After a very solid start and a great follow-up batch of episodes, Avatar: Seven Havens has finally reached what it’s been building up to for its first season. While it’s been delivering a very interesting story for the first six episodes, a lot of the more intriguing parts were shrouded in mystery and happening in the background. Everything comes to a head in this batch of episodes with the bandit troupe known as The Faceless, Uki’s disappearance, Korra’s involvement in the Cataclysm, and the evil spirit representing the Survival Chakra. Spoilers ahead for episodes 7-9.
I must first off apologize, as I really believed Commander Karthik was a secret bad guy right up until the big confrontation in episode 9. He was too nice! Turns out he just may be nice, and is just our new Uncle Iroh for Seven Havens. Go figure. The reveal of the real antagonist, the Faceless Queen, is one of my favorite twists in the history of this franchise, but I’ll get into it later.
We first get to meet the Faceless underneath Ellora, where it turns out they’ve been hiding this whole time. As I suspected, they do live in the city undetected, and entering from outside the walls for attacks is part of the ruse. Jae meets Uki down here, who reveals that the Faceless are a rebellion group who aim to restore individual freedom to Ellora. That also means that they have to live as bandits, stealing “only what they need”, but still stealing from those aboveground.
The girls are meanwhile engaged with the black spirit, which has been hiding underground and shows them a vision of Korra 200 years ago. In a further attempt to convince the audience that she is evil, we see her enter Republic City with fury and tear down the infrastructure of the spirit power, which you’ll remember from the previous show. Varrick was able to harness the power of the spirit vines into concentrated beams, which provided unlimited energy but had very destructive tendencies if even one thing was out of place.
In a very clear analogy to nuclear energy, Kuvira essentially drops an atomic bomb on Republic City in the finale of Korra. My guess is that Korra strongly opposed using spirit energy because of its necessity to exploit the spirits and because of how volatile it was, but various industrialists and most likely the idiotic President Raiko decided to do it anyway. It’s very obvious we don’t have the full story – my hope is that Korra didn’t accidentally cause the Cataclysm and is instead being framed for it. I can’t take another hit of Korra doing something rash and it ending up ruining everyone’s lives.
We then meet delegations from four other havens who have come to answer Kayoko’s call for aid. It seems that other Havens are indeed suffering from storms, but not to the degree that Ellora is. They are also all lacking food, something Ellora has but not in excess. We also importantly learn that less benders are born each generation all across the world. I’ve been having thoughts about this fact – have the Lion Turtles decided that humans have not used their gift correctly and are slowly taking it back?
Then, the big snap – The Faceless show up and take the leaders at the summit hostage, and the Faceless Queen reveals she is Agam, the restaurant owner. I loved this twist, because as some reaction channels have been pointing out, she has been giving free food to the Bending Brigade while at the same time complaining that she’s very low on ingredients. She has been buttering them up so they don’t suspect her, essentially, but there were so many clues it was her from the start. She’s been innocently sowing chaos and discord for 8 episodes in the background, and now is the time to strike.
We find out that Agam’s father was conscripted into the Bending Brigade and died in service, leaving her full of hatred for the military and its practices. It’s also at this point that I looked around the room and through my memory, and realized that Karthik seems to be the only person on the Bending Brigade over the age of 35. It became very plain, suddenly, that not many benders make it to old age because they all die in service, fighting the storms. Like every good bad guy, Agam has a great point.
Her point, essentially, is that the Council forces all benders into conscripted service as early as age 8, and has been spinning propaganda for who knows how many decades about how you get an “opportunity” to be “part of something bigger” and “dedicate your life to the service of others.” It’s the same exact rhetoric the US Military Recruiters regurgitate to susceptible high schoolers in real life and struck a real chord with me. You can see just how hard Jae has drank the Kool-Aid, so to speak, in his conversation with Uki. It’s reminiscent of WWII propaganda too, with conscientious objectors to the draft fighting for individual rights against a nation of people pushing to send them out to die. Things are more complicated, though, because there is a real threat in the storms, so you can see the point in forcing conscription.
At this point, Nisha reveals herself as the Avatar, and all hell breaks loose. The spirit attacks, and Nisha is able to energybend it to dismiss it. Pavi, meanwhile, has a vision where she sees the true cosmic power of the universe, just like Aang and Korra before her. However, something’s off – rather than seeing her own spirit at the end of the rainbow road, it’s the seven chakras. At the front, the black and red spirit, which is of course the spirit of the Survival Chakra, is blocked by fear. I love this, because it feels like a huge reveal but also leaves me with more questions than ever.
Back at the council building, Kayoko loses her mind and orders Karthik and the White Lotus to be executed for harboring the Avatar. Karthik wisely indicates to Jae to play up like he’s also betrayed, and Jae arrests Karthik, saving his life. I have to admit I wasn’t sure Jae would pull off the act, but he did great selling Kayoko like he was betrayed by Karthik as well. The rest of the White Lotus members decide Nisha must be trained elsewhere, but Nisha escapes Ellora entirely, separated from Pavi. The story is out – the evil black spirit was summoned by the Avatar, and she’s going to cause the second Cataclysm. Mothers, hide your children – she is coming to kill them.
I loved this set of episodes so much because it paid off all the setup, introduced new mysteries, debuted a villain with an interesting socio-political ideology (just like Amon, Zaheer, and Kuvira) that has a point to make, and left us on a massive cliffhanger going into the season finale. I can say with confidence the first season of Seven Havens is already better than the first season of The Last Airbender, and maybe The Legend of Korra‘s first season too. Let’s see how they stick the landing, but it’s good to know that Mike ‘n Bryan absolutely still have the sauce.
FilmObserver Score: 9/10 – Outstanding
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