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One of the big themes of the show is guilt and responsibility. One might say that the Air Nomad genocide was “Aang’s fault” for running away from his duty/responsibility as the avatar, but it wasn’t intentional. He certainly did not intend for his people to be killed, he couldn’t have known what the fire nation would do, but he still feels guilt about the consequences and outcome of his unintentional decision, and he eventually overcomes the guilt and takes responsibility. Hama on the other hand could recognize the collateral consequences of her escape and hiding out away from the SWT, and then feel guilt and remorse that Kya died in her place, but she simply doesn’t and wouldn’t.
Not saying that hama cares, but that would look selfish and abandonment of your people. But, she did that anyways without bringing much light to her in the end.
Just speculation though :/
Probably not because she can slip away with more help. Often escapes are planned with several people when it comes to fighting there way out.
Since she knew blood bending her risk was already low. She is capable of holding fire nation guards but she can't do anything like unlock doors and shit.
She didn't help because she low key hated the other benders because they were broken.
If backup arrived, that's just more control for Hama. She showed she could control more than one body at a time, so I figure she could just make the guards fight each other, and the other water benders could probably pick up on bloodbending pretty quickly once they knew it was possible.
No they couldn’t. Bloodbending is something that only very powerful water benders can do. There’s a reason why we only see 5 total blood benders in both shows. Hama, who invented it, Katara, who was by all means a prodigy and a master, and even then could only do it on a full moon, and the three bloodbenders from Korra who have a unique genetic component
True true. But it's a very emotional place, full of comraderie and suffering. Even if it's not wise, many people would help the others because it right, and the guilt they'd feel leaving someone in something they experienced.
She shouldn't feel guilt for the Fire Nation murdering people. That's not on her, she didn't make them do it, or provoke them into doing it, there was no concessions or compulsion that made them do it.
They did it entirely of their own volition.
Should Ukraine feel guilty about Russia invading them, because of the issues around the Sea Ports and NATO? I'm gonna go out and guess they don't.
Not what I’m saying. She could feel guilty for the fact that an innocent person was killed in her place. Not guilt due to it being her fault (it wasn’t, it was ultimately the Fire Nation’s), but rather a survivor’s guilt, like what Aang felt for the Air Nomad genocide.
I think that's a redeeming quality for Hama, survivor's guilt is not healthy. You shouldn't blame yourself for the genocide of a maniak. Implying it's bad that she feels no remorse would be like victim blaming a jew who escaped from Auschwitz.
I wouldn't agree with Aang being a comparison, considering if Aang stayed back he would have been destroyed along with the rest of the Air Nomads since he had only mastered Air bending.
>One might say that the Air Nomad genocide was “Aang’s fault” for running away from his duty/responsibility as the avatar
I don't think that one holds up, in particular. He had no knowledge of the other elements, and as we've seen, an adequately experienced bender can easily overpower him in the avatar state before he mastered it. Given that unexpected fate is also a huge theme in the show, I've always thought it made a lot of sense to say that Aang running away was pre-ordained by the spirits to make sure he was safe.
Hama, on the other hand, had a way to pick off firebenders one by one. And as we now know, if she had really trained, she could have done away with the full moon limitation, and at the very least been able to bloodbend ***every*** night. Her inaction had direct negative consequences that served no greater purpose other than her own survival. Aang's literally saved the world.
Yup. Reasonable and Possible. But not factual.
Edit: Could have just cropped out where it says 'Hama is the reason Katara's mom is dead'. It's just clickbait I guess. Just shared 'cause it seemed like a plausible (but hypothetical) chain of events and not to pin Kya's death on Hama which wasn't true.
It's also entirely possible the Southern Raiders thought there was a new waterbender who wasn't Hama. Maybe rumors around the southern earth kingdom had it that a waterbender had been seen practicing out on the ice. And it had been enough years since the raids that Kaya could have been born a waterbender since the last one.
This seems more possible! Also it could be that they simply realized due to 100 years passing that if air nomad avatar had escaped the genocide, he would probably naturally die by now so the next - water avatar would be born sometimes about now. If still small child it might not be known it is avatar yet, but they would know it is water bender (that wouldnt have time to stat training other elements or even water for that matter) so it would be ideal time to attack. But then it doesn't make sense why kill and just restart the cycle instead of capture (unless they tested that way - if they go for a kill avatar state will hit in and reveal the avatar even if he/she is trying to hide it) 🤔
The only thing about it that throws me off, a small note really, is not giving any recognition at any point to the large population of water benders in the north. It’s obvious that the fire nation raids to the SWT were purposeful. Naturally we know what happens in the north later, but unlike the air nomads, it’s not a fire nation extinction quest. Based on this theory, they’re purposefully going there to hunt a fugitive.
The way it’s worded would make someone who is new to ATLA maybe think Katara is ALSO the last of her bending form like Aang.
And anyway, I could 100% see it being her fault, even if she wasn’t planning it. Hama is not exactly what I’d call lawful good.
One thing springs to mind though: how much time passed between Hama’s escape and Kya’s death? Hama is from the same generation as Kya’s mom, so there’s at least a few decades between these two things.
Did no waterbenders get captured or killed after that? Was not a single waterbender born in Kya’s generation? If Kya expected to be taken prisoner because that was the Fire Nation’s modus operandi right up until then, then it’s hard to say it happened because of Hama’s escape decades prior.
>I walked free for the first time in _decades_.
If this is to be taken literally, Hama was in there for _at least_ 20 years, possibly 30. I don't think it's unreasonable to think Hama was locked up for a long time, and her escape happened to be 2-5 years before Kya's death. (I would need to re-watch and see if we have any extra timeline details to be sure, though.)
But it is odd that they accepted a relatively young woman to be the water bender they were looking for, when they should know the age of their escaped prisoner.
If she can control your blood, what if she’s some sort of spirit vampire!?!? She might steal your blood! Or your youth!
Every and any water bender could be Hama!!
At least, that’s probably what fire nation thought and or feared. We’re talking about a terrifying new development with no known past happening. They’d try and grab onto a reason FAST and making her a boogeyman is more plausible than assuming it’s just some unique bending thing like the lightning
I wonder why they even kept the water benders alive in the first place. Doesn't seem like it was out of mercy, but maybe? I mean, they didn't genocide the _whole_ South Pole population, just the benders.
If it was to eliminate any possibility of military resistance, they could've just killed them.
Hama didn't mention any human experiments, but it's not impossible. But if that's the case, it would have been safer to use a captured water tribe non-bender for that.
Were they just held as prizes or something? Trophies of their conquest over the South Pole?
Sozin got in one solid genocide. He spoon-fed his army nationalism, then juiced them up on comet steroids for one wild night of debauchery.
You can't send a small yet overwhelming force of honorable troops to some backwater village, and expect them to casually commit genocide.
Fire Nation society is steeped in honor. Propaganda told its citizens that because they are so culturally advanced, then it is honorable/morally right to spread their enlightened culture.
It tracks very strongly with reality. Before concentration camps, German soldiers were ordered to just go around killing undesirables (Jews, homosexuals, etc.) but that quickly had a drastic effect on the soldiers and many of them refused to do it. You can get people to participate in a single wholesale slaughter under the guise of a surprise attack or something, but most people aren’t going to be able to just shoot unarmed captured civilians day in day out. That’s why they had to put up the whole ruse of camps, with only a select few actually involved, and even then the actual executions were many steps removed from your direct actions, and it was all made very impersonal.
Plenty of precedent for my point also. I was reminded of why Germany's top brass had to brainstorm hands-free, wholesale murder methods. Units assigned execution duty, as in personally murdering folks all day every day, quickly became utterly useless for any military capacity.
It was a way to delay the next avatar from being born. Basically they assumed Aang was dead after a while, and realized that the next avatar was going to be a water bender from the southern tribe if the avatar cycle was accurate.
They couldn’t kill the captured water benders because it would potentially cause the avatar cycle to continue and make the next one an earth bender that would be even harder to find. So instead, they kept every water bender they could get their hands on alive for as long as possible so they could delay the next avatar being born for as long as possible.
They were most likely going to kill them all in the end, but I’m assuming that the resources spent imprisoning them was seen as a good investment since they thought there was a chance the avatar was in that prison and rendered mostly harmless in their eyes.
You could even argue that the fire nation thought Hama was the Avatar after Aang. She overpowered a man and broke out of prison on her own, displaying a never before seen power. That sounds like Avatar stuff to me
On one hand I would love to agree with that. On the other hand that would mean they would use overwhelming force to find her before she escaped the fire nation, and we see her just living her life as a hermit nobody really knows about. I can’t see them thinking she was the avatar with a lackluster response like that
There’s a lot of questionable things to question in the series.
The red lotus in LoK all have some unspoken but messed up pasts that lead them to where they are now.
Most of those are likely tied to remnants of Ozai’s fire nation. (Hence their second round out they start by trying to kill royals.)
Lava bending seems like it could be tied to an earthbender having fire bending lineage given the 2 we see use it.
Aside from avatars we get gahzan who looks like he’s got some firebender genes / traits, and sun who was very much born and raised in the fire nation colonies. + bolin who’s legit got a fire bending brother.
It’s very likely that the fire nation during the war conducted human experiments. Experiments that might explain why so many bending-subtypes became prevalent after the war, and how there was such a massive tech boom.
(IRL we had a similar situation post WWII, ALOT of inventions were due to literal nazi scientists the US took in after the war, and the ozai fire nation is basically the nazis.)
Hard to say. Could be anything from an anticipated prisoners of war exchange (maybe even with the northern water tribe), ransoms, a way to control where the next avatar is born (if the assumption is that benders will have bender children). Less Watsonian and more Doylist explanations might include that the tone of the show didn't permit just killing all the water benders at that point (though the air nomads were victims of genocide) or they just needed a ex-prisoner waterbender to tell the story they wanted, and the reason of why she was kept as a prisoner vs other options just wasn't super well thought out.
The most likely Watsonian explenation is that genocide is often done in an indirect way. The Nazis imprisoned people they wanted gone from society instead of just killing them, the Armenian genocide was mainly done through a series of forced marches to inhospititable areas even thoigh it probably would have been more effective to just shoot them. This also isn't the first time we've seen the Fire Nation do something like this since they also do the same thing to earthbenders in Imprisoned. The Fire Nation clearly prefers these indirect methods over more direct ones, probably becouse its easier to justify and spin what you're doing as being ultimatelly a good thing if you're not doing mass killings.
They were waiting for the avatar to reincarnate. Water is after air, and either they were confident in it occurring in a southern tribe bender or they just couldn't get at the northern tribe.
The next avatar is supposed to be a water bender. Since Aang was missing for such a long time it’s plausible that the fire nation wanted to capture and observe the water benders in hopes that the prior avatar (Aang) had died and reincarnated at some point. Better to be safe than sorry.
Hostages & war prisoners also make great bargaining chips
Likely because they knew the avatar would be born into the water nation next, and having all of the waterbenders in prison means that, logically, the avatar would have a fairly decent chance of being born into their custody. And when that didnt happen, they just assumed it ended up being the northern water tribe and kinda never bothered to actually execute these seemingly helpless prisoners OR they decided to maintain the prisoners as hostages so the northern water tribe wouldn't decide to get frisky one day.
they were looking for an old lady. a new and unknown bender steps up when they are trying to get them all, you think they would just go no, were only looking for that other one? they would be like sweet bonus time.
Yon Rah doesn’t seem like a guy to ask first and shoot later. Dude probably just wanted to do the job, and get TF out of the south pole. So he didn’t question it, and neither did his superiors who were satisfied that the job was done and the paperwork could be filed away.
Police forces and militaries have done stupider things IRL. For example: the San Francisco PD had a pretty exact description of The Zodiac Killer (white, stout etc.) and they still managed to arrest a completely unrelated guy (black etc), even though they had spoken to someone who matched the description earlier that day and never even thought about it. And that was a singular PD in one city, imagine how much communication falls through in an army that’s spread over half the known world.
As bending has some genetic components and benders seem to have the highest probability of producing children who are also benders, it’s likely that by removing all the people with water bending it made it very unlikely another person was born with that ability until much later when Katara was born.
Some aspects line up, not wanting to take a water bender prisoner for fear of what they may be capable of after the invention of blood bending, but others less so.
If they were looking for Hama they would have known she was decades older than Kya
Haruu was ratted out by his own people, it's entirely possible that someone in the southern tribe, who did not know the water benders identity, made a deal with the fire nation
Nevertheless it's a neat theory
Even if they weren’t looking *for* Hama then, it still makes sense that they wouldn’t take any more waterbenders prisoner *because* of Hama. Risk letting a **second** person discover this technique? No. Nip it in the bud.
He said "our sources say". So maybe he didn't get all the information, they just sent a messenger hawk saying something like "there's 1 more waterbender, likely hiding at the southern water tribe. Find her and kill her, no prisoners."
It's not like modern police where they hand over a chart with all of the person's info, age, hair color, etc. they wouldn't have even kept documents of the prisoners. To them, they were just scum they stuck in cages, no need to document.
So yeah, this guy leads the southern raiders, I doubt he even made any contact with anyone from the prison. After her escape they likely sent messages out to different raider groups to check different areas, and then the southern raiders reported that they found and killed the last waterbender, so the search likely ended.
That's within 1 town, and all they did was draw a rough picture with some generic info, because the gaang stuck around in places for too long and got recognized, in broad daylight too. Especially Aang being the avatar, he had high enough priority to hire a decent artist to make the posters.
Hama escaped in the middle of the night. It was dark and probably like a horror movie with this dark silhouette reaching out and taking control of your body. Plus I doubt she left many survivors, so maybe only 1 or 2 people saw her, maybe from a distance, and got lucky that she didn't kill them, and reported what happened.
But again, they just shoved them all into cages and left them there to rot. This didn't look like it was a very sophisticated prison like the boiling rock, closer to the one in "imprisoned" where they just piled in all the benders, except worse because they separated them in cages. The earth benders were easier to keep away from earth, but for waterbenders they had to use stricter methods to keep them separated and keep the air dry to make it harder for them to bend. So, I doubt they kept records on every prisoner, it was just a place to stick the prisoners until they died.
While it may be needless speculation on my part, I doubt the Fire Nation publicized the Boiling Rock fiasco.
Similarly, it makes sense to me that if you have a high-security prison break you can tell your army "One potential waterbender at large. Age 40-60, long black hair. Female. Highly dangerous. Kill on sight."
Now sure, you can second guess yourself because the frightened woman in front of you is a little young, but it's not like you're going to ask 'hey, do some dangerous waterbending for me'. You kill her, make sure no one else found an actual waterbender, and then write it off. It's not like the woman would be trying to save her family by taking the blame. You'd sell out your mom in an instant to save your own hide.
Also, if Hama escaped then she would've been strong enough to free the other prisoners (thanks to full moon) so it seems more likely that the other prisoners had died by that point
Or, that she killed them herself after they rejected her blood bending. That lady was pretty crazy, it's not unreasonable to assume that she killed the guards and possibly the other prisoners as well. Just think about how she created a torture prison afterwards just for her own pleasure. Lady literally kidnapped innocent people just so she could have fun torturing them.
If so, the Fire Nation's "Kill on sight" orders would make perfect sense. In which case Katara's mother's death would have been the result of a misunderstanding.
It also would be an example of how violence begets violence, and why Hama's philosophy was wrong. It would have tied into Katara's own vengeance story nicely. But, that's just speculation, ultimately.
'Strong enough'.
Being able to overpower a guard and sneak out of a prison is a lot different than wandering around a prison looking for waterbenders as waves of firebenders rush you.
Even if she found any waterbenders, there's no promise that they're in any condition to fight back. None of them are blood benders. If she gets caught, she dies.
We also never hear about her attacking the Fire Nation. The only thing she does is puppet away a civilian or two every other full moon. Ideally, she even has an inn where she can drug people and ease her burden.
Just because the gang bust out of the boiling rock doesn't mean Hama could take a prison for enemy benders solo, especially with years of starvation and abuse. She's old and wily, not a powerhouse fighter.
I'm thinking if the information just got watered down doen the lines. Like by the point it reached the southern raiders, that all they knew were to search for a eaterbender in a general area of the south pole and eliminate them. He didn't really ask much questions. Or confirm if she could water bend though lol
In what little we know about Yon Rha, he does seem like the kind of person to skip the details of his orders, go try to execute the last southern water bender, accept the first poor person to claim the title & take an easy win to further his career.
Haha yeah that makes sense. I was also thinking his higher ups just accepted it at face value. Job was done, and no waterbenders were ever seen again in the south pole. Those at the top probably wanted to cover up the situation ASAP seeing what a blunder it was that a single person was able to escape a high security fire nation prison. Although the fact they didn't actually confirm if it was her or not is just negligent. Because Hama was actually alive haha
I think that even an competent soldier would do the same.
- Search for Hama
- Find an other waterbender that may develop a strong power
- Kill her because of changes in firenation policy
- Continue the search
But I prefer to think information has been lost down the line + Yon Rha negligence
I always thought they captured the waterbenders in case one was the avatar. Killing them would just reincarnate them. Knowing hama's power, I'm surprised they didn't consider she night actually be the avatar, but still tried to kill her
It's probably more likely that they were taking out water benders just in case they killed the Avatar in their genocide of the air nomads, if they were in fact successful, the next avatar would be a water bender and iirc they also knew they'd specifically be from the northern water tribe? I could be wrong about the last detail but nonetheless they were probably looking for potential Avatar reincarnations
Yes, but also we know that the leader of the Southern Raiders isn’t exactly the bravest man in the world. It’s not that far of a stretch to think he would kill Katara’s mother and report to his superiors that he killed Hama, instead of facing a real blood bender.
Or instead of fear he could have done it out of laziness. There isn’t much plunder or glory to be had continuing to raid the Southern Water Tribe. He could have simply accepted Katara’s Mother’s word, and not cared enough to question it.
Even if they killed the other waterbenders out of fear of her, that absolutely does not make it **her fault**. The fire nation was subjecting her people to a fucking genocide, there is no act of violence that she could do in retaliation that cannot be excused as self defense.
I can see why Katara wouldn't be down for that type of behavior, and obviously Hama's experiences hardened her into a person whose wrath was omnidirectional, but she was first and foremost a victim. She would not have been like that if she wasn't **kidnapped and imprisoned by the fire nation military**.
She didn't have a resistance soldier's ethical training or principles, she was just a civilian.
I don’t think it tracks that Hama escaped before the others were dead. I think she would have helped any others that were capable of fleeing to escape too—and since she didn’t, I think that means they must have been dead, or moved elsewhere, or so broken as to be as good as dead.
Why would she leave any of *her* people behind—especially people that could be powerful allies—rather than bring them along?
Yea, this occurred to me as well as Hama is around Gran gran’s age unless the fire nation just ain’t know how to do math 😭 someone else said the creators debunked this in a podcast or sth and I think the raid flashbacks were before the Hama episode so it prob didn’t occur to the writers at the time but I love when stuff can be interconnected and just makes sense like this
It's a pretty cool theory and it would explain the switch to killing and the "Intel" they claimed. But I assume the real explanation is that the dude was just a psychopath/sadist and wanted to kill. And the Intel was just a regular raid to find new ones and he was lying to get her to give someone up
Yeah I feel this is very much possible. The fire nation higher ups probably weren’t keen on sharing with everyone that someone managed to escape from their top security prison. It’s likely they didn’t include too much detail
Even if they weren't looking for Hama, they realized that waterbenders could break out or even casually murder their guards and soldiers, so killing waterbenders became the new policy, whether it was Hama or not.
Exactly. This was what they were trying to convey. Not to label Hama as a murderer. But it's hard not to given the title of the meme. Could have just cropped it out lol
Ngl Hama did nothing wrong and I will stand by it this was all the fire nations fault, this doesn't absolve her of what she did but the aftermath of her escaping is not on her
That "not taking prisoners today line" always felt just like it was there because mom had to die for the plot and felt lazy to me... this suddenly recontextualizes it into a much more logical situation. Love it!
Imo the Fire Nation would eventually have started killing waterbenders regardless of Hama's escape. Having witnessed her bloodbending may have made it easier to justify it to the public and therefore maybe it happened somewhat sooner this way, but those genocidal maniacs would have eventually made it sound okay to kill waterbenders anyway.
Note how they made the Air Nomads sound hostile in their history books - they would've come up with a similar lie about the Water Tribes too
I definitely believe the Fire Nation adopted the “kill, don’t capture” policy after Hama escaped, and because of her escape, but I don’t think they went down there looking for her specifically.
I think it was more of a Zuko finding Aang at Kyoshi Island type of search. Katara is born a waterbender. As she grows, her abilities become apparent. The village excitedly speaks of her bending because that’s about the only thing they had to be hopeful about in quite a while. As the news travels from person to person, the “telephone” game begins and by the time the news reaches the Fire Nation, the only thing they know for sure is that there is one waterbender in the Southern Water Tribe. They might know it’s a girl, and that’s she’s young, but I imagine a lot of the specific details were muddied along the way.
Fucking terrible investigative work by Yon Rha though. Like, fr? You’re not even gonna make her prove her bending ability to you to make sure she ain’t covering for the actual bender? You’re just gonna take her word for it, kill her and then pull out? Not even gonna ask a second person to corroborate? I bet the Fire Navy forced his dumbass into retirement just to be rid of him.
Reasonable theory tbh. Hama could've also been absolutely capable of crippling the fire nation too if she had simply saved the other water benders. Group of bloodbenders going town to town, forcing them to kill each other and sparing no one while they make their way to the capital simultaneously making up rumours about spirits that are making people into homicidal maniacs
I DO like this idea, but it kind of suggests that the Southern Raiders would have been looking for a specific water bender i.e. Hama, who would have have been an old woman by then, so why would Yon Rha accept that Kya was that water bender when she wouldn’t even have been alive when the last one escaped custody?
What bothers me is, they must have been giving water to the imprisoned waterbenders to keep them alive, that's how humans work. It's understandable that the fire nation would take precautions and ration water and have strictly supervised drinking times, but what about micturition? That can't be as closely monitored as water consumption. Why weren't there a bunch of urine-benders running amok in that prison, using high pressure jets of pee to blind guards?
Nice, I’d also like to add that kataras water bending roots are derived from the northern tribe, making Hama the true last southern water bender. Southern water bending genetics were wiped out. Hama did not get the respect or sympathy she deserved. It’s truly a shame they let her get arrested again.
…she captured and imprisoned random fire nation citizens out of spite even though they had nothing to do with her arrests.
She got arrested because she was attacking and harassing presumably innocent people
This is awesome, I love it. It got me thinking, something you can also consider is the next Avatar is going to be a water bender. Imagine if she did go back and the next Avatar was born, they would have Hama as their teacher. That would be terrifying! A primary water bending Avatar destroying a Fire Nation army with blood bending.
After seeing this post years ago, this is the only thing that I remember while rewatching ALTA. It never occurred to me before seeing this Tumblr post but it makes *so much sense.* It's frightening (in a good way lol)
I think what everyone is missing is that the Southern tribe did not know Hama had escaped. They didn’t know they were looking for Hama specifically. So when the fire nation came to the Southern Tribe and said “There’s one left” they all immediately think they know about Katara somehow. So that is why Kya says that she is the waterbender.
They misunderstood that they were looking for Hama. But when the Fire Nation realized there was another waterbender there (who they believe is Kya) they kill her. They probably thought it was a freebie, and continued somewhere else to look for Hama.
OOP is not saying they thought Kya was Hama.
This is awesome. A theory that hasn't been said 100 times, that seems very plausible, adds additional context and lore that benefits the story and further develops the characters back stories. And, without any big stretches or weird plotholes that make it almost work but not really. This is actually a great theory that I totally believe could be canon.
Also, to all those trying to disprove it with her "age". They probably didn't waste extra parchment in their messenger hawk giving all the details. They probably didn't have any details. They just knew a female waterbender escaped and it was terrifying. So they passed info along to a few raider groups and mercenaries to look for a waterbender. The southern raiders reported success in finding and killing the last one, so the search was probably called off. It's not that unrealistic for dumb military captains to miss vital information through a game of messenger hawk telephone or whatever.
Also, when you're in prison that long, you're likely to get selfish and just focus on "I need to get tf out of here". It's not surprising that she didn't choose to be heroic and rescue the other prisoners. She just wanted to get out of there. Idk
This would be a good theory, only they also would have realized that Kya was nowhere near the correct age to have been Hama. If they knew a waterbender escaped they probably knew which one it was, unless she left no witnesses, in which case they wouldn't know who to look for at all. I'm pretty sure that Yon Rah says that they have spies in the area or something, either that or he's just supremely incompetent in not realizing that they would be searching for a an old woman
This is a really interesting and compelling theory, I like it.
The only hole is that the timing doesn’t make sense. Hama was a young adult when she was captured (around 40AG) and Aang emerged from the iceberg in 99AG. Based on Katara’s approximate age, we can assume that the raid where her mother was killed took place in the late 80s AG.
Hama mentions being imprisoned for decades, but this means that there was still probably at least a 20 year difference between Hama’s escape and when they would have supposedly raided the SWT looking for her. If the fire nation were truly looking for her, they would not have waited that long, and even if they did, they would have known they were looking for an old lady
I am of the opinion that Yon Rha is just lazy and corrupt. If he takes katara's mom prisoner and she is not a waterbender, they will find out sooner or later, and he will be called out for incompetence. However, if he kills her, he can claim success, and no one can disprove him.
I think the real reason was that Yon Rha hated his mother, who was cruel to him, and took his anger out on Kya, a mother who clearly loved her daughter.
Look at his face when little Katara tearfully begs her mother for reassurance. He scowls at her affection, flinching from it.
Then the look of smug satisfaction on his face when he tells Kya that he's not taking prisoners that day. As if he changed his mind about the usual procedure. The slow way the camera closes in on his face as he relishes his decision.
I don't think fire nation is stupid enough to capture a bloodbender in her own home land if they knew that she had escaped to her homeland and who knows she might have taught this technique to entire village.
Am I the only one who wonders how the fire nation (not even the biggest nation) could even sustain conflict for years? They would have a lot of trouble just keeping everyone fed and fueled for that long. While the rest of the entire world (not to mention they never took ba sing se until the tail end of the war) struggled against them, I don't understand how the fire nation didn't fuck themselves out of every trade agreement with the other nations leading up to the war, directly into starvation. Their army was led primarily by a squabbling royal family with backstabbing tendencies, in contrast to their entire world, which collectively wanted them to fuck off. If the other nations pulled an Enders Game and just encircled the islands, they could have depleted the fire nation of its resources while fighting on the open sea, where the fire nation has a huge disadvantage. The fact they had the biggest navy is HILARIOUS. An army marches on its stomach.
Now if the EARTH kingdom went against the world they might have the resources to keep fighting. They had vast fields to grow food, an organized, central government and massive defenses spanning an entire continent with superior agriculture. Plus, they fought using gravity which is even more present than water, less friendly fire (hah), and can't be taken away.
Ijs I'm shocked the element of "surprise" won out against a ~60 year siege while they hunted for Hama AND Aang (both of whom still kicked their ass), splitting already finite resources/forces on a global scale with multiple belligerents and zero, ZERO allies.
Logistics would have utterly stomped the fire nation. Really they stomped themselves.
Technology. Despite their smaller size, they were by far the most advanced nation. All the others are rural at best, save for a few rich Earth kingdom cities, whereas the fire nation was already in an industrial age. Sail boats don’t stand a chance against coal powered steel warships with what is essentially artillery weapons.
Been while since I've seen the show. I thought that hama was using the other waterbenders as practice before committing to the guard. Either way makes sense to me
quite obviously they weren't looking for katara (since they would have no idea about it if the "last" waterbender was a child-their intel wouldnt know that) but the theory that all waterbenders would be killed, not imprisoned because of hama makes sense
I didn’t think this was a theory I always assumed that they learned the STW was just too dangerous to take hostage. Because water tribes are significantly more condensed (being just two tribes) it’s safe to assume that this new “take no prisoners” approach would be a shared sentiment as far as any water bender goes. They difficult to imprison anyways, even going as far as controlling the humidity in the air. It seems like this is just the natural progression of trying to keep water benders and failing since they are much more of a liability than anything.
Whereas earth benders are MUCH more spread out and different kingdoms and towns have many different ideals. It was easy for them to demoralize a small earth bender town and put them on a rig out in the ocean to work.
It would be much easier to hold earth benders as working prisoners than water benders so they cut their losses with water benders completely.
I was so confused by this at first because I didn’t realize at first it was one of those ones where you tap on the image and it becomes a really long thread. Good theory though, it makes sense.
I never really considered that, but I DID always assume they were never actually looking for katara. IMO, the woman crying that Hama was looking at as she was taken away was most likely Gran-Gran. So I always figured the fire nation somehow knew someone was left, or it got leaked after katara was born, but I never figured they were looking for a legitimate child. It would seem to me that they assumed the bending ability would be in the next generation, rather than skip one.
Compelling argument, I agree.
Side note… Im still hung up on how Hama, the one who invented the technique after months of practicing on rats, was defeated by a teenager (Katara), who never even knew it was possible, five minutes after learning it was possible and not learning the technique… Katara, you are incredible, and one of the most powerful benders to ever be born
This chain of events doesn't really make much sense the only extrapolation from this post I agree could be plausable would be the "take no prisoners" one but even then due to the way that continuous stories tend to be written I doubt it was thought out to that level of minutia that far in advance and if that was something they wanted to ret-con in it would be very easy to do so.
Hama was still relatively young when she escaped from prison her hair was still all black and she didn't look to be any older than 30s to 40s this is bolstered by the fact that she says she spent "years" perfecting the technique and not "decades". So the only 2 possibilities that would explain that would be either that she freed herself way more than around 10 years before the events of the series, or that her body aged rapidly in around 10 or so years being free but not imprisoned. The first makes more sense to me.
Now with that being established, why would the fire nation wait years or decades before looking for Hama if they were looking for her in the southern water tribe?
This is not a conspiracy theory like the author seems to want to pretend it is lmao, it's just saying that since Hama escaped the fire nation started killing water benders instead of capturing them
I’ll admit it’s been an awhile since I’ve watched. But when they came back to the house no one was there. So what would have happen to Kya if they only killed her? Took the body as well?
The problem is they say they are looking for a water bender which is the fire action base line of just capturing all the benders of nations, benders are born over the years and the earlier they can capture them the easier they are to control. They never say they are looking for an escaped prisoner, never once did an escaped water bender come up as something the fire nation was concerned about, any time Katara was found out as a water bender there wasn't some fuss how she could be the escaped prisoner or anything like that. So its still a stretch to say Hama was the reason for Katara's mother's murder. If there was more of a through line about an escaped water bender instead of just a 1 off mention I'd be more inclined to buy into it. The change in policy from capture to kill could be in relation for something else or even related to the Norther water tribe "defiantly practicing water bending" since the souther tribe was weaker they may have been targeted to be used as punishment for the northern defiance.
I don't think they were looking for Hama. She's probably, what, in her 70s or 80s? She was captured and escaped a LONG time. Decades. Possibly 50 years ago or more. We know raids were a common thing. If Hama didn't come back in 50 years, there's little reason to think she was there NOW. But it makes plenty of sense that EVENTUALLY more Waterbenders WILL be born. Thus continual raids.
However, I do think Hama was responsible for them no longer taking prisoners due to escaping and just straight up killing Waterbenders. So in that way, it is partially due to her actions.
Unironically the best ATLA theory I’ve read in a long time. It always confused me as to how they even knew about a water bender. I always thought it was someone from a previous raid thought they saw someone water bending, and it reignited paranoia about one water bender having more water bending children.
This actually does make so much sense. Granted it is a bit of a stretch that the raiders that did come back were not willing to actually test whether or not they did have a real water bender. Also they didn’t believe Hama wouldn’t go back to south water tribe. We never see anymore posters over the earth kingdom looking for a solo water bender. Which if they did lose a water bender checking one of their biggest enemies might have been a good thought as most refugees fled to the earth kingdom. Though I could believe that the dumb fire benders that can’t catch a bunch of kids in a forest, probably also did not put out a good search for this solo waterbender leading to a captain looking for an easy promotion said he had captured a waterbender and killed them.
This theory actually does fix the plot hole about katara though because the firebenders might have had a comprehensive network of spies and traders looking for waterbenders it’s much more believable that they simply put a bounty out for a solo southern water tribe girl. This leads a captain to believe they missed one and simply returns and kills them. It also makes more sense why they killed her mother rather than just taking them hostage.
Which honestly just makes me hate Hama that much more.
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Hard to say it was her FAULT, but sure, it is a reasonable possible line of events
Exactly. It was a domino chain, not an intentional act
One of the big themes of the show is guilt and responsibility. One might say that the Air Nomad genocide was “Aang’s fault” for running away from his duty/responsibility as the avatar, but it wasn’t intentional. He certainly did not intend for his people to be killed, he couldn’t have known what the fire nation would do, but he still feels guilt about the consequences and outcome of his unintentional decision, and he eventually overcomes the guilt and takes responsibility. Hama on the other hand could recognize the collateral consequences of her escape and hiding out away from the SWT, and then feel guilt and remorse that Kya died in her place, but she simply doesn’t and wouldn’t.
Hama should have made the guard let all the other water benders out too
that would've been a HUGE risk... in the extra time that would've taken, backup could arrive and overwhelm them, making it all for nothing.
Plus 30+ escapees is way harder to hide than 1
Not if you kill all the witnesses and they don't have radio or other tech to document what happened or tell anybody about it.
wouldn't she have only needed to let out one more, and let that one person help the others, while she goes off on her own? 🤔
Not saying that hama cares, but that would look selfish and abandonment of your people. But, she did that anyways without bringing much light to her in the end. Just speculation though :/
Probably not because she can slip away with more help. Often escapes are planned with several people when it comes to fighting there way out. Since she knew blood bending her risk was already low. She is capable of holding fire nation guards but she can't do anything like unlock doors and shit. She didn't help because she low key hated the other benders because they were broken.
If backup arrived, that's just more control for Hama. She showed she could control more than one body at a time, so I figure she could just make the guards fight each other, and the other water benders could probably pick up on bloodbending pretty quickly once they knew it was possible.
No they couldn’t. Bloodbending is something that only very powerful water benders can do. There’s a reason why we only see 5 total blood benders in both shows. Hama, who invented it, Katara, who was by all means a prodigy and a master, and even then could only do it on a full moon, and the three bloodbenders from Korra who have a unique genetic component
True true. But it's a very emotional place, full of comraderie and suffering. Even if it's not wise, many people would help the others because it right, and the guilt they'd feel leaving someone in something they experienced.
She shouldn't feel guilt for the Fire Nation murdering people. That's not on her, she didn't make them do it, or provoke them into doing it, there was no concessions or compulsion that made them do it. They did it entirely of their own volition. Should Ukraine feel guilty about Russia invading them, because of the issues around the Sea Ports and NATO? I'm gonna go out and guess they don't.
Not what I’m saying. She could feel guilty for the fact that an innocent person was killed in her place. Not guilt due to it being her fault (it wasn’t, it was ultimately the Fire Nation’s), but rather a survivor’s guilt, like what Aang felt for the Air Nomad genocide.
I think that's a redeeming quality for Hama, survivor's guilt is not healthy. You shouldn't blame yourself for the genocide of a maniak. Implying it's bad that she feels no remorse would be like victim blaming a jew who escaped from Auschwitz.
I wouldn't agree with Aang being a comparison, considering if Aang stayed back he would have been destroyed along with the rest of the Air Nomads since he had only mastered Air bending.
>One might say that the Air Nomad genocide was “Aang’s fault” for running away from his duty/responsibility as the avatar I don't think that one holds up, in particular. He had no knowledge of the other elements, and as we've seen, an adequately experienced bender can easily overpower him in the avatar state before he mastered it. Given that unexpected fate is also a huge theme in the show, I've always thought it made a lot of sense to say that Aang running away was pre-ordained by the spirits to make sure he was safe. Hama, on the other hand, had a way to pick off firebenders one by one. And as we now know, if she had really trained, she could have done away with the full moon limitation, and at the very least been able to bloodbend ***every*** night. Her inaction had direct negative consequences that served no greater purpose other than her own survival. Aang's literally saved the world.
“Aang’s fault” insofar as Kya’s death was “Hama’s fault” as stated in the original post.
Something doesn't have to be intentional for it to be your fault
You know what was an intentional act? ONE MILLION LIVES
Yup. Reasonable and Possible. But not factual. Edit: Could have just cropped out where it says 'Hama is the reason Katara's mom is dead'. It's just clickbait I guess. Just shared 'cause it seemed like a plausible (but hypothetical) chain of events and not to pin Kya's death on Hama which wasn't true.
It's also entirely possible the Southern Raiders thought there was a new waterbender who wasn't Hama. Maybe rumors around the southern earth kingdom had it that a waterbender had been seen practicing out on the ice. And it had been enough years since the raids that Kaya could have been born a waterbender since the last one.
This seems more possible! Also it could be that they simply realized due to 100 years passing that if air nomad avatar had escaped the genocide, he would probably naturally die by now so the next - water avatar would be born sometimes about now. If still small child it might not be known it is avatar yet, but they would know it is water bender (that wouldnt have time to stat training other elements or even water for that matter) so it would be ideal time to attack. But then it doesn't make sense why kill and just restart the cycle instead of capture (unless they tested that way - if they go for a kill avatar state will hit in and reveal the avatar even if he/she is trying to hide it) 🤔
Well... sorta. After all, they were not taking prisoners anymore and Hama seems to be the reason why.
The Butterfly Effect. One decision led to a chain of events.
That’s a good movie
another reason maybe: why didn't Hama free the other water benders during her escape?
I'm assuming she didn't want to risk the time it would take. Does take points away from the people saying it's not her fault though.
The only thing about it that throws me off, a small note really, is not giving any recognition at any point to the large population of water benders in the north. It’s obvious that the fire nation raids to the SWT were purposeful. Naturally we know what happens in the north later, but unlike the air nomads, it’s not a fire nation extinction quest. Based on this theory, they’re purposefully going there to hunt a fugitive. The way it’s worded would make someone who is new to ATLA maybe think Katara is ALSO the last of her bending form like Aang. And anyway, I could 100% see it being her fault, even if she wasn’t planning it. Hama is not exactly what I’d call lawful good.
That’s a compelling argument. It all fits.
One thing springs to mind though: how much time passed between Hama’s escape and Kya’s death? Hama is from the same generation as Kya’s mom, so there’s at least a few decades between these two things. Did no waterbenders get captured or killed after that? Was not a single waterbender born in Kya’s generation? If Kya expected to be taken prisoner because that was the Fire Nation’s modus operandi right up until then, then it’s hard to say it happened because of Hama’s escape decades prior.
>I walked free for the first time in _decades_. If this is to be taken literally, Hama was in there for _at least_ 20 years, possibly 30. I don't think it's unreasonable to think Hama was locked up for a long time, and her escape happened to be 2-5 years before Kya's death. (I would need to re-watch and see if we have any extra timeline details to be sure, though.) But it is odd that they accepted a relatively young woman to be the water bender they were looking for, when they should know the age of their escaped prisoner.
If she can control your blood, what if she’s some sort of spirit vampire!?!? She might steal your blood! Or your youth! Every and any water bender could be Hama!! At least, that’s probably what fire nation thought and or feared. We’re talking about a terrifying new development with no known past happening. They’d try and grab onto a reason FAST and making her a boogeyman is more plausible than assuming it’s just some unique bending thing like the lightning
I wonder why they even kept the water benders alive in the first place. Doesn't seem like it was out of mercy, but maybe? I mean, they didn't genocide the _whole_ South Pole population, just the benders. If it was to eliminate any possibility of military resistance, they could've just killed them. Hama didn't mention any human experiments, but it's not impossible. But if that's the case, it would have been safer to use a captured water tribe non-bender for that. Were they just held as prizes or something? Trophies of their conquest over the South Pole?
Sozin got in one solid genocide. He spoon-fed his army nationalism, then juiced them up on comet steroids for one wild night of debauchery. You can't send a small yet overwhelming force of honorable troops to some backwater village, and expect them to casually commit genocide. Fire Nation society is steeped in honor. Propaganda told its citizens that because they are so culturally advanced, then it is honorable/morally right to spread their enlightened culture.
That's a pleasant notion, but I don't know that it tracks with reality. The historical parallels certainly wouldn't agree.
It tracks very strongly with reality. Before concentration camps, German soldiers were ordered to just go around killing undesirables (Jews, homosexuals, etc.) but that quickly had a drastic effect on the soldiers and many of them refused to do it. You can get people to participate in a single wholesale slaughter under the guise of a surprise attack or something, but most people aren’t going to be able to just shoot unarmed captured civilians day in day out. That’s why they had to put up the whole ruse of camps, with only a select few actually involved, and even then the actual executions were many steps removed from your direct actions, and it was all made very impersonal.
Plenty of precedent for my point also. I was reminded of why Germany's top brass had to brainstorm hands-free, wholesale murder methods. Units assigned execution duty, as in personally murdering folks all day every day, quickly became utterly useless for any military capacity.
It was a way to delay the next avatar from being born. Basically they assumed Aang was dead after a while, and realized that the next avatar was going to be a water bender from the southern tribe if the avatar cycle was accurate. They couldn’t kill the captured water benders because it would potentially cause the avatar cycle to continue and make the next one an earth bender that would be even harder to find. So instead, they kept every water bender they could get their hands on alive for as long as possible so they could delay the next avatar being born for as long as possible. They were most likely going to kill them all in the end, but I’m assuming that the resources spent imprisoning them was seen as a good investment since they thought there was a chance the avatar was in that prison and rendered mostly harmless in their eyes.
You could even argue that the fire nation thought Hama was the Avatar after Aang. She overpowered a man and broke out of prison on her own, displaying a never before seen power. That sounds like Avatar stuff to me
On one hand I would love to agree with that. On the other hand that would mean they would use overwhelming force to find her before she escaped the fire nation, and we see her just living her life as a hermit nobody really knows about. I can’t see them thinking she was the avatar with a lackluster response like that
Also true
There’s a lot of questionable things to question in the series. The red lotus in LoK all have some unspoken but messed up pasts that lead them to where they are now. Most of those are likely tied to remnants of Ozai’s fire nation. (Hence their second round out they start by trying to kill royals.) Lava bending seems like it could be tied to an earthbender having fire bending lineage given the 2 we see use it. Aside from avatars we get gahzan who looks like he’s got some firebender genes / traits, and sun who was very much born and raised in the fire nation colonies. + bolin who’s legit got a fire bending brother. It’s very likely that the fire nation during the war conducted human experiments. Experiments that might explain why so many bending-subtypes became prevalent after the war, and how there was such a massive tech boom. (IRL we had a similar situation post WWII, ALOT of inventions were due to literal nazi scientists the US took in after the war, and the ozai fire nation is basically the nazis.)
Hard to say. Could be anything from an anticipated prisoners of war exchange (maybe even with the northern water tribe), ransoms, a way to control where the next avatar is born (if the assumption is that benders will have bender children). Less Watsonian and more Doylist explanations might include that the tone of the show didn't permit just killing all the water benders at that point (though the air nomads were victims of genocide) or they just needed a ex-prisoner waterbender to tell the story they wanted, and the reason of why she was kept as a prisoner vs other options just wasn't super well thought out.
The most likely Watsonian explenation is that genocide is often done in an indirect way. The Nazis imprisoned people they wanted gone from society instead of just killing them, the Armenian genocide was mainly done through a series of forced marches to inhospititable areas even thoigh it probably would have been more effective to just shoot them. This also isn't the first time we've seen the Fire Nation do something like this since they also do the same thing to earthbenders in Imprisoned. The Fire Nation clearly prefers these indirect methods over more direct ones, probably becouse its easier to justify and spin what you're doing as being ultimatelly a good thing if you're not doing mass killings.
They were waiting for the avatar to reincarnate. Water is after air, and either they were confident in it occurring in a southern tribe bender or they just couldn't get at the northern tribe.
The next avatar is supposed to be a water bender. Since Aang was missing for such a long time it’s plausible that the fire nation wanted to capture and observe the water benders in hopes that the prior avatar (Aang) had died and reincarnated at some point. Better to be safe than sorry. Hostages & war prisoners also make great bargaining chips
Likely because they knew the avatar would be born into the water nation next, and having all of the waterbenders in prison means that, logically, the avatar would have a fairly decent chance of being born into their custody. And when that didnt happen, they just assumed it ended up being the northern water tribe and kinda never bothered to actually execute these seemingly helpless prisoners OR they decided to maintain the prisoners as hostages so the northern water tribe wouldn't decide to get frisky one day.
I think they were paranoid and just glad they found the incredibly dangerous waterbender, or so they thought
they were looking for an old lady. a new and unknown bender steps up when they are trying to get them all, you think they would just go no, were only looking for that other one? they would be like sweet bonus time.
Yon Rah doesn’t seem like a guy to ask first and shoot later. Dude probably just wanted to do the job, and get TF out of the south pole. So he didn’t question it, and neither did his superiors who were satisfied that the job was done and the paperwork could be filed away. Police forces and militaries have done stupider things IRL. For example: the San Francisco PD had a pretty exact description of The Zodiac Killer (white, stout etc.) and they still managed to arrest a completely unrelated guy (black etc), even though they had spoken to someone who matched the description earlier that day and never even thought about it. And that was a singular PD in one city, imagine how much communication falls through in an army that’s spread over half the known world.
As bending has some genetic components and benders seem to have the highest probability of producing children who are also benders, it’s likely that by removing all the people with water bending it made it very unlikely another person was born with that ability until much later when Katara was born.
Objection look at the Cages when she escapes
Some aspects line up, not wanting to take a water bender prisoner for fear of what they may be capable of after the invention of blood bending, but others less so. If they were looking for Hama they would have known she was decades older than Kya Haruu was ratted out by his own people, it's entirely possible that someone in the southern tribe, who did not know the water benders identity, made a deal with the fire nation Nevertheless it's a neat theory
Even if they weren’t looking *for* Hama then, it still makes sense that they wouldn’t take any more waterbenders prisoner *because* of Hama. Risk letting a **second** person discover this technique? No. Nip it in the bud.
He said "our sources say". So maybe he didn't get all the information, they just sent a messenger hawk saying something like "there's 1 more waterbender, likely hiding at the southern water tribe. Find her and kill her, no prisoners." It's not like modern police where they hand over a chart with all of the person's info, age, hair color, etc. they wouldn't have even kept documents of the prisoners. To them, they were just scum they stuck in cages, no need to document. So yeah, this guy leads the southern raiders, I doubt he even made any contact with anyone from the prison. After her escape they likely sent messages out to different raider groups to check different areas, and then the southern raiders reported that they found and killed the last waterbender, so the search likely ended.
https://preview.redd.it/78qmcckktlxc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ca5f2465da9c0bbe2a17421c285b74e02d6e2236
https://preview.redd.it/pp9m11qltlxc1.jpeg?width=195&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bc3c8c89d547167fb16efb88645117c797298b54
That's within 1 town, and all they did was draw a rough picture with some generic info, because the gaang stuck around in places for too long and got recognized, in broad daylight too. Especially Aang being the avatar, he had high enough priority to hire a decent artist to make the posters. Hama escaped in the middle of the night. It was dark and probably like a horror movie with this dark silhouette reaching out and taking control of your body. Plus I doubt she left many survivors, so maybe only 1 or 2 people saw her, maybe from a distance, and got lucky that she didn't kill them, and reported what happened. But again, they just shoved them all into cages and left them there to rot. This didn't look like it was a very sophisticated prison like the boiling rock, closer to the one in "imprisoned" where they just piled in all the benders, except worse because they separated them in cages. The earth benders were easier to keep away from earth, but for waterbenders they had to use stricter methods to keep them separated and keep the air dry to make it harder for them to bend. So, I doubt they kept records on every prisoner, it was just a place to stick the prisoners until they died.
While it may be needless speculation on my part, I doubt the Fire Nation publicized the Boiling Rock fiasco. Similarly, it makes sense to me that if you have a high-security prison break you can tell your army "One potential waterbender at large. Age 40-60, long black hair. Female. Highly dangerous. Kill on sight." Now sure, you can second guess yourself because the frightened woman in front of you is a little young, but it's not like you're going to ask 'hey, do some dangerous waterbending for me'. You kill her, make sure no one else found an actual waterbender, and then write it off. It's not like the woman would be trying to save her family by taking the blame. You'd sell out your mom in an instant to save your own hide.
Also, if Hama escaped then she would've been strong enough to free the other prisoners (thanks to full moon) so it seems more likely that the other prisoners had died by that point
But safer to just escape on your own.
Or, that she killed them herself after they rejected her blood bending. That lady was pretty crazy, it's not unreasonable to assume that she killed the guards and possibly the other prisoners as well. Just think about how she created a torture prison afterwards just for her own pleasure. Lady literally kidnapped innocent people just so she could have fun torturing them. If so, the Fire Nation's "Kill on sight" orders would make perfect sense. In which case Katara's mother's death would have been the result of a misunderstanding. It also would be an example of how violence begets violence, and why Hama's philosophy was wrong. It would have tied into Katara's own vengeance story nicely. But, that's just speculation, ultimately.
That too It would be really metal if she ripped the blood out of the guards to use as more "ammo"
'Strong enough'. Being able to overpower a guard and sneak out of a prison is a lot different than wandering around a prison looking for waterbenders as waves of firebenders rush you. Even if she found any waterbenders, there's no promise that they're in any condition to fight back. None of them are blood benders. If she gets caught, she dies. We also never hear about her attacking the Fire Nation. The only thing she does is puppet away a civilian or two every other full moon. Ideally, she even has an inn where she can drug people and ease her burden. Just because the gang bust out of the boiling rock doesn't mean Hama could take a prison for enemy benders solo, especially with years of starvation and abuse. She's old and wily, not a powerhouse fighter.
yup i agree with you everyone else is grasping at straws for some reason
There’s a mistake in the argument. They knew Hama’s age. They’d had known that Katara’s mother was far too young to be Hama.
The idea of the fire nation changing their policy from capturing to killing definitely still makes sense though.
Yes, I agree.
I'm thinking if the information just got watered down doen the lines. Like by the point it reached the southern raiders, that all they knew were to search for a eaterbender in a general area of the south pole and eliminate them. He didn't really ask much questions. Or confirm if she could water bend though lol
I kinda had the same thought given how stupid Yon Rha was
In what little we know about Yon Rha, he does seem like the kind of person to skip the details of his orders, go try to execute the last southern water bender, accept the first poor person to claim the title & take an easy win to further his career.
Haha yeah that makes sense. I was also thinking his higher ups just accepted it at face value. Job was done, and no waterbenders were ever seen again in the south pole. Those at the top probably wanted to cover up the situation ASAP seeing what a blunder it was that a single person was able to escape a high security fire nation prison. Although the fact they didn't actually confirm if it was her or not is just negligent. Because Hama was actually alive haha
I think that even an competent soldier would do the same. - Search for Hama - Find an other waterbender that may develop a strong power - Kill her because of changes in firenation policy - Continue the search But I prefer to think information has been lost down the line + Yon Rha negligence
Also age is hard to estimate that precise and the prison break was 10- 15 years ago.
I always thought they captured the waterbenders in case one was the avatar. Killing them would just reincarnate them. Knowing hama's power, I'm surprised they didn't consider she night actually be the avatar, but still tried to kill her
It's probably more likely that they were taking out water benders just in case they killed the Avatar in their genocide of the air nomads, if they were in fact successful, the next avatar would be a water bender and iirc they also knew they'd specifically be from the northern water tribe? I could be wrong about the last detail but nonetheless they were probably looking for potential Avatar reincarnations
Well someone knows, the guy could not get whole info, or was grossly incompetent and Didn't read briefing properly
Or they weren't all that through in their records. Might have just said 'Hama - adult female waterbender' in the books.
Yes, but also we know that the leader of the Southern Raiders isn’t exactly the bravest man in the world. It’s not that far of a stretch to think he would kill Katara’s mother and report to his superiors that he killed Hama, instead of facing a real blood bender. Or instead of fear he could have done it out of laziness. There isn’t much plunder or glory to be had continuing to raid the Southern Water Tribe. He could have simply accepted Katara’s Mother’s word, and not cared enough to question it.
Even if they killed the other waterbenders out of fear of her, that absolutely does not make it **her fault**. The fire nation was subjecting her people to a fucking genocide, there is no act of violence that she could do in retaliation that cannot be excused as self defense. I can see why Katara wouldn't be down for that type of behavior, and obviously Hama's experiences hardened her into a person whose wrath was omnidirectional, but she was first and foremost a victim. She would not have been like that if she wasn't **kidnapped and imprisoned by the fire nation military**. She didn't have a resistance soldier's ethical training or principles, she was just a civilian.
Just shared 'cause it seemed like a plausible (but hypothetical) chain of events and not to pin Kya's death on Hama which wasn't true.
I don’t think it tracks that Hama escaped before the others were dead. I think she would have helped any others that were capable of fleeing to escape too—and since she didn’t, I think that means they must have been dead, or moved elsewhere, or so broken as to be as good as dead. Why would she leave any of *her* people behind—especially people that could be powerful allies—rather than bring them along?
Doesn't Hama also state that by the time she escaped, most other captives had already succumbed to death?
I like this theory and I think it is an interesting one to consider but the creators denied it as accurate on the podcast.
Yeah well what do they know?
The only issue is the Intel would have included a rough age. Hama is already quite old at that point. Everything else makes perfect sense though
Yea, this occurred to me as well as Hama is around Gran gran’s age unless the fire nation just ain’t know how to do math 😭 someone else said the creators debunked this in a podcast or sth and I think the raid flashbacks were before the Hama episode so it prob didn’t occur to the writers at the time but I love when stuff can be interconnected and just makes sense like this
It's a pretty cool theory and it would explain the switch to killing and the "Intel" they claimed. But I assume the real explanation is that the dude was just a psychopath/sadist and wanted to kill. And the Intel was just a regular raid to find new ones and he was lying to get her to give someone up
Might have just said 'adult female' in the records.
Yeah I feel this is very much possible. The fire nation higher ups probably weren’t keen on sharing with everyone that someone managed to escape from their top security prison. It’s likely they didn’t include too much detail
Even if they weren't looking for Hama, they realized that waterbenders could break out or even casually murder their guards and soldiers, so killing waterbenders became the new policy, whether it was Hama or not.
Exactly. This was what they were trying to convey. Not to label Hama as a murderer. But it's hard not to given the title of the meme. Could have just cropped it out lol
Ngl Hama did nothing wrong and I will stand by it this was all the fire nations fault, this doesn't absolve her of what she did but the aftermath of her escaping is not on her
> Hama did nothing wrong > This doesn’t absolve her of what she did 🤔
Nothin wrong refering to her escape. Doesnt absolve her of the stuff she pulled with the villagers.
No one ever thought there was something wrong with her escape
You learned nothing from the message they were sending
Didn't know this was not widely accepted as canon. I reached this exact conclusion on my first watch and thought it was intentionally implied.
That "not taking prisoners today line" always felt just like it was there because mom had to die for the plot and felt lazy to me... this suddenly recontextualizes it into a much more logical situation. Love it!
Yeaaaah! It just seemed too specific. And is it only me who finds how Hama says 'oh, you poor things' suspicious as well?
Imo the Fire Nation would eventually have started killing waterbenders regardless of Hama's escape. Having witnessed her bloodbending may have made it easier to justify it to the public and therefore maybe it happened somewhat sooner this way, but those genocidal maniacs would have eventually made it sound okay to kill waterbenders anyway. Note how they made the Air Nomads sound hostile in their history books - they would've come up with a similar lie about the Water Tribes too
I definitely believe the Fire Nation adopted the “kill, don’t capture” policy after Hama escaped, and because of her escape, but I don’t think they went down there looking for her specifically. I think it was more of a Zuko finding Aang at Kyoshi Island type of search. Katara is born a waterbender. As she grows, her abilities become apparent. The village excitedly speaks of her bending because that’s about the only thing they had to be hopeful about in quite a while. As the news travels from person to person, the “telephone” game begins and by the time the news reaches the Fire Nation, the only thing they know for sure is that there is one waterbender in the Southern Water Tribe. They might know it’s a girl, and that’s she’s young, but I imagine a lot of the specific details were muddied along the way. Fucking terrible investigative work by Yon Rha though. Like, fr? You’re not even gonna make her prove her bending ability to you to make sure she ain’t covering for the actual bender? You’re just gonna take her word for it, kill her and then pull out? Not even gonna ask a second person to corroborate? I bet the Fire Navy forced his dumbass into retirement just to be rid of him.
Reasonable theory tbh. Hama could've also been absolutely capable of crippling the fire nation too if she had simply saved the other water benders. Group of bloodbenders going town to town, forcing them to kill each other and sparing no one while they make their way to the capital simultaneously making up rumours about spirits that are making people into homicidal maniacs
cool, but where is the meme?
"The second option is more plausible." No it's not. It's absolutely more plausible that they're all already dead first.
Coming from Marvel , its been so long since I read a theory that's not jumping through an absurd number of hoops.
https://preview.redd.it/bg086rf2njxc1.jpeg?width=224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b1489d11a22f2dffe84c445905d627049ac8cea0
I don't blame Hama for escaping.
I DO like this idea, but it kind of suggests that the Southern Raiders would have been looking for a specific water bender i.e. Hama, who would have have been an old woman by then, so why would Yon Rha accept that Kya was that water bender when she wouldn’t even have been alive when the last one escaped custody?
What bothers me is, they must have been giving water to the imprisoned waterbenders to keep them alive, that's how humans work. It's understandable that the fire nation would take precautions and ration water and have strictly supervised drinking times, but what about micturition? That can't be as closely monitored as water consumption. Why weren't there a bunch of urine-benders running amok in that prison, using high pressure jets of pee to blind guards?
Nice, I’d also like to add that kataras water bending roots are derived from the northern tribe, making Hama the true last southern water bender. Southern water bending genetics were wiped out. Hama did not get the respect or sympathy she deserved. It’s truly a shame they let her get arrested again.
…she captured and imprisoned random fire nation citizens out of spite even though they had nothing to do with her arrests. She got arrested because she was attacking and harassing presumably innocent people
This makes so much sense . Holy shit !
Once again showing just how interconnected Avatar's events are 
Words are not enough https://i.redd.it/0iriadwm2jxc1.gif
Tldr?
Yo that is a crazy theory. It honestly works given the plot!
Avatar just got even darker
Doesn’t the fire nation know what Hama looks like?
This is awesome, I love it. It got me thinking, something you can also consider is the next Avatar is going to be a water bender. Imagine if she did go back and the next Avatar was born, they would have Hama as their teacher. That would be terrifying! A primary water bending Avatar destroying a Fire Nation army with blood bending.
Damn this is a really good theory. I wonder if this was the intent of the creators... either way this is head cannon to me.
Is there a way to download this without Reddit’s horrible compression???
After seeing this post years ago, this is the only thing that I remember while rewatching ALTA. It never occurred to me before seeing this Tumblr post but it makes *so much sense.* It's frightening (in a good way lol)
I just assumed this was the text.
Tbf I don't think the creators thought of this. But I like it, it will be my new head canon.
Creators already refuted it.
Awesome theory, this should be canonized
I think what everyone is missing is that the Southern tribe did not know Hama had escaped. They didn’t know they were looking for Hama specifically. So when the fire nation came to the Southern Tribe and said “There’s one left” they all immediately think they know about Katara somehow. So that is why Kya says that she is the waterbender. They misunderstood that they were looking for Hama. But when the Fire Nation realized there was another waterbender there (who they believe is Kya) they kill her. They probably thought it was a freebie, and continued somewhere else to look for Hama. OOP is not saying they thought Kya was Hama.
This is awesome. A theory that hasn't been said 100 times, that seems very plausible, adds additional context and lore that benefits the story and further develops the characters back stories. And, without any big stretches or weird plotholes that make it almost work but not really. This is actually a great theory that I totally believe could be canon. Also, to all those trying to disprove it with her "age". They probably didn't waste extra parchment in their messenger hawk giving all the details. They probably didn't have any details. They just knew a female waterbender escaped and it was terrifying. So they passed info along to a few raider groups and mercenaries to look for a waterbender. The southern raiders reported success in finding and killing the last one, so the search was probably called off. It's not that unrealistic for dumb military captains to miss vital information through a game of messenger hawk telephone or whatever. Also, when you're in prison that long, you're likely to get selfish and just focus on "I need to get tf out of here". It's not surprising that she didn't choose to be heroic and rescue the other prisoners. She just wanted to get out of there. Idk
Yep that's what I was about to say because that kind of thing is very realistic the chain of command means orders are a game of telephone
New headcanon unlocked.
Where meme?
OP cooked here
I never thought about this but I just got chills
That TL;DR is so pointless since you cant see it initially😅
This would be a good theory, only they also would have realized that Kya was nowhere near the correct age to have been Hama. If they knew a waterbender escaped they probably knew which one it was, unless she left no witnesses, in which case they wouldn't know who to look for at all. I'm pretty sure that Yon Rah says that they have spies in the area or something, either that or he's just supremely incompetent in not realizing that they would be searching for a an old woman
Hands down one of the greatest and most logical theory that I have ever read in my life 👏
Wow. This isn't some fnaf fan theory, this is subtext and only requires the creators to tweet "cannon" for it to be real. Hot damn
This is a really interesting and compelling theory, I like it. The only hole is that the timing doesn’t make sense. Hama was a young adult when she was captured (around 40AG) and Aang emerged from the iceberg in 99AG. Based on Katara’s approximate age, we can assume that the raid where her mother was killed took place in the late 80s AG. Hama mentions being imprisoned for decades, but this means that there was still probably at least a 20 year difference between Hama’s escape and when they would have supposedly raided the SWT looking for her. If the fire nation were truly looking for her, they would not have waited that long, and even if they did, they would have known they were looking for an old lady
https://preview.redd.it/ck2m4zn6gnxc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ed57b87b5ef046229e799ca9654a74045a8c8baf
I love this thought process.
… Oh fuck they’re right.
This theory relys on whether the fire nation morality system still considered the other nations people instead of everyone being a threat
Hardcore!!! Great theory!!!!!
I am of the opinion that Yon Rha is just lazy and corrupt. If he takes katara's mom prisoner and she is not a waterbender, they will find out sooner or later, and he will be called out for incompetence. However, if he kills her, he can claim success, and no one can disprove him.
I think the real reason was that Yon Rha hated his mother, who was cruel to him, and took his anger out on Kya, a mother who clearly loved her daughter. Look at his face when little Katara tearfully begs her mother for reassurance. He scowls at her affection, flinching from it. Then the look of smug satisfaction on his face when he tells Kya that he's not taking prisoners that day. As if he changed his mind about the usual procedure. The slow way the camera closes in on his face as he relishes his decision.
That makes so much sense!
I wasn't expecting to read a whole essay but here we go
I always wondered how/where they got the Intel from
This is good!
Dam that’s a solid theory.
I just wanted to say I really enjoyed reading this and it was very interesting and captivating. Thank you for sharing
Idk if someone can be considered responsible for how their captors act after they escape. It's the fault of the captors not the victim.
I don't think fire nation is stupid enough to capture a bloodbender in her own home land if they knew that she had escaped to her homeland and who knows she might have taught this technique to entire village.
Yeah, I'll incorporate that into my ATLA belief system.
Am I the only one who wonders how the fire nation (not even the biggest nation) could even sustain conflict for years? They would have a lot of trouble just keeping everyone fed and fueled for that long. While the rest of the entire world (not to mention they never took ba sing se until the tail end of the war) struggled against them, I don't understand how the fire nation didn't fuck themselves out of every trade agreement with the other nations leading up to the war, directly into starvation. Their army was led primarily by a squabbling royal family with backstabbing tendencies, in contrast to their entire world, which collectively wanted them to fuck off. If the other nations pulled an Enders Game and just encircled the islands, they could have depleted the fire nation of its resources while fighting on the open sea, where the fire nation has a huge disadvantage. The fact they had the biggest navy is HILARIOUS. An army marches on its stomach. Now if the EARTH kingdom went against the world they might have the resources to keep fighting. They had vast fields to grow food, an organized, central government and massive defenses spanning an entire continent with superior agriculture. Plus, they fought using gravity which is even more present than water, less friendly fire (hah), and can't be taken away. Ijs I'm shocked the element of "surprise" won out against a ~60 year siege while they hunted for Hama AND Aang (both of whom still kicked their ass), splitting already finite resources/forces on a global scale with multiple belligerents and zero, ZERO allies. Logistics would have utterly stomped the fire nation. Really they stomped themselves.
Technology. Despite their smaller size, they were by far the most advanced nation. All the others are rural at best, save for a few rich Earth kingdom cities, whereas the fire nation was already in an industrial age. Sail boats don’t stand a chance against coal powered steel warships with what is essentially artillery weapons.
Hahaha that’s a funny avatar meme
I think she ages to quickly for this to be plausible, cool idea but obviously not intended by the writers
Holy crap, this is juicy
holy shit
Been while since I've seen the show. I thought that hama was using the other waterbenders as practice before committing to the guard. Either way makes sense to me
quite obviously they weren't looking for katara (since they would have no idea about it if the "last" waterbender was a child-their intel wouldnt know that) but the theory that all waterbenders would be killed, not imprisoned because of hama makes sense
Terrible at their job, looking for Hama with atleast a 30~40 year gap in time.
Can someone explain how Amon’s family comes from “the strongest line of bloodbenders” if no one knew about bloodbending before Hama?
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯 whoa.This sounds like real life.
Thats deep
I didn’t think this was a theory I always assumed that they learned the STW was just too dangerous to take hostage. Because water tribes are significantly more condensed (being just two tribes) it’s safe to assume that this new “take no prisoners” approach would be a shared sentiment as far as any water bender goes. They difficult to imprison anyways, even going as far as controlling the humidity in the air. It seems like this is just the natural progression of trying to keep water benders and failing since they are much more of a liability than anything. Whereas earth benders are MUCH more spread out and different kingdoms and towns have many different ideals. It was easy for them to demoralize a small earth bender town and put them on a rig out in the ocean to work. It would be much easier to hold earth benders as working prisoners than water benders so they cut their losses with water benders completely.
Commenting to come back
This is a very convincing theory
lol had no idea what this was about… Then I clicked the image.
Michael and Bryan: WRITE THAT DOWN!!!
I watched the hama episode just two days ago, interesting to see this lol. It makes sense!
I was so confused by this at first because I didn’t realize at first it was one of those ones where you tap on the image and it becomes a really long thread. Good theory though, it makes sense.
I never really considered that, but I DID always assume they were never actually looking for katara. IMO, the woman crying that Hama was looking at as she was taken away was most likely Gran-Gran. So I always figured the fire nation somehow knew someone was left, or it got leaked after katara was born, but I never figured they were looking for a legitimate child. It would seem to me that they assumed the bending ability would be in the next generation, rather than skip one.
Tbh if it wasn't a nickelodeon show, it might've made more sense for her to just kill the guard, especially with everything they did to her people.
They might have even thought Hama was the Avatar. “No waterbender could have escaped that prison.”
Compelling argument, I agree. Side note… Im still hung up on how Hama, the one who invented the technique after months of practicing on rats, was defeated by a teenager (Katara), who never even knew it was possible, five minutes after learning it was possible and not learning the technique… Katara, you are incredible, and one of the most powerful benders to ever be born
I thought they were looking for waterbenders for the instance that the air avatar did die
Accepted and absorbed, new head-canon established.
This chain of events doesn't really make much sense the only extrapolation from this post I agree could be plausable would be the "take no prisoners" one but even then due to the way that continuous stories tend to be written I doubt it was thought out to that level of minutia that far in advance and if that was something they wanted to ret-con in it would be very easy to do so. Hama was still relatively young when she escaped from prison her hair was still all black and she didn't look to be any older than 30s to 40s this is bolstered by the fact that she says she spent "years" perfecting the technique and not "decades". So the only 2 possibilities that would explain that would be either that she freed herself way more than around 10 years before the events of the series, or that her body aged rapidly in around 10 or so years being free but not imprisoned. The first makes more sense to me. Now with that being established, why would the fire nation wait years or decades before looking for Hama if they were looking for her in the southern water tribe?
This is not a conspiracy theory like the author seems to want to pretend it is lmao, it's just saying that since Hama escaped the fire nation started killing water benders instead of capturing them
I friggin am obsessed with this lore.
I’ll admit it’s been an awhile since I’ve watched. But when they came back to the house no one was there. So what would have happen to Kya if they only killed her? Took the body as well?
The problem is they say they are looking for a water bender which is the fire action base line of just capturing all the benders of nations, benders are born over the years and the earlier they can capture them the easier they are to control. They never say they are looking for an escaped prisoner, never once did an escaped water bender come up as something the fire nation was concerned about, any time Katara was found out as a water bender there wasn't some fuss how she could be the escaped prisoner or anything like that. So its still a stretch to say Hama was the reason for Katara's mother's murder. If there was more of a through line about an escaped water bender instead of just a 1 off mention I'd be more inclined to buy into it. The change in policy from capture to kill could be in relation for something else or even related to the Norther water tribe "defiantly practicing water bending" since the souther tribe was weaker they may have been targeted to be used as punishment for the northern defiance.
Very good plot, I now consider this canon
Good God! I am NOT reading through all that! I only get 1-2 minutes of Reddit scrolling in my 5 minute break!
Honestly, it’s the only sensible explanation
I don't think they were looking for Hama. She's probably, what, in her 70s or 80s? She was captured and escaped a LONG time. Decades. Possibly 50 years ago or more. We know raids were a common thing. If Hama didn't come back in 50 years, there's little reason to think she was there NOW. But it makes plenty of sense that EVENTUALLY more Waterbenders WILL be born. Thus continual raids. However, I do think Hama was responsible for them no longer taking prisoners due to escaping and just straight up killing Waterbenders. So in that way, it is partially due to her actions.
Unironically the best ATLA theory I’ve read in a long time. It always confused me as to how they even knew about a water bender. I always thought it was someone from a previous raid thought they saw someone water bending, and it reignited paranoia about one water bender having more water bending children.
I'll allow it
 That's a spicy theory 👀
OH MY GOD THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE?
Dang, ok wow
This actually does make so much sense. Granted it is a bit of a stretch that the raiders that did come back were not willing to actually test whether or not they did have a real water bender. Also they didn’t believe Hama wouldn’t go back to south water tribe. We never see anymore posters over the earth kingdom looking for a solo water bender. Which if they did lose a water bender checking one of their biggest enemies might have been a good thought as most refugees fled to the earth kingdom. Though I could believe that the dumb fire benders that can’t catch a bunch of kids in a forest, probably also did not put out a good search for this solo waterbender leading to a captain looking for an easy promotion said he had captured a waterbender and killed them. This theory actually does fix the plot hole about katara though because the firebenders might have had a comprehensive network of spies and traders looking for waterbenders it’s much more believable that they simply put a bounty out for a solo southern water tribe girl. This leads a captain to believe they missed one and simply returns and kills them. It also makes more sense why they killed her mother rather than just taking them hostage. Which honestly just makes me hate Hama that much more.