This statement sums up my disappointment with kataang in the end of season 3.
As you all probably know, Kataang is my OTP of OTPs. I seriously love this ship more than anything and that’s why I’m so pissed off about what happened to them in S3. I had to figure out a way to reconcile my love for the ship and the kitten treatment it got in the end. Every way I look at it, I’ve had to either insert additional scenes or erase scenes from canon. The way it’s presented on the show makes NO SENSE to me no matter how I look at it. And that’s just not good. You shouldn’t be forcing your audience to do brain surgery just for it to make sense. Headcanons should be fun extra stuff; they shouldn’t be required.
And what really pisses me off isn’t just that it’s bad writing. I can forgive writing mistakes cause hey, nothing’s perfect and sometimes you just overlook a few things. But the way this played out really made me lose some respect for Bryke. This was a pretty clear attempt to stall the Kataang relationship in order to please all the shippers, at the expense of the characters and their natural development. Which is such kitten cause you should at least have the integrity to stand by your choices and make it the best story possible, and not sacrifice the story to please fans (who are going to hate it anyways). It would explain why Kataang, the most prominent relationship of the series, was reduced to barely any interaction in the last episodes with no explanation, except in the very very last minute of the series when the ratings would’ve been counted already. Or why they altered a storyboard to backtrack on Katara’s feelings for Aang and make it seem more up in the air when that makes no sense for her character because we’ve already seen her get jealous at other girls and show interest in him.
1. First way to make sense of things is to simply ignore/erase Ember Island Players altogether and assume they had a separate conversation earlier about holding off on romance for now. This is my preferred method cause that balcony scene in EIP was so unnecessary and didn’t add anything to either character. Had the show actually explored Katara’s reasons for stalling and maybe given us some back story on why she wasn’t ready at that moment, then that would’ve been fine but since they didn’t bother with that, the whole scene should’ve been deleted and left on the cutting room floor. It really makes no sense at all that Katara, the most nurturing and sweet person on the show, who worries over Aang’s well-being constantly (or at least she did before her OOC turn), who wants him to talk out his issues with her even when he doesn’t feel like it, would simply leave Aang in a dust of uncertainty right before he’s about to go face his potential death. It just doesn’t compute.
2. The most popular way this is dealt with in fan fiction is to make it all about how Katara’s afraid of losing Aang. I have a few problems with this still and it also requires adding extra scenes to canon in which she explains this. First of all, if this was the reason, I’m pretty sure Katara would’ve just told Aang right away and then they’d talk it out and come to a mutual understanding. It’s OOC for Katara to be cryptic to him. That’s not really who she is, she’s someone who speaks her mind and wears her heart on her sleeve. We saw that from the way she reacted when Aang was struck with lightning (even in the lost advestures comics, she is constantly in anguish over him) and then when he ran away. Katara does not hide these things from anyone. If she suddenly developed this new defense mechanism, then the audience deserves to see that and not just have it be an assumption. There is that scene in the comics but that was still incredibly vague and didn’t give any real answers. At least it emphasized a little more that Katara wanted Aang to focus on the firelord, but doesn’t say much about her own feelings for him.
3. The way it’s presented on the show as it is, to me, only mildly works with the interpretation that there is now a serious rift in Kataang’s relationship and that Katara’s feelings for Aang are actually in question now (even if that’s inconsistent with her behavior from the first half of S3) that would require a much longer time to repair than just a kiss on a balcony. There are some fan fics that go this route and put a longer time gap between the end of the show and when Kataang finally gets together (years even). But looking at their behavior towards each other in the last episodes, this is really the only interpretation that works without having to add a bunch of missing scenes. They basically ignore each other, fight a little and then pretend they don’t exist to each other and are barely even friends. Look at Katara’s reaction to Aang’s disappearance - it’s basically nothing. She reacts like someone who needs to find the Avatar, not someone whose best friend is gone. She continues to make jokes and laugh even, not really thinking much about the fact that Aang was effectively wiped off the map according to Jun. Compare that to how she reacts in The Awakening when she literally runs out in tears and has a total breakdown when she thinks Aang is going to face the firelord alone. And Aang’s fight with the group about killing the firelord, she has no reaction at all to Zuko being a kitten about it or the others laughing and is very easily convinced not to follow Aang. Another inconsistency given the way Katara used to constantly try to talk out problems with Aang and is always understanding of all the pressure put on him.. and in turn, Aang doesn’t seem to care either.
Hence why I think all this points to Aang and Katara drifting away from each other towards the end. Their relationship is so fundamentally different from the past two and a half seasons. They act more like casual friends who just met and who, in all honesty, don’t even get along very well. There isn’t even a reunion scene; it’s like they don’t even exist to each other. There was more love in Aang/Sokka’s reunion when Sokka is totally fanboying cause that was so consistent of their established friendship. I mean, Katara/Zuko get a big touching moment for the finale (supposedly the pairing that Bryke hates yet still felt the need to dole out a lot of fanservice). Every other relationship gets at least some significant interaction, except Kataang. If you take out the last minute of the show, it would actually make sense because Kataang getting together at this stage really doesn’t work. They don’t seem to care about each other anymore, they barely even think of each other’s well-being, and there’s still that huge shadow of Katara’s rejection. That’s not a good start to a new relationship - there’s no sense of trust between them at this point, there’s no closeness, and it’s a shadow of their former dynamic. This is assuming you don’t have an elaborate headcanon that fills in lots of extra scenes, but the way it is on the show.
And I think that would’ve been.. okay had the show gone this route instead of just tacking on a kiss at the very end with no conversation between them. It’s like trying to fix a bullet wound with a band-aid. Them making out into the sunset doesn’t address this rift between them. What’s going to happen when they have a fight? Of course Aang will start to doubt Katara’s feelings for him because her change in tune was so random. It actually would’ve make more sense to have them drift away from each other for some time and then bring them back together with the correct development.
All in all, the last half of S3 is riddled with problems and the Kataang development is a BIG one. You took a relationship that developed beautifully for 2 and ½ seasons, that had been established as an extremely close bond with mutual affection involved and just stomped all over it in the last episodes. The balcony kiss is a beautiful scene but it never fulfills the potential of this pairing because of how poorly things were handled leading up to it. I wish when I watched the kiss that I thought of their scenes in The Desert of when Katara brought Aang back to life or their dance in The Headband but unfortunately, it’s muddled by all this unnecessary drama from Ember Island Players and the complete lack of interaction in the finale.
It’s still a beautiful ship and I will ship it until the end of time, but the fact that it could’ve been so much better just pisses me off because all these problems were completely avoidable and could’ve been fixed so easily. It’s such a shame that an almost perfect ship was dragged through the mud just so they wouldn’t lose viewers for the finale.