Zuko (Avatar)

Zuko is a character from the Avatar - The Last Airbender animated series.

Zuko is a firebending master, born as a prince in the Fire Nation Royal Family, who held the title of Fire Lord from 100 AG to 167 AG. Originally the primary enemy of Team Avatar, Zuko devoted three years to trying to capture the long-lost Avatar to end his banishment and regain his honor as Crown Prince of the Fire Nation. He is recognizable by the distinctive scar on the left side of his face, which was given to him by his father, Fire Lord Ozai, shortly before his banishment as a result of an incident in which he unintentionally disrespected his father by speaking out of turn and refusing to duel him.

With support from his paternal uncle, General Iroh, and after much internal struggle and turmoil, Zuko rejected Ozai and his model of the Fire Nation. He instead joined the Avatar's group to become Aang's lifelong friend and firebending mentor and was determined to end the war and restore both his and the Fire Nation's honor. While Aang defeated Ozai, Zuko, with the help of Katara, defeated his younger sister Princess Azula and took his place as Fire Lord, declaring the end of the Hundred Year War and the start of an era of love and peace.

At the beginning of his reign, Zuko had to overcome great difficulties and solve several crises, especially those caused by the Harmony Restoration Movement and the New Ozai Society. Nevertheless, he succeeded in maintaining peace and eventually became one of the founders of the United Republic of Nations. Zuko stepped down from his position as Fire Lord in 167 AG and became an ambassador of peace, relinquishing the throne to his daughter, Izumi.

When he learned in two weeks after Harmonic Convergence in 171 AG that the Red Lotus had escaped their prisons, Zuko once again set out to help the Avatar to protect the world.

Personality
Zuko starts off as having the expected attitude of a firebender; he is a violent, impatient and destructive individual.

However, there are times where even fellow stereotypical firebenders see him as being different, be it for better or worse.

For the better, Zuko seems to have a higher conscience and can tell the difference from right and wrong at a young age, something elder firebenders were incapable of doing, which is exactly what earned Zuko good trust, as well as much woe in his life.

He can also be very passive compared to others, taking it when an entire city that originally adored him, turned on him completely after realizing he was a firebender.

For the worse, Zuko is quite rude and argumentative, his words often offend or even hurt others. Zuko is also very impulsive and headstrong, so he has a tendency to not think things through, as shown many time in the series, ranging from before when he volunteered to show a firebending move to his grandfather without even mastering the move, or during the series, when he finally managed to kidnap Aang, but had no place to take him after being trapped in a blizzard.

After his revelation to where he defected over to Aang's side he learns to be much more calmer and relaxed, and is able to serve as Aang's firebending teacher and while he wanted Aang to kill his father to end his tyranny, he is just as satisfied when Aang strips Ozai of his firebending power in the end.

Firebending
Zuko is a very skilled firebender who controls his fire quite well, though not at the same level as his gifted sister, Azula, who can create both blue fire and lightning.

When challenged to Agni Kai by Admiral Zhao, Zuko was able to beat him fairly easily, thanks to all his training. Zuko's fire was fueled by rage and anger, which he had plenty of, but when he redeemed himself and joined Team Avatar, his rage lowered and his firebending weakened. It was later when he realized that Firebending was not fueled by anger, but determination, where his fire bending grew once again due to his determination to take his spot at the throne and help Aang defeat his father.

Lightning Redirection
Zuko attempted to learn lightning bending from Iroh after his and Iroh's lives were threatened by Azula. He failed to master it at every attempt, however, as he had not faced his "inner turmoil", as a lightning bender must know precisely what they truly want, and Zuko had always been borderline between his father's expectations and his own free will. When he finally seemed to decide on free will, Zuko took a shocking turn back into his father's expectations when he was given the ultimate chance to kill the avatar.

In the end, Zuko never learned how to bend lightning. Instead, Iroh taught him how to absorb and redirect lightning, something neither Azula nor Ozai was knowledgeable of. He later employed this technique against his father (when he left the Nation) and Azula (to protect Katara). In the latter engagement, Zuko redirected the blast in an improper stance, as he had jumped into the lightning's path, and so failed to redirect it completely and resulted in serious injury. Though he seems to have overcome his inner turmoil, he does not create lightning for the remainder of the series.

Physical Abilities
In addition to his firebending, Zuko is highly skilled in unarmed combat, able to break apart oncoming spears with his hands and legs, and disarm, subdue or defeat opponents. He is also equally masterful with his dual dao blades, the latter skill he picked up after being trained by the sword master Piandao.

He would use these two skills as his primary tactics whenever he was in his Blue Spirit disguise, unable to firebend, or when he needed to fight but also needed to conceal his firebending. He was able to defeat multiple foes using only his swords.

He also dueled evenly with Jet and his dual hook swords until the fight was broken up by the Dai Li and Jet was arrested. Zuko defeated several Earth Kingdom soldiers with his Dao swords and minimum effort, only resorting to firebending when faced with a powerful earthbender; even then he was able to hold off the earthbender's attacks for several moments with only his blades. His skill was such that his father, Fire Lord Ozai, opted not to face him during an eclipse when neither of them could firebend.

Zuko is very physically capable, able to almost nonchalantly launch a person with a single hand and smash through iron shackles with a single kick. He is also quite fast and agile, able to perform great acrobatic feats, such as running across walls, doing mid-air twirls, scaling vertical faces with great efficiency and climbing speed, and jumping large distances to avoid enemy attacks with noticeable agility and free-running skills.

Zuko is skilled at infiltration and stealth; able to sneak into heavily-defended fortresses and conceal himself effectively for long periods of time. All of these skills would serve him while he was disguised as the Blue Spirit.

Zuko was also a skilled tracker, able to track the airborne Avatar all around the world, something that his friends later acknowledged in hopes of finding Aang when he disappeared.

While not as naturally adept at strategy and academics as his sister, Zuko is quite intelligent. Throughout the series, he demonstrated himself to be a skilled strategist, able to exploit any situation to his advantage. Zuko used his ship's damages as a smokescreen to conceal his movements from Zhao. He is also able to form alliances with people with special skills, such as June, and use them to his advantage.

However, Zuko tended to have a hot-headed nature that caused him to never fully think his actions through. For example, he was able to his exploit advantages in the Northern Water Tribe, and get into the Spirit Oasis to capture Aang, but he did not figure a way back out ahead of time which caused him to almost freeze to death. Zuko began to think things out more toward the end of the series, and he started to plan things out and think ahead to solve problems more often.

When he and Aang needed to get in a specific room in the Sun Warrior ruins, Zuko was able to outsmart the Celestial Calendar, as it would only allow the room to open during a solstice. Zuko is also a gifted tsungi horn player, although it is clear that it is not his favorite instrument.

Trivia

 * At Emerald City ComiCon 2017, Gene Luen Yang implied that Zuko and Mai rekindled their relationship three years after their break-up in The Promise Part Three.
 * Zuko's hair is black in all of his appearances in Book One: Water, differing from the dark brown used throughout the rest of the franchise.
 * Zuko's first major act as Fire Lord was to send out search parties for his mother.
 * Zuko is the first character to have an entire episode, "Zuko Alone", completely to himself with no other main characters appearing except in flashbacks, the second being Korra in the Book Four episode "Korra Alone".
 * Zuko's name was listed on a Fire Nation wanted poster, which translates as "ancestors robber". Later, in "The Tales of Ba Sing Se", his name was written on his segment's title card, which is the phonetic transcription based on the official guide for foreign names, and which can also be translated as "awaken rank". In The Search Part One however, when Ursa writes a letter to Ikem, she writes Zuko's name meaning "vertical high" with the second character being a variant.
 * The name Zuko is phonetically similar to suko, a Cebuano word meaning "angry". This derivation corresponds to Zuko's ill-tempered personality portrayed in all three books.
 * According to Iroh, Zuko is a bad tea maker, though he seemed to have gotten better by the time of "The Boiling Rock, Part 1", as he was seen serving tea to the members of Team Avatar, and they drank it without any apparent disgust.
 * Zuko successfully used his uncle's lightning redirection technique twice, against his father and his sister.
 * Zuko had above average abilities that helped him survive certain situations. In "The Waterbending Master" with Avatar Extras bonus commentary, when the pirates infiltrated Zuko's ship, one of the commentary bubbles said that Zuko had above average hearing abilities, waking up when he heard one of the pirates opening a rusty door. In "The Siege of the North, Part 1" with Avatar Extras bonus commentary, when swimming through the underwater tunnels one of the commentary bubbles said that Zuko can hold his breath for an unusually long amount of time. In addition, it is stated by Uncle Iroh in "The Avatar State" that they had survived for three weeks without food or water.
 * In the pilot episode, it is shown that Zuko was originally supposed to have a pet hawk, but it did not make it into the show. A pet hawk did make it into the show as Hawky, Sokka's pet, though it only appeared for one episode.
 * Zuko took part in all three Agni Kais shown in the series: the first between him and Ozai, the second between him and Zhao, and the third between him and Azula.
 * According to the Avatar Extras bonus in "The Cave of Two Lovers", Zuko's story throughout the series is similar to that of the Buddha.
 * Zuko is the only person from the Fire Nation known to use dao swords to firebend.
 * According to the Avatar Extras for "The Waterbending Master", Zuko was gifted in playing the tsungi horn, in contrast to Aang, who was terrible at it.
 * Zuko was shown to cry five times, in "The Storm", "Zuko Alone", "Bitter Work", "The Day of Black Sun, Part Two: The Eclipse", and finally, in "Sozin's Comet: Part 2, The Old Masters".
 * Zuko was the first of only two characters to bleed on the series. He bled for the first time in "The Avatar State" when Azula scratched his forehead with her nails. The second character to bleed was Appa in "Appa's Lost Days".
 * According to the Avatar Extras for "The Avatar Returns", Zuko was supposed to be Katara's love interest, though Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko have both stated that they never intended to make that relationship happen.
 * Throughout Book Two: Earth, Zuko visibly started losing muscle, as he was forced to live off the land of the Earth Kingdom as a refugee. This changed in Book Three: Fire, when he was reaffirmed as a prince; as seen in "The Beach" and "The Ember Island Players", his body was much fitter than it was in Book Two.
 * Taking the throne at the age of sixteen years, Zuko is the youngest known Fire Lord.
 * Additionally, he is the second youngest known person to become the ruler of a state, the first being Earth King Kuei.
 * Zuko is the first of two known rulers in the Avatar franchise to willingly abdicate his throne, the other being Earth King Wu.
 * He is also the second known Fire Lord, after his father, not to have died prior to their successor taking the throne.
 * Zuko's voice actor, Dante Basco, also voiced General Iroh, Zuko's grandson.
 * Zuko is the second of three characters to have joined a Team Avatar and to have a father who is antagonistic toward them and their allies. The other two are Toph Beifong and Asami Sato.
 * There are many parallels between Zuko and Asami Sato.
 * Both were born to upper-class families and lived under the influence of their ambitious fathers.
 * Both characters had experienced the loss of at least one family member, a loss that eventually turned their respective fathers into dangerous enemies for the Avatar: the loss of Lu Ten as Iroh's possible successor gave Ozai a lust for the power and authority of being a Fire Lord, while the loss of Asami's mother caused Hiroshi Sato to develop a hatred for benders and join the Equalists.
 * Zuko also lost his mother, and like Asami after him, was forced to live under his father's manipulative influence.
 * Both characters eventually spoke out against their fathers after realizing that their only remaining parents had little regard for righteousness and could no longer feel actual affection toward anyone.
 * Their reactions to this acknowledgment were also similar, as both Zuko and Asami had to make a choice between joining the Avatar to stop their fathers or serving their fathers, and both characters made the former choice, turning against their parents with quick lightning-based attacks.
 * Lastly, both characters were temporarily reduced to greater poverty and isolation as a result of following their beliefs.
 * Both Ozai and Hiroshi were imprisoned for their actions.
 * Although the Blue Spirit was Zuko's disguise, the character was depicted as a different person altogether in the play The Boy in the Iceberg and the non-canon short "School Time Shipping".
 * The Blue Spirit mask used by Zuko was among the collection of masks from the play Love amongst the Dragons that Ursa kept hidden in her quarters behind a painting of her and Ozai.
 * Zuko has a close relationship with his grandson, General Iroh.
 * In his old age, Zuko holds the title of "Lord".
 * Zuko is the first character in the entire Avatar universe known to have been scarred by a close relative, the second being Lin Beifong in The Legend of Korra. However, he was scarred deliberately, whereas Lin accidentally.
 * Zuko is the last surviving male member of the original Team Avatar.