WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (2014)| Dir. Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (2014) | dir. Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi

+ bonus: 

‘Our Flag Means Death’ Renewed for Season 2 at HBO Max

The well-reviewed pirate comedy starring Taika Waititi is getting a second season.

Yay!

Yet more Zuko meta

In which I tackle Season 2 Zuko! (My S1 Zuko meta can be found here and here, for those who are interested.) I'm starting S2 with another episode that's been subject to its fair share of meta by other people, because as usual I have Opinions about it that I want to share.

Season 2 - Zuko Alone: In which Zuko, having tried doing the right thing by his crew (keeping them safe) and losing them all to Zhao's plan and the Avatar/La's vengeance at the North; having tried doing the right thing by his father/Fire Lord (capturing the Avatar) and wound up not only with no Avatar, but also labeled a traitor by his father and hunted by Azula; having (kind of) tried to at least do right by his Uncle (stealing to provide for them, now that they are penniless refugees) and gotten only more lectures on who he's supposed to be couched in "questions" about who he wants to be (questions that always come with a clear "right" answer in Iroh's mind), has finally had enough and decides to set out on his own and find out for himself who he is, when he's lost everything that he used to think defined him.

(also, uh, this one got... long?)

We'll go ahead and get this out of the way first: Zuko starts off Season 2 in a pretty low place, and his behavior reflects that. He's rude and dismissive to Iroh while lacking much of the subtle fondness he used to bury under a gruff exterior, he displays some of his most verbally/outwardly entitled behavior, he steals shamelessly from anyone who has more than he does and takes things he and Iroh don't even need but which might make their lives a bit easier. One of his lowest points comes just before Zuko Alone, when he steals Song's ostrich horse right after she and her mother have offered medical aid, food, and shelter to Zuko.

Zuko has just had a series of harsh lessons on how little ability he has to care for "his" people - his crew were taken from him and now they're all likely dead, he feels like he dragged his Uncle down with him as a traitor after his Uncle already spent 3 years traveling with Zuko in his banishment when he likely didn't have to, and then Iroh poisons himself while trying to make tea and would have died without the help of a kind stranger. So when he gets that help from Song, and then gets further generosity from Song and her mother in the form of food and pleasant company that his Uncle clearly enjoys, he lashes out. In spite of the fact that she is also poor, in spite of the fact that she's been hurt by the Fire Nation already (Zuko's people, who hurt her even though she is kind and compassionate and good; Zuko's people, who hurt Zuko because he lost his honor and apparently does not deserve his father's compassion or care), Zuko adds to that harm by stealing her ostrich horse.

It's a low point for him, there's no denying that! Even Iroh gets frustrated by Zuko's behavior. It's selfish, it's reckless, it's disrespectful, and at points like with the ostrich horse it's outright cruel. Through the early episodes of Season 2, we also see a rift growing between Iroh and Zuko that hasn't really been there before. This rift eventually builds to the point where, in response to Iroh's growing frustration, Zuko chooses to part from his Uncle entirely and sets out on his own.

Ultimately, this parting does wind up being a healing and positive journey for Zuko, if not a very pleasant one for most of it.

Instead of stealing his way across the Earth Kingdom for most of Zuko Alone, he starts taking odd jobs from residents of the small towns he's passing through and begins to work his way across the Earth Kingdom to survive. Finally, he winds up in a small town that's been ravaged by the war and is, at the time Zuko shows up, being effectively run by Earth Kingdom army bullies. This town provides Zuko with an opportunity to reaffirm for himself who he is and what he values, though it winds up not being sufficient in the end to break him away from his goal to one day return home with Ozai's approval.

I see discussions sometimes that question why this journey was not enough for Zuko to choose the Avatar's side by the time he and Katara talk under Ba Sing Se. What I think is important, even if we don't really hear Zuko verbalize it until later in Season 3, is that Zuko still has years of propaganda to unlearn. Propaganda that was taught to him throughout his childhood, about the greatness of his nation and the honorable intentions of his people in the war. He has been taught that the Fire Nation is trying to help the other nations by spreading "civilization" to people who lack the same innovations and resources as the Fire Nation, spreading their "glory" to the hapless ignorant hoards that populate the rest of the world.

It's an ugly narrative for sure, and most viewers (with the benefit of narrative framing and other characters' stories that Zuko doesn't have) rightfully recognize it for the imperialist nonsense that it is. Zuko, however, is still fairly young and until very recently was still very immersed in the Fire Nation rhetoric. During the three years he spent on his ship, his crew consisted entirely of Fire Nation soldiers. Even when he would have stopped at ports, there is little evidence or reason to believe that he would not have chosen primarily neutral ports, colony ports, or other ports dominated by Fire Nation peoples.

At the start of Season 2, Zuko also very likely has very recent memories of watching the Avatar, while merged with La, slaughter a significant chunk of the Fire Nation navy in vengeance for what, to Zuko, would have looked like the plot of one corrupt naval officer. As he travels through the Earth Kingdom, he sees how the war has negatively affected these towns, but he also sees cruel, petty, and dishonorable behavior from Earth Kingdom soldiers (realistic behavior, given that the Earth Kingdom is itself a major world power initially built through imperialist conquest, and given that human nature has plenty of examples of people who get a bit of power over others and immediately proceed to abuse that power for their own self interest no matter where they are from), who choose to bully and steal from their own people.

Zuko's travels do help him heal from the trauma of losing his crew, losing his ship, and the latest rejection from Ozai in the form of being declared a traitor to his own people (plus, the likely additional heavy trauma of having to raft through who knows how many days worth of the bloating corpses of Fire Nation soldiers left behind by La's rampage, as he and his Uncle starved on their tiny raft while fleeing the North Pole massacre). Up to this point, Zuko's compassion and empathy has been largely buried - by the trauma from his father in his Agni Kai, by the stress and desperation and anger he used to fuel himself during his 3-year Avatar hunt, by the slaughter he witnessed at the North Pole and the further rejection Azula delivered on Ozai's behalf afterwards (just when he thought he and his Uncle had escaped the North and made it to safety).

His travels alone through the Earth Kingdom show Zuko certain limits to his own capacity for selfishness and cruelty, however, even when he is at one of his lowest points in the series. Choosing not to steal from the young, pregnant couple marks his first major turning point, where he realizes that even if he has nothing and is nothing (nothing but a traitor, expected to act without honor) in the eyes of the Fire Nation, he still desires to act with whatever honor he can when the choice belongs to him anyway.

It is after this point that Zuko stops stealing and starts finding jobs to earn money/food/shelter each day. By the time he reaches the last small town in the episode, he is able to interact fairly kindly (if not warmly, though Zuko is frequently shown to be awkward in social situations of any kind) with the young child of the family he finds work with, when the kid starts following him around and asking him questions and making it clear that he looks up to Zuko due to an act of kindness Zuko committed earlier on the kid's behalf. Zuko even gives the kid his knife, one of the few things he has left of his old life, and something he had treasured enough to take with him from home when he was originally banished.

Spending time with the Earth Kingdom family and interacting with this young kid helps Zuko heal enough to bring back forward his innate desire towards protecting and caring for those who could reasonably be seen as "his" to care for (the same drive, arguably, that lead him to save the crew member who nearly died during The Storm in S1, and ultimately lead him to temporarily give up chasing the Avatar and prioritize his crew's safety at the end of that episode; the same drive that got him challenged to an Agni Kai, burned, and banished at 13). When the kid is directly threatened by the Earth Kingdom soldiers who have been bullying the townspeople, Zuko's core of compassion trumps the more selfish front he'd been trying to put forward in order to protect himself up to that point. He turns back to the town, fights the Earth Kingdom soldiers to save the kid who had looked up to him, the child of the family who had given him work and shelter while he was there, and eventually he reveals his true name and title as he achieves victory against the soldiers with firebending, while remembering his mother's last words to him to never forget who he was.

It is, briefly, a moment of triumph for Zuko. He has objectively done the right thing, he has acted with compassion and used his strength to help those in need rather than to cause harm, and he has owned the truth of who he is without shame.

And very rapidly, his moment of triumph turns to yet another painful lesson on how other people see him, not for what he does but for who he is. It is understandable for the townspeople to reject Zuko here! He's just admitted that he's not merely a firebender, he is also the son of the man who is currently leading the nation that started the war and is still perpetuating atrocities against their people. He is the crown prince of the nation responsible for all the loved ones whom these townspeople have lost to the war. He could not have more clearly announced himself The Enemy if he'd tried!

For Zuko, however, it still means that he tried to find acceptance outside of his home, acceptance that was not dependent on his lying and hiding who he was, acceptance through doing something good for this town of mostly strangers, and he was told that he could not both be himself and also seek acceptance in another nation. Regardless of his father's rejection, he is a Prince of the Fire Nation, and that means in the eyes of the world that he bears at least some responsibility for his nations crimes. He is rejected, here, even by the very child whose life he had just saved. A rejection that is made clear and absolute when the child refuses even to keep Zuko's knife.

The message is clear: he is not wanted here; he does not belong.

His travels have brought him to a place where he wants to be accepted again, however. He wants to have a place where he belongs, a place where his contributions and his care are both accepted and appreciated, without having to pretend that he is someone he isn't.

And so, having been rejected by these Earth Kingdom townsfolk for revealing himself, Zuko returns to something he knows, a mission that he had already spent 3 years convincing himself would earn him a way back to the place and acceptance that he most desperately craves - he returns to hunting the Avatar and, with it, the dream that he can one day earn his father's approval and go home.

In today's Zuko meta, Zuko did one good thing and got a fever about it… after doing a lot more than one good thing over the course of Seasons 1&2, watching the life he desperately wanted continue to slip further and further out of his grasp anyway, and then facing the disappointment of a father figure whom he loves for his continued desire to please the father who burned and banished him at 13.

(Previous Zuko meta can be found here and here for S1, and here for S2)

First, a list of some positive things Zuko has done (or at least tried to do) in Seasons 1&2, along with the consequences of those actions for Zuko:

1) Zuko tries to do the right thing by his people at 13. He defends the lives and loyalty of a battalion of young soldiers that some older General wanted to sacrifice for the sake of taking more Earth Kingdom land. In response, his father demands he fight an Agni Kai for disrespect over the fact that Zuko yelled his objections to the unnecessary slaughter of their own soldiers during a war meeting that he hadn't been invited to.

2) Zuko tries to do the right thing as a loyal son when he realizes Ozai meant for Zuko to fight him. In response to Zuko begging for forgiveness instead of fighting in the Agni Kai, his father publicly sears off half his face and then banishes him with nothing but a fool's errand to pin any hopes on for "earning" his way back home.

3) Zuko actually finds the Avatar, commits a number of definitely not great and often harmful actions as he chases the Avatar for weeks/months, and then nearly gets challenged to another Agni Kai by his Lieutenant for demanding his ship sail into a dangerous storm in pursuit of the Avatar. When he nearly does get his crew killed and his ship destroyed by following the Avatar into the storm that everyone else on board was telling him to turn back from, he realizes they might have had a point. Zuko saves one crew member's life and then tries to do the right thing by his crew, in turning back and temporarily halting his Avatar chase in favor of prioritizing the crew's safety. After the storm, he no longer takes them into dangerous situations for the sake of capturing the Avatar. A few days/weeks after that, his whole crew gets commandeered by Zhao and likely all wind up killed by La at the North Pole.

4) Zuko gives up on trying to do the right thing for a while, because he has lost faith in himself after he and Iroh are labeled Fire Nation traitors in the wake of Zhao's failure at the North Pole. This leads to him losing even Iroh, as their frustration with each other grows to the point that Zuko finally parts from his Uncle and sets off to travel on his own. Eventually, however, his travels through the Earth Kingdom help him heal to the point that he starts wanting to care about other people again. He stops stealing and starts working to earn food/shelter through honest means, and he eventually finds himself in an Earth Kingdom town whose inhabitants are being bullied by members of their own army. He winds up with a young kid following him around and looking up to him, after he refuses to rat the kid out for throwing things at the bullies.

4) Zuko tries to do the right thing by going back to the town after the child's mother asks for his help with rescuing her kid from the army bullies, who have threatened to conscript the kid and get him sent off to die at the front. He returns to the town and saves the kid. Unfortunately he can't defeat the earthbenders without using his firebending, and he announces who he really is in the process, too. In response, the villagers, including the child he just saved, reject him and demand that he leave their town. Zuko leaves, and begins tracking the Avatar again.

5) Zuko finds the Avatar, only to discover that Azula has also found the Avatar. After Iroh and the rest of the Gaang all show up, Zuko sides with the Avatar and his Uncle against Azula. Azula wounds Iroh to the point that Iroh loses consciousness, and then she retreats. This leaves Zuko effectively alone (in a nation that hates him when they know who he is) with a group of people who, the last time he'd encountered them, had fought against him - for good reason, as he had been the antagonist in that situation - and then allied with the ocean spirit to wipe out half his country's navy - who had also initiated the aggression in that situation. Given that Zuko originally showed up in this town to fight against the Avatar, he understandably doesn't trust the Gaang's intentions when he's effectively alone and even more vulnerable than usual, what with having a downed Iroh to watch over as well as himself. Rather than letting Katara get close when she offers to help heal Iroh, he chases the group away with anger and showy firebending that doesn't actually burn anyone.

6) On the ferry to Ba Sing Se some time later, Zuko meets a guy who seems to like him, who encourages him to steal food from the ferry captain to distribute among the hungry refugees, and who wants Zuko to join the group of outcast kids that he leads - kids who have all been harmed in some way by the Fire Nation. Zuko agrees to steal food with Jet on the ferry, but when they arrive in Ba Sing Se he refuses an offer to join Jet's group. Zuko is, at the time, hiding his identity in a city where being a firebender at all is illegal, and he had already left his Uncle once and then nearly lost him to violence when they reconnected. Therefore, Zuko turns Jet down. Unfortunately, while Jet is trying to convince Zuko to join him in spite of Zuko's refusal, he spots Iroh firebending to heat a cup of tea. Jet proceeds to stalk Zuko and Iroh for days, until he finally bursts into their work place while they're working and tries to get them arrested. Zuko fights back to protect himself and his Uncle, and Jet gets arrested due to his own actions as the one who started that fight.

--

After all these experiences of trying to do what he feels is right, trying to do what other people tell him is right, trying to just do what he wants in the moment and screw the consequences, all of which end with Zuko losing or almost losing nearly everything he cares about and getting rejected by nearly everyone he tries to care for except Iroh, Zuko finds the Avatar's bison imprisoned under Ba Sing Se.

He is now faced with the choice between doing what his Uncle tells him is right, or continuing the quest that his father had given him three years before when all this started. (Ironically, Zuko has been quite verbally clear that he wants to restore his honor in his father's eyes and be allowed to go home every time Iroh asks him to think about what he wants, so the answer to Iroh's constant demands that Zuko consider, "What he wants," actually runs counter to what Iroh is hoping the answer will be.)

Zuko is at a crossroads of his own, here. He can keep persevering at the mission that he's centered nearly his whole life around since he was thirteen, keep the hope alive that one day he might be able to go home and be worthy of his father's pride, or he can finally give up on his hunt for the Avatar, and thus his hope of eventually going home, for good.

7) Though it clearly terrifies and angers him, Zuko chooses to give up on something that he has believed in fiercely and completely for three years, something to which he has dedicated countless hours of work and pain and struggle and grief and desperate aching hope. He symbolically lets go of the last shreds of that hope that he might one day go home, when he frees Appa instead of trying to find a way to use Appa against the Avatar.

Zuko gives up on something he believes in with his whole heart and soul for the sake of pleasing a father figure who has just been verbally disappointed in and angry with him, and he barely makes it home before he collapses. Honestly at that point, is it really so surprising that freeing Appa made Zuko literally sick with fear?

Avatar couples (+Toph) in Sakura atire! Everyone’s aura has never been pinker!

🌸🌸Love is in bloom🌸🌸

🌸Early spring vibes for winter🌸 Artwork by me using brush pens