What a fucking cop out

What a fucking cop out.

Better than any of the Korra finales desu senpai

I don't care what anyone says that moment had me hype as fuck

[Fart noises]

Avatar Finales seemingly always have some ridiculous dues ex machina plot device in both series, its rather annoying.

I don't think any of the others can top MAGIC ROCK though.

Imagine what would've happened had he accidentally erased his own bending instead of Ozai's. Blunder of the fucking century.

Magic rock?

Stop stealing ideas from the LoK writing team

Aang isn't in the avatar state for that whole fight because his chi is blocked so he can't enter it. Then he bumps hinto a wall and a rock jabs a pressure point that unblocks his chi and he immediately fucks up Ozai.

That's the real bullshit that people should complain about over energy bending

Oh, yeah, forgot about that

Come up with a better ending

The whole of Book 1 build up to the finale. Book 2 finale was awful and I hated it. Book 3 finale was very good. Book 4 finale was good.

ATLA had an amazing finale but it was nonetheless an unadulterated asspull to save Aang's live-and-let-live character.

Eh not really. They could have brought back his Avatar state ability at any time. That shit wasn't a big deal.

Book 1 finale was just as bad as ATLA's book 3 finale in terms of deus ex machina. Book 2 finale was shit. Book 3 finale was great. Book 4 finale was a complete and total let down after immense build up

I don't like the way it was done, but the concept of being right and standing with your convictions no matter what was good.

The bullshit part was that they had all the past avatars tell Aang that he had to put his own morals aside and do what was best for the world, even Yang-chen a fellow air nomad, then just lt him puss out.

>The Lion Turtle straight up tells Aang what Energybending exactly does.
>The past Avatars think it's too great a risk and wanna just kill Ozai.
>Aang can't get close enough to Ozai to attempt energybending, and gets his ass beat.
>He gets hit by the rock, the past Avatars take control and Ozai gets rekt.
>The big conflict is between Aang and his past lives
>Aang gains control of the Avatar state at the last minute, refusing to sully Airbending tradition - he may be the Avatar, but he also has a duty as the Last Airbender.
>He energybends Ozai and triumphs.

The actual ending has hints of this, but it needed to be made clearer so the audience recognizes the stakes involved. Aang needs to be explicit in saying why he can't kill Ozai. I mean, all his past lives pretty much say it's gonna be death, so Aang needs a better argument than "I don't wanna." Something an audience can get behind. Likewise, the Lionturtle needs to clearly state what it can do so the audience understands it - otherwise it makes no sense and lacks tension, because we're being introduced to all these unfamiliar elements. If the rest of the endings weren't so solid (Zuko becomes Firelord, Aang kisses Katara), the Avatar finale could've been a shitshow.

I remember being hyped as fuck when this happened and the point still stands.

Also you cant have the hero of a kids show outright murder somebody

he could have just punched him in the neck then frozen him and buried him underground for the next thousand years

>Aang gains control of the Avatar state at the last minute, refusing to sully Airbending tradition - he may be the Avatar, but he also has a duty as the Last Airbender.

This.

Aang being able to keep the air nomad path AND be the avatar is part what makes him a legend.

It is even show that he could have kill Ozai many other times. The real conflict is his own struggles.

Energy bending should have been introduced earlier tho.

book 3 was pretty good. was also where Korra should have ended

>you cant have the hero of a kids show outright murder somebody

Well, you could in 1990-2006 in between times of 7-11 am and 6-10pm. ATLA was 2 years too late.

to expand on this
>Every time Ozai knocks Aang around, Roku or somebody needs to pop up, as a ghost or in his head, and say "Aang, we can't lose you too! You need to let us take control!"
>Aang needs to refuse everytime.
>Even if we find his point of view stupid, the audience can at least admire his tenacity. It endures him to us.
>This way, when Aang goes all glowy, it's more than just watching Ozai get righteously stomped - we'll feel enough for Aang's view that we get scared FOR Ozai. We're scared for Aang, because it's been made clear how much he values his Airbender code, and we're scared for how he'll feel when he comes out of the Avatar State.
>The audience isn't feeling sympathy for a Big Bad like Ozai, but we feel sympathy for Aang for Ozai, which is easier to pull off.
>Instead of an anti-climax, Aang literally wrestling away control of the Avatar State is a huge jump for his character. The audience cheers and we get a definitive sign of his mastery over the Avatar State. It wasn't a gift handed to him by a rock/a Lionturtle, we understood the immense struggle that he had to go through to push all his past lives out of his head - and by doing so, come to master the Avatar State.

>Energy bending should have been introduced earlier tho.
It just needed to be made explicit what it is.
Bryke wanted to pull some kinda twisty-twist to engage us, and to give the show an air of fantasy mystery, but it didn't need that.
It reminds me of the ending of Mass Effect 3, actually - they think that by being all mysterious, they're making a more effective and evocative ending, but they're just grabbing tropes without understanding how to tie them into the world that came ahead of it. It dispels all the tension, and thus, the interest. Seriously, if Avatar didn't wrap up the rest of their major plot-lines as well as they did, this ending could've been really fucking awful.

They built up to the Book 1 finale. Not with lore but with Korra's inability to air bend. They knew what they were doing from the beginning. By contrast the ending of ATLA was not apparently planned. The resolution didn't tie into the rest of the previous plot points.

This.
Des ex machina usually bugs the hell out of me, but in this case, I think it worked really well.

One of Pixar's "rules of storytelling" is that "Coincidences to get characters in trouble are great. Coincidences to get them out of trouble are lame."
Getting a rock to the back here doesn't help Aang, it just gives him one more problem to overcome. And it's much easier to accept that.

How about Magic Tree or Magic Bending?

...this is pretty much exactly what happened?
The only difference is that we as the audience only saw Energybending in the flashback instead of when it was delivered to make for a surprise.
I don't get what you're complaining about other than you not being able to grasp subtlety.

Him killing Ozai would've been way worse.

At least this fits within the show.