abandoned

marsreds:

Zuko and Katara were set up for a romance.

It boggles my mind that someone can watch Season 2 episodes “The Cave of Two Lovers” and “The Crossroads of Destiny” and not realize that Zuko and Katara were supposed to have a romance.

And not just a romance at that. They were set up for a Romance™.

The kind of Romance that gets remembered for thousands of years. The kind of Romance that gets a giant statue raised in its honor. The kind of Romance that gets a city named after it.

“Two lovers, forbidden from one another… a war divides their people, and a mountain divides them apart. Built a path to be together.”

Two lovers, one red, the other blue:

A war dividing their people:

Built a path to be together, in a cave of glowing green crystals:

And I just cannot understand how anyone could possibly misinterpret that so badly as to not get that it was set up to have them fall in love.

I mean, what, do they think that they ran out of yellow and green ink for the Oma and Shu sequence? During digital coloring? Do they think they put Zuko and Katara in a cave of glowing green crystals on accident? Even though we know Ba Sing Se has a dungeon? A dungeon good enough to hold Long Feng, the Earth King, and Toph and Sokka? But Zuko and Katara end up in the Catacombs? What do they think was going on there? No, seriously, someone, please, how else do you possibly explain that, other than as a deliberate parallel to the greatest lovers in Avatar-verse history and folklore?

[Edit: Followup explanation here and then afterwards here.]