a corner and had a certain ending they wanted to reach and the DEM was the only way to get to that ending.

But still, the Deus Ex Machina always bugs me even if I get why it was used it's always going to be something that I'm going to call out mainly because it's something that REALLY shouldn't be encouraged because for every good story that uses a DEM there are at least a dozen that use the DEM to justify it's lazy or outright bad writing.

Lore can be broken, rules can and will be ignored but there is no reason to encourage such ideas. I will always except honesty of purpose but I always get annoyed when the some cheats poorly.

[Beelzquill]

Man, I hated the energy bending asspull at the time. I still hate it now, but I feel like I understand more that they just wrote themselves into a corner. I mean, would Nickelodeon let them show Aang deliberately kill Ozai? Hell no, so they had to write a way for Aang to take him down otherwise and they boldly pointed out that he maybe should kill him. My problem with it now is that we should have learned hints about energy bending before or at least in the beginning of the finale and Aang's spiritual journey should have been to deliberately find that, not have some random Lion Turtle come up and show him this nth hour ability and then fuck off to nowhere again. Maybe if Aang had decided to run instead of getting dragged off by the island and just had the journey take place entirely in the spirit world or something. Man, imagine if they had Aang just straight KILL Ozai though! Like how much of a ruckus would that cause.