Firebending! Failure! We’re diving into Aang’s first brush with firebending and all the chaos that comes with it in this episode of Avatar State Radio.

Kev starts things off thinking Chey is the deserter, and honestly? It’s not a bad guess. We feel bad for the guy: he’s out here trying to help, and the Gaang barely gives him the time of day. Their visit to the Fire Nation’s flashy Fire Days Festival goes exactly as well as you’d expect when you’re public enemies wearing bad disguises. Sokka is loud, paranoid, and weirdly Conan O’Brien-esque in his energy (imagine him on Hot Ones), but he’s not wrong; the festival is a trap waiting to be sprung. And of course, Aang blows their cover because his crush on Katara overrides his survival instincts.

With nowhere else to go, the Gaang meets Jeong Jeong, the actual deserter, who lives in exile after turning his back on the Fire Nation. Aang is eager to learn firebending, but Jeong Jeong—burnt out and haunted—warns him that fire is a force of destruction. Even Avatar Roku has to step in and convince him to teach Aang. What follows is a lesson in discipline, one Aang is absolutely not ready for. He loses control. Katara gets burned. And while Sokka is justifiably furious, this injury unlocks Katara’s healing powers, a moment so powerful even Jeong Jeong admits he’d trade firebending to be a waterbender instead.

Things go from bad to worse when Zhao shows up, forcing Jeong Jeong to evacuate. Aang disobeys, stays behind, and ends up schooling Zhao by outmaneuvering him completely. Turns out Zhao has no self-control and Aang’s starting to realize that might be a problem with firebending as a whole. In the end, Jeong Jeong and his people escape… except for poor Chey, who once again gets left behind. We wrap with a round of Mike Trivia, a bison whistle moment, and Kev wondering who will actually become Aang’s firebending teacher.

Find Mike

Tellest.com | Twitter @tellest | Facebook @tellestbooks | Twitch @ThatTellestGuy | Etsy | Patreon

Find Kev

ThatNerdyKev.com | Starbird Media, LLC | Everything is Awesome | Get 'Em Next Year | @ThatNerdyKev on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Twitch

Find Avatar State Radio

AvatarStateRadio.com | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Amazon

Our intro music is The Voyage by Audionautix, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Artist: http://audionautix.com/