Created: 2024-08-08 16:54
Edited: 2024-11-10 18:09
Status: 🌿budding

The Avatar is the master of all five elements.

So at the beginning of each episode of both ATLA and LOK, the narrator says that only the Avatar can master all four elements. But I think that's only a partial truth. I believe that there is one more elements, and the Avatar is the master of all five.

And this is only partially influenced by my love of The Fifth Element.

Let me explain.

The classical elements model, that is the one that speaks of earth, air, fire and water, was a pretty common model worldwide. There were some regional differences regarding the elements themselves, for example wind was sometimes used in place of air, but otherwise they were pretty consistant. Many of these systems also included a fifth element, aether or void. But it's the interpretation of the five elements used in many forms of modern paganism that is most relevant since they hold that the elements are earth, fire, air, water, and spirit.

It's not until LOK that we get more detail about how the Avatar came to be and exactly why the Avatar has mastery over multiple elements when everyone else has a maximum of one, but even in ATLA we see the importance of the Avatar mastering spirit. Or as it is more commonly known, the Avatar state.

The Avatar state is extremely powerful and acts both as a means of protecting the Avatar when their life is in danger, as it did when Aang was in the iceberg, and as a way of purposefully channelling more power. We learn through Avatar Wan's story in LOK that the Avatar spirit spoken of in ATLA is in fact the light spirit Raava, fused to the Avatar's own soul and so accompanies the Avatar in each new incarnation.

The Avatar is the only one who can bend multiple elements because they are the only one bound to a spirit in this way, and Raava holds the Avatar's ability to bend multiple elements until they are ready. And the Avatar state occurs when the Avatar channels Raava's spirit fully, the two acting together as one being. Raava is also the critical link that allows the Avatar to remember and have access to their past lives, when no one else in the world can do that with their previous incarnations.

Control of the Avatar state is the final lesson that must be learned in order to become a fully realised Avatar. And in order to control the Avatar state, the avatar must master their bond with Raava. It's not quite bending, but it is not dissimilar to it. Aang unlocks his Avatar state by having his chakras forcibly realigned by Firelord Ozai. Korra unlocks hers in one of her worst moments, after finally connecting with her past lives and using Aang's knowledge of energy bending to restore her own bending.

(Okay, so in the show it is depicted as Aang's spirit restoring Korra's bending, but since Aang is dead and his spirit now resides in Korra I'm gonna argue that she did in fact restore her own bending. But that's a rant for another time.)

The point is that in order to become a fully realised Avatar both Korra and Aang must master bending earth, fire, air and water plus the Avatar state. Only after mastering these five elements will they truly be able to bring balance to the world.

So there you have it. The Avatar is not the only person who can master all four elements as Tenzin and Katara state in the intros to both shows. They are, in fact, the only person who can master all five.

Source: =this.source
Links: ATLA & LOK