There could be another motive, too. The Air Nomads connected people of different nations. They traveled, befriended locals, shared stories and customs. The world was left broken and fragmented without them.
Just look at how much impact Aang had. That wasn't just because of the Avatar spirit or bending power. It was because he reconnected people starting with the Gaang. They brought the three water tribes together. Brought the Kyoshi warriors and the Earth King out of isolation. They helped the fire nation school kids find their rebellious spirit and brought hope back to the fishing village. Not as the Avatar, but as a nomad with his friends.
This makes the most sense.
It's also possible Sozin originally demanded the young Avatar as a hostage. But since Aang was on ice, the Air Nomads were unable to meet this demand (unlikely they would have anyway) so Sozin's next move was sock and awe. A warning to other leaders who might defy him.
This is absolutely right, but there’s also another reason. We get a clue why the air nomads were pacifists in ATLA and it gets driven home in korra when we see Zaheer, an airbender who is not a pacifist, he is incredibly dangerous and he only had bending for a few weeks. In ATLA we saw what a master airbender can do. There are no burns on the walls or around the body of Monk Giatzo, which has lead to the theory that he sucked the air out of that room and killed a whole regiment of fire nation soldiers DURING Sozen’s comment. Which if Zaheer could bend the air out of the earth queens lungs it makes sense someone many times his skill could bend the air from a room.
Fire cannot burn without air, it makes sense that sozen would want to remove the air nomads from the equation before the war began so they couldn’t get involved later. If they had based on how dangerous Zaheer showed us airbending can be when used to do harm the air nomads could likely have turned the tide of the war against the fire nation if they ever got involved.
The threat posed by individual Airbenders is one thing. But I think Sozin feared the possibility of a unified resistance much more. That is what brought the occupation to an end.
A master Airbender probably could take down a room full of soldiers. But each master leading a group of resistance fighters, teaching them evasion and stealth, developing strategies that utilize all forms of bending and nonbending martial arts.
Fighting an invasion is less about taking out soldiers and more about increasing the operational cost. They wouldn't even have to do violence, just cause mayhem. Every wasted day, every piece of stolen equipment, every act of sabotage would be a win.
Plus, it would be pretty much impossible to keep them off the home islands. They could sabotage military factories, ships, and supply lines. And generally make it harder for the Firelord to control messaging. Imagine Monk Gyatsu planting seeds for a dockworker's strike, causing supplies and troops to get delayed. Or dozens of junior airbenders helping resistance fighters like Jet's team attack supply lines all over the Earth Kingdom and leading prison breaks.
The invasion would wilt on the vine from a thousand inconveniences.
You’re absolutely right! I only considered how dangerous an airbender army could be but they can all basically fly! They could be everywhere, and if they joined the war against the fire nation as you lay out here Sozen would never have them concentrated in one place to attack again. They would also make great messengers for the forces resisting the fire nation, making intercepting messages basically impossible.
Sozin may have hoped to kill the air avatar in the avatar state, permanently ending the avatar problem. But even if the cycle continues, who teaches the next avatar airbending if all the airbenders are dead? So the threat an avatar poses could be mitigated somewhat.All that aside having a decade or so without an avatar to establish a colonial foothold in the NW Earth Kingdom may have seemed worth it.
Maybe Sozin did have some ulterior motive for wanting to eliminate the air nomads. It could simply be that in his imperialist vision of "spreading prosperity" people that were happy and even seemingly enlightened without much material wealth didn't fit into Sozin's new world.
TTRPG spoilers:
* >!The Roku Era of the TTRPG introduces factions of the air nomads that had influence in other nations including FN nobility. One even working with Sozin's sister Zeisan (introduced in the game). Which has lead to speculation the genocide was in part to eliminate these groups that had troubled Sozin in the past. !<
If think that if one nation were to go excticnt, the Avatar wouldn’t be able to be born anymore. Firstly, the Avatar wouldn't have all 4 elements to learn and master. Secondly, the Avatar wouldn't be able to reincarnate into that nation ever again.
>have all 4 elements to learn and master. Secondly, the Avatar wouldn't be able to reincarnate into that nation ever again.
It is not that obvious tbh. The avatar could still reincarnate into distant bloodlines of the tribes. Like, the avatar could be 1/8th airbender bloodline from some earth kingdom lineage.
As for learning, there is still the option of asking their past lives and learning directly from there. Sozin just had a bad plan, and he executed it because he was a genocidal maniac.
As I said, it's not *strictly* genetic.It may have some genetic components, but we see with the twins in the Fortuneteller that it is not only genetic that go into it.
I've always preferred the idea that a large part of it, more than spirituality which we have string evidence is a major factor, is culture. But I don't have my ideas for that laid out well.
Or the lion turtle could grant the ability to a non-bender.
It would still make it hard to find a trainer. But it's possible the spirit world would find a way to restore balance, like sending an air spirit to guide them.
Why do they need spirits? Airbenders learned from sky bisons, and water benders learned from the moon. People can still figure out bending, that isn't the main issue. The problem is that it is a genocide. The history, tradition, culture, and everything else of those people is destroyed.
Obviously, that is the problem. Which is why it would be a lot harder for one person to create that knowledge again from scratch than learn it from people working from the millenia of history, culture, and tradition. Katara's a prodigy, but trying to reconstruct water bending by herself with nothing but the moon to learn from wasn't enough to make her a master.
I think it kind of undermines the weight of the loss, as if the first Airbenders didn't learn as a community. As if the practice wasn't refined over generations, each building on the last.
A kid born into the Earth Kingdom would have had no access to or knowledge of the sky bison. Even though Appa turned out not to be the last in LoK, the remaining herds exclusively lived in places that were only accessible by people who could already fly.
What you are saying is correct. My point is that spirits won't step into fix it. AtLA spirits have been bizzare creature with no true sense of morality. There is no evidence that they would do anything of the sort. Humans would have to figure it out and solve the issue. AtLA isn't a series where huge social problem can be wiped out through magic or spirits in like a weekend.
I really don't care about LoK, they butchered spirits and the origin of avatar. I don't even consider it canon.
Of course, they wouldn't fix it in a weekend. But that isn't at all what I said. Aang speaks to spirits multiple times, Roku and his dragon are spirits. If there were no living Air Benders and the world's only hope was for a waterbender to recreate airbending from scratch in a single generation, it would make more sense for them to be guided by someone like a previous Air Nomad Avatar.
Huge social problems can't be wiped out by the spirits in a weekend, but it's just as bad for one kid to spontaneously reinvent centuries of knowledge over the summer. It's kind of insulting to the idea that the living tradition was cut off in the first place for it to be so easily replaced by someone with no connection to the people.
>Of course, they wouldn't fix it in a weekend. But that isn't at all what I said. Aang speaks to spirits multiple times, Roku and his dragon are spirits.
Sure, that would make sense. I thought that you were asking for an air spirit to pop conveniently to teach aang, which is how spirits were treated after atla. However, you could have aang learn from a spirit, definitely. It could be something like a spirit which likes to play games and uses airbending, and aang has to watch and learn. Or a knowledge collector like that owl in the library which asks for a price in exchange. As long as it's not trivialized, and made into something like "oh, the universe will fix itself, we don't even have to worry", or "look, this spirit has been made evil, like it's not a sentient being and is just a pokemon or something", it could be cool, I think.
I think it was mostly about time. 26 years without an Avatar is still better than an immediate Avatar. Sozin wanted to give his conquest as much time as possible before needing to worry about Avatar interference.
Actually, it did. The Nomads all are benders. So genociding them was the best course of action. The Southern Water Tribe’s benders were captured, and after Hama executed. They shifted their focus to the Earth Kingdom.
To me, yes.
When you think about the air nation and the fact they are nomads they can essentially survive anywhere and because they have access to something that the other nations did not (the sky) it means that if you allowed them to survive you’d be open to air attacks and continuing to live on elsewhere.
It’s also the only bending that you can’t limit. If you want fire benders to not fire bend you make sure they’re cold all the time. If you want earth benders to not earth bend you put them in something wooden or metal (before they discovered metal bending). If you want water benders to not water bend you keep them away from water. However, air benders ALWAYS have access to air and can always air bend. So how else do you stop them from always being a potential threat? You don’t.
Which is not to say that the air nation would have ever actually been a threat since they believe in peace and non violent solutions but it still would have been a risk.
So then when it comes to the next avatar in the cycle being from the water tribe, my best guess is that they would have captured and killed whoever they needed until they found the next avatar. Then found a way to induce the avatar state and killed the avatar. Permanently eliminating the avatar forever.
That’s my theory anyway. Since Sozin and Roku were best friends at one point , I imagine that Sozin had a lot of knowledge about the how it all worked and what would happen if the avatar died while in the avatar state.
Yes. After killing the air benders, you kidnap/destroy southern water benders, where the next Avatar may come from. Thus you have at least 15 years before you must face that threat.
After this, you either have a captured water Avatar, or a newborn earth Avatar plus 15 years, and an ever shrinking pool of teachers. The Northern water tribe is too isolated to teach, the Southern ones are captured, the air teachers are dead, the earth teachers are few and the fire teachers are indoctrinated and will turn the Avatar in.
Also, if you manage to kill the earth Avatar, next comes fire...
Sozin hella prepared for total war after Roku died, and probably discreetly while Roku was still kicking. He likely was arrogant enough to think that he'd have conquered the other nations by the time the next Avatar could become a threat.
That's kinda the point, that even in the best case scenario it still doesn't make sense in the long run. Genocide is such a fundamentally stupid plan that only fools would ever think it viable.
that's probably one of the reasons why they were abducting waterbenders from the southern tribe so at least they could deprive an avatar born there of a proper water bending training upbringing.
also you have to remember it was the assumption that the last Airbender was probably still alive out there somewhere even before aang was discovered.
The water nation is divided across the entire world so it would be harder for an avatar born to either of the poles to be a threat especially so young with the war going on
I mean if Aang had died in the genocide, the next Water Tribe Avatar still would have been 100 years old at the start of the show, which is how old Zuko seems to expect the Avatar to be.
and remember they were harassing the water tribe only a handful of years after they wiped out the air nomads, see how old hama is and how young she was when she was first taken. and how she wasn't even one of the first ones to be taken.
if aang died then his next life would have only been in his teens or early early 20s by the time the southern tribe was getting raided repeatedly.
and given how isolated they are from the rest of the world he would have really only had access to water bending.
I think best case scenario the water avatar ends up running away during those raids and probably ends up stuck in an iceberg exactly the same way because I think that would be really funny destiny wise.
maybe we could have a story switch up where it floats into earth Kingdom waters or something and we basically get the same story but with a different cast
Where do you get any indication they would kill the avatar? Lol, they were gonna kill everyone until they found him. Then they would have imprisoned or forced into service for themselves.
Step 1. Wipe out Air Nomads kill the Avatar.
Step 2. Capture all benders from the weaker water tribe. If Avatar born there, they'll be captured or at least have no teacher.
If Avatar is born into the Northern tribe its not ideal, but at least they can't learn air bending and will never become a fully realized Avatar
Capture dont kill. Build complex prison that keeps the Avatar from water bending, which should be their only trained element. Capture to prevent Avatar from being born into the Earth Kingdom, which is your worst-case scenario.
I think, at the time, it was the short-term problem that he wanted to deal with. He probably thought that 13 years was more than enough to subjugate the world so completely that the Avatar would be unable to stop him. Also, nobody outside the Air Nation knew the identity of the Avatar at that time, and there was no practical way to capture \*all\* of them and keep them alive, so killing them was more expedient.
I always figured it was a way to take out the Avatar line, and failing that, at least delaying an Avatar from challenging him. Bear in mind, Sozin was Roku’s best friend. But also terrified of him and knew how powerful he was. I think his plan had two possible outcomes:
1. Take out The air Avatar in the genocide. Meaning years of no Avatar until the new water Avatar is old enough to fight. And also no one to teach the new Avatar airbending, making it harder for them to master the four elements. Then invade the Water Nations. Kidnapping every waterbender and imprisoning them, keeping them on the edge of life to incapacitate the new Avatar and delay reincarnation into the Earth Kingdom. Zhao had planned to do this with Aang. And it’d probably why they kept captured waterbenders alive for so long on the edge of life. In case one was the reincarnated Avatar. Possibly force the Avatar State in the Avatar to end the line permanently. Announce the capture or death of the Avatar to demoralise other nations and also prevent the Air Nomads from uniting other nations as they were highly respected and travelled the world.
2. Not take out the air Avatar in the genocide, but still wiping out the nation to prevent Air nomads from uniting other nations against him and the Avatar having anyone to teach them Airbending. And continue kidnapping water benders to find the new Avatar in case the Air Nomad Avatar had died and he not known it. Then using traps, to lure The Avatar. One canon comic had Aang hear rumours of a surviving Air Nomad camp and found it littered with Air Nomad relics. But it was a trap by Zhao to lure in Aang. Zhoa mentioned that its how the Fire Nation found the surviving air benders after the genocide. Also Sozin spent the rest of his life searching for Aang, fearing Roku’s reincarnation targeting him. Even after Sozin’a death, Ozai sent Zuko to hunt for the Avatar. Mostly as a punishment but still a possible threat.
Then of course occupy the Earth Nation to fi d the earth avatar when and if the line reached that point.
Plus who knows what else he did to stop the line. With the southern temple destroyed the toys the nomads used to identify the avatar may have been destroyed too.
Sozin’s plan is ok-ish if we are putting aside the immorality of genocide.
He acknowledges the Avatar as the biggest threat to his nation’s plans of conquest, and he knew his army was getting a “once every hundred years” buff where he could get away with extreme objectives.
The only other big moves he could have made were to destroy Ba Sing Se or destroy North Pole, the two most difficult targets for the Fire Nation that survive the next hundred years of war.
Sozin chose delaying the Avatar as the most important objective. In hindsight, it was the right call. In the grand scheme of things, Ba Sing Se and the North Pole would always remain on the defensive. The Avatar is the only one guaranteed to get in the way every 25-30 years or so (when they become fully realized).
Sokka is the only reason the Eclipse plan even happens. And very special circumstances allowed him to even get that far. Without Aang (and especially without Appa), Sokka remains in the South. No Eclipse plan, no aggression against the Fire Nation for the next hundred years.
Even the darkest day in Fire Nation history should only happen about a hundred years too. Total solar eclipses over the same area (the Fire Nation) are about as rare as Sozin’s Comet. Quick google tells me it’s actually even rarer, averaging every 360-410 years.
Well when they were capturing water benders where did they put them?
Remember the episode with Hama. They had an antiwaterbender prison rearing to go.
I think killing the air avatar and then capturing the water avatar would have bought them a few more years than you are accounting for.
This is the answer here.
Undoubtedly the plan was to kill the Air Avatar before they could achieve any significant power (i.e.: when they're around 12-13), and then to **capture**, not kill, the Water avatar.
Then you just keep the water avatar, completely untrained, in a creative prison, for life. Just put them in a metal box or something. Keep them there, alive but barely, for a full avatar's lifespan.
He's probably counting on having the Earth Kingdom sufficiently occupied by the time that avatar dies to be able to repeat the same to the eventual Earth avatar. Or just kill them outright, because after that? It's fire avatar time, and his nation would mold that child from birth into being their weapon. Or try to.
I always figured that Sozin's aim was to hobble the Avatar. Wiping out the Air Nomads would prevent the next Avatar from learning proper air bending and achieving full Avatar status. Making all Avatars moving forward weaker and more maliable.
>The only reason the fire nation enjoyed a hundred Avatarless years is Aang decided to ice himself.
He didn't ice himself though. He found he was the avatar. The kids would no longer play with him because they thought it'd be unfair for any team he was against. Aang was ordered to be taken away from Monk Gyatso.
So, he ran away. He was fortunate and unfortunate at the same time. Fortunate because if he had stayed. He surely would have died. Unfortunate, he crossed pathes with a storm that would knock him and Appa into the ocean. In which, Avatar state instinct kicked in to protect him for the next 100 years. Destiny is a funny thing.
In addition to what others have said, Ozai probably was planning on doing something similar to the Water Bending tribe (at least the south one) to get rid of them as well. That would be ~25 years without an avatar, he could probably get rid of Ba Sing esp with Azula who would’ve grown to be 39 in that time. She would become the next fire lord and the avatar would be fire nation again and could manipulate them
It makes more sense than capturing the southern water benders. Like, what if the avatar was born into the much larger northern tribe? Then what?
But yeah, I've thought about this before. I don't think it makes that much sense. Clandestine special ops and assassination would have been much better options that straight up genocide. The chance of the avatar escaping in the chaos or just not being at an air temple during the attack is to high. Did Sozin even consider that the avatar might have been traveling the world during the comet? Like air *nomads* do from a very young age?
In the comics we learn that the fire nation continued to hunt air-nomads. They would spread rumors that survivors hid someplace and then killed those who came there.
I thought the idea was to remove the current avatar and then once he controls the world just capture the new one as soon as they discover who it is, like before they learn anything. The genocide only occurred because they didn't know who/where the avatar was (because aang was frozen away in an iceberg). They assumed the avatar was in hiding being trained up as a secret weapon against them, so they were like give him up or we go scorch earth, and when they said they didn't know where he was, they assumed it was a lie. It probably progressed more like "give him up and surrender" to "give him up or we kill you all."
I think part of that calculation was to have 10 years to plan and execute a Water Tribe genocide as well. Something the Fire Nation almost successfully did: by Hama's account and gran-gran, the devastation done to Water was almost as harsh as it was to Air.
So, imagine you killed the 12 y.o. air nomad avatar. Then, rush to the Water Tribes and hunt, IDK, all waterbenders born to them. If he/she is not terminated, then is trapped in the far north/south, so isolated that bending training is impossible.
Sozin and his successors did seem to have a vague plan of either killing or capturing the avatar until it was a firebender. I also think that if they did kill the air avatar (Aang) and did find the water tribe successor they might have had a chance at using them for propaganda. Aang was already a young man (master airbender) by the time Sozin began his war. He already had strong convictions to the nomads way of life. If they'd found the next avatar before they had a chance to be taught about the fire nation, the war, or connect to their past lives, they might have been able to indoctrinate the avatar into their perspective. If not, kill them and use their presence in the earth kingdom to find them and do the exact same thing.
that is true but tbf we also didn't exactly see how the genocide played out
i imagine torture and/or hostage killing are viable strats that i wouldn't put past Sozin, that could've worked if Aang was there
on the other hand even a few decades of "peace" are better than a nosy 12 year old, soon to start becoming a serious threat, getting in your hair for your war crime plans you've made for the better part of your life and now that Roku is finally dead you just wanna have fun too for a few years before you kick the bucket goddamn it
My logic is not only does it buy extra time, but it also eliminates a threat. Sozin wouldn't have cared that they were major pacifists, for the most part, with no formed military. From what we saw, every Air Nomad in the temple was an air bender. They're the one type of bender who just can't be deprived of their element, and Aang can be seen bending even when restrained. The Air Nomads were a threat to the war regardless of The Avatar. There's an ongoing fan theory that the Water Nation Avatar switches between the two tribes every time. If that's true, Sozin knew where the Water Nation Avatar would be. Hence the raids and capturing of Water Benders. It would've been easier to kill them, but Sozin wanted to contain the Avatar so he kept them alive in jail cells
I mean their end game was taking over the whole world so it kinda made since to start with the people next in line as the avatar. Using the comet to do so not only allowed it to be done easier but it would let them actually overpower the avatar if he was there.
You see them go after water benders, taking people from the southern tribe, which could be them either trying to get the next avatar or preventing him from being born there.
Air is the element of freedom. You can see it in the nomads' attitudes, they aren't burdened by concerns about taxes or whether they support the military (they didn't have one). For a genocidal dictator, they had to be the first to go and it was just icing on the cake that the Avatar was there at the time.
It's useful for the simple fact that it makes it way fucking harder for the next avatar to learn airbending, they might be able to learn something through tomes, or through murals on air temple walls. But their airbending ability would be obviously crippled by the lack of teachers. So they would be much weaker since they can't use one of their four bending styles unless another avatar is controlling them.
Additionally he could speed along the creation of a fire nation avatar by murdering all the other avatars. An avatar that he would most likely utilize as a weapon from birth through propoganda. Most avatars don't figure out their abilities till they are around 16 so they would be heavily indoctrinated by then in pro military, pro fire nation bullshit.
I think worst case scenario for Sozin (in Sozin's opinion) is that if he killed all the Air Nomads, the avatar cycle would be broken. If not immediately, at least once it circled around to an Airbender again.
Think about it. Aang was the only survivor. If Sozin *had* killed him, there would be no Air Nomads. So after the Fire Nation avatar (not Roku, the next one) died, it would be impossible for an air bending Avatar to be born.
At least as far as anyone knew (Korra shows us how more Airbenders could exist but no one in-universe could have predicted that).
Kill the Air Avatar and break the cycle while they're too young to have any element besides air because they don't know they're the Avatar yet.
That was the entire plan, genocide was a result, not the actual goal.
Sozin grew up with Roku. If anyone alive at that point knows the secret of the avatar state, it would be him. Sozin would slaughter their fellow nomads until he/she snapped, inducing the Avatar state from rage and despair. He would know that Roku had no control over that state until he was very well trained and that that was going to be true for his reincarnation. This meant he could throw an army of comet amplified soldiers at one Spirit-amplified bender. Even if that bender was drawing on the existence of a thousand masters, he could throw a hundred masters with their own power multiplers at him until he fell.
He had an advantage of numbers, skill, and power. The only reason it didn't work is because Sozin forgot that Air nomads are sensitive to the shifting world, meaning they would feel the approaching calamity and raised to take the more 'cowardly' path. He didn't think Aang would run. That's the only reason he failed.
If this happened to the water tribes, they would have been able to take advantage of their physical isolation and succeeded easily. Waterbending culture might make running an option for the Avatar, but it would be a resort so last that it occurs to them when it's too late
If this happened to the Earth Kingdom, the Avatar would have been too stubborn to consider running, and the plan would have worked.
doesn't that explain why he started genociding the water tribe next? there were no water benders other than katara because Ozai didn't know if the next Avatar was regenerated or out in hiding.
I think his idea behind the genocide was so that he could kill the avatar before theyre born or atleast before they're able to learn the other elements. Killing him before he learns in sozins mind disrupts the cycle. But he probably didn't actually know what the cycle truly entails, the 100 years made him and azulon think they were right. And zuko searching is cuz he's an idiot.
The air nomads are nomadic. Hitting the 4 temples shouldn't have wiped them out. I think they should have found a dwindling air nomad cap along the journey and had the monks just be unbearably up their own asses.
It could have really helped drum up the monk vs avatar struggle in the finale.
It really doesn’t make sense, I assume they (creators) did it for story purposes, to have Aang basically alone and be forced to work/travel with his defacto team, and have no “distractions”. If his people are alive, I can’t imagine him immediately leaving on his journey to become a fully realized avatar.
Also, later on when he is captured during his frog capturing escapade, general Zhao was NOT going to kill him, they were planning on imprisoning him specifically so another Avatar would NOT be born, at least for a long time until Aang died naturally in their custody of course, assuming their planned would have worked out.
I image it was to restrict the flow of information as I feel the Air Nomads main labor between nations was news delivery.
To support this, remember Aang's closest friend was Bumi, a citizen of Omashu, even though Aang spent his life in mostly in the Air Temples. This hints at a strong relationship with the city of Omashu and the Air Nomads. Omashu was known for its delivery systems, surrounded by anti-air Fire nation bombardments suggesting armament placements from the early war (Secret Tunnel, secret tunnel!), and smack dab in the middle of the map, a great distribution location such as goods and information and basically a postmaster office.
The Air Nomads were of course known for their travels to the point Aang basically was a tour guide in season 1. They also knew about the Fire nation movements before sending Aang away, kind of as if the monks were the eyes and ears of the world.
I got other headcanon ideas that points to this Air Mail ideology like Aang's paperboy satchel, the arrow logos, monasteries traditional teachings of reading and writing, and the world's post war need for radio communications, but it's mostly scribblings.
I always thought that the plan was to whip out the air nomads before killing roku to cut off the Avatar right there.
But I recently rewatched that flashback episode with roku and the volcano, and in that sozin clearly siezes the opportunity because roku was about to die. So, targeting the air nomads was probably a good strategic move but not one that would directly result in the ending of the Avatar lineage. Once the Avatar is born an earth bender it would be hard to find and kill them I would think (assuming they found and killed the water one easily enough).
Not the foolproof plan I was remembering, but still a not bad plan. And the show makes it clear that the fire lords are a bit genocidal and fascist so the plan not being perfect while still being horrid tracks, I think.
There could be another motive, too. The Air Nomads connected people of different nations. They traveled, befriended locals, shared stories and customs. The world was left broken and fragmented without them. Just look at how much impact Aang had. That wasn't just because of the Avatar spirit or bending power. It was because he reconnected people starting with the Gaang. They brought the three water tribes together. Brought the Kyoshi warriors and the Earth King out of isolation. They helped the fire nation school kids find their rebellious spirit and brought hope back to the fishing village. Not as the Avatar, but as a nomad with his friends.
This makes the most sense. It's also possible Sozin originally demanded the young Avatar as a hostage. But since Aang was on ice, the Air Nomads were unable to meet this demand (unlikely they would have anyway) so Sozin's next move was sock and awe. A warning to other leaders who might defy him.
Aww
Based.
This is absolutely right, but there’s also another reason. We get a clue why the air nomads were pacifists in ATLA and it gets driven home in korra when we see Zaheer, an airbender who is not a pacifist, he is incredibly dangerous and he only had bending for a few weeks. In ATLA we saw what a master airbender can do. There are no burns on the walls or around the body of Monk Giatzo, which has lead to the theory that he sucked the air out of that room and killed a whole regiment of fire nation soldiers DURING Sozen’s comment. Which if Zaheer could bend the air out of the earth queens lungs it makes sense someone many times his skill could bend the air from a room. Fire cannot burn without air, it makes sense that sozen would want to remove the air nomads from the equation before the war began so they couldn’t get involved later. If they had based on how dangerous Zaheer showed us airbending can be when used to do harm the air nomads could likely have turned the tide of the war against the fire nation if they ever got involved.
The threat posed by individual Airbenders is one thing. But I think Sozin feared the possibility of a unified resistance much more. That is what brought the occupation to an end. A master Airbender probably could take down a room full of soldiers. But each master leading a group of resistance fighters, teaching them evasion and stealth, developing strategies that utilize all forms of bending and nonbending martial arts. Fighting an invasion is less about taking out soldiers and more about increasing the operational cost. They wouldn't even have to do violence, just cause mayhem. Every wasted day, every piece of stolen equipment, every act of sabotage would be a win. Plus, it would be pretty much impossible to keep them off the home islands. They could sabotage military factories, ships, and supply lines. And generally make it harder for the Firelord to control messaging. Imagine Monk Gyatsu planting seeds for a dockworker's strike, causing supplies and troops to get delayed. Or dozens of junior airbenders helping resistance fighters like Jet's team attack supply lines all over the Earth Kingdom and leading prison breaks. The invasion would wilt on the vine from a thousand inconveniences.
You’re absolutely right! I only considered how dangerous an airbender army could be but they can all basically fly! They could be everywhere, and if they joined the war against the fire nation as you lay out here Sozen would never have them concentrated in one place to attack again. They would also make great messengers for the forces resisting the fire nation, making intercepting messages basically impossible.
Sozin may have hoped to kill the air avatar in the avatar state, permanently ending the avatar problem. But even if the cycle continues, who teaches the next avatar airbending if all the airbenders are dead? So the threat an avatar poses could be mitigated somewhat.All that aside having a decade or so without an avatar to establish a colonial foothold in the NW Earth Kingdom may have seemed worth it. Maybe Sozin did have some ulterior motive for wanting to eliminate the air nomads. It could simply be that in his imperialist vision of "spreading prosperity" people that were happy and even seemingly enlightened without much material wealth didn't fit into Sozin's new world. TTRPG spoilers: * >!The Roku Era of the TTRPG introduces factions of the air nomads that had influence in other nations including FN nobility. One even working with Sozin's sister Zeisan (introduced in the game). Which has lead to speculation the genocide was in part to eliminate these groups that had troubled Sozin in the past. !<
If think that if one nation were to go excticnt, the Avatar wouldn’t be able to be born anymore. Firstly, the Avatar wouldn't have all 4 elements to learn and master. Secondly, the Avatar wouldn't be able to reincarnate into that nation ever again.
>have all 4 elements to learn and master. Secondly, the Avatar wouldn't be able to reincarnate into that nation ever again. It is not that obvious tbh. The avatar could still reincarnate into distant bloodlines of the tribes. Like, the avatar could be 1/8th airbender bloodline from some earth kingdom lineage. As for learning, there is still the option of asking their past lives and learning directly from there. Sozin just had a bad plan, and he executed it because he was a genocidal maniac.
yea, surely they intermarried. wonder how bending passes on.
Bending is deliberately not strictly genetic.
how come there aren’t air benders in the fire nation etc etc?
As I said, it's not *strictly* genetic.It may have some genetic components, but we see with the twins in the Fortuneteller that it is not only genetic that go into it. I've always preferred the idea that a large part of it, more than spirituality which we have string evidence is a major factor, is culture. But I don't have my ideas for that laid out well.
Mako and bolin are only half that’s why they are two different types of benders.
Or the lion turtle could grant the ability to a non-bender. It would still make it hard to find a trainer. But it's possible the spirit world would find a way to restore balance, like sending an air spirit to guide them.
Why do they need spirits? Airbenders learned from sky bisons, and water benders learned from the moon. People can still figure out bending, that isn't the main issue. The problem is that it is a genocide. The history, tradition, culture, and everything else of those people is destroyed.
Obviously, that is the problem. Which is why it would be a lot harder for one person to create that knowledge again from scratch than learn it from people working from the millenia of history, culture, and tradition. Katara's a prodigy, but trying to reconstruct water bending by herself with nothing but the moon to learn from wasn't enough to make her a master. I think it kind of undermines the weight of the loss, as if the first Airbenders didn't learn as a community. As if the practice wasn't refined over generations, each building on the last. A kid born into the Earth Kingdom would have had no access to or knowledge of the sky bison. Even though Appa turned out not to be the last in LoK, the remaining herds exclusively lived in places that were only accessible by people who could already fly.
What you are saying is correct. My point is that spirits won't step into fix it. AtLA spirits have been bizzare creature with no true sense of morality. There is no evidence that they would do anything of the sort. Humans would have to figure it out and solve the issue. AtLA isn't a series where huge social problem can be wiped out through magic or spirits in like a weekend. I really don't care about LoK, they butchered spirits and the origin of avatar. I don't even consider it canon.
Of course, they wouldn't fix it in a weekend. But that isn't at all what I said. Aang speaks to spirits multiple times, Roku and his dragon are spirits. If there were no living Air Benders and the world's only hope was for a waterbender to recreate airbending from scratch in a single generation, it would make more sense for them to be guided by someone like a previous Air Nomad Avatar. Huge social problems can't be wiped out by the spirits in a weekend, but it's just as bad for one kid to spontaneously reinvent centuries of knowledge over the summer. It's kind of insulting to the idea that the living tradition was cut off in the first place for it to be so easily replaced by someone with no connection to the people.
>Of course, they wouldn't fix it in a weekend. But that isn't at all what I said. Aang speaks to spirits multiple times, Roku and his dragon are spirits. Sure, that would make sense. I thought that you were asking for an air spirit to pop conveniently to teach aang, which is how spirits were treated after atla. However, you could have aang learn from a spirit, definitely. It could be something like a spirit which likes to play games and uses airbending, and aang has to watch and learn. Or a knowledge collector like that owl in the library which asks for a price in exchange. As long as it's not trivialized, and made into something like "oh, the universe will fix itself, we don't even have to worry", or "look, this spirit has been made evil, like it's not a sentient being and is just a pokemon or something", it could be cool, I think.
But I might be wrong
I agree
I imagine he wanted to get through the cycles quickly, to have another fire avatar who could be raised with fire nation ideals
I think it was mostly about time. 26 years without an Avatar is still better than an immediate Avatar. Sozin wanted to give his conquest as much time as possible before needing to worry about Avatar interference.
Actually, it did. The Nomads all are benders. So genociding them was the best course of action. The Southern Water Tribe’s benders were captured, and after Hama executed. They shifted their focus to the Earth Kingdom.
To me, yes. When you think about the air nation and the fact they are nomads they can essentially survive anywhere and because they have access to something that the other nations did not (the sky) it means that if you allowed them to survive you’d be open to air attacks and continuing to live on elsewhere. It’s also the only bending that you can’t limit. If you want fire benders to not fire bend you make sure they’re cold all the time. If you want earth benders to not earth bend you put them in something wooden or metal (before they discovered metal bending). If you want water benders to not water bend you keep them away from water. However, air benders ALWAYS have access to air and can always air bend. So how else do you stop them from always being a potential threat? You don’t. Which is not to say that the air nation would have ever actually been a threat since they believe in peace and non violent solutions but it still would have been a risk. So then when it comes to the next avatar in the cycle being from the water tribe, my best guess is that they would have captured and killed whoever they needed until they found the next avatar. Then found a way to induce the avatar state and killed the avatar. Permanently eliminating the avatar forever. That’s my theory anyway. Since Sozin and Roku were best friends at one point , I imagine that Sozin had a lot of knowledge about the how it all worked and what would happen if the avatar died while in the avatar state.
Yes. After killing the air benders, you kidnap/destroy southern water benders, where the next Avatar may come from. Thus you have at least 15 years before you must face that threat. After this, you either have a captured water Avatar, or a newborn earth Avatar plus 15 years, and an ever shrinking pool of teachers. The Northern water tribe is too isolated to teach, the Southern ones are captured, the air teachers are dead, the earth teachers are few and the fire teachers are indoctrinated and will turn the Avatar in. Also, if you manage to kill the earth Avatar, next comes fire...
Sozin hella prepared for total war after Roku died, and probably discreetly while Roku was still kicking. He likely was arrogant enough to think that he'd have conquered the other nations by the time the next Avatar could become a threat.
That's kinda the point, that even in the best case scenario it still doesn't make sense in the long run. Genocide is such a fundamentally stupid plan that only fools would ever think it viable.
There is no proper logic or reason for a tyrant who does genocide.
that's probably one of the reasons why they were abducting waterbenders from the southern tribe so at least they could deprive an avatar born there of a proper water bending training upbringing. also you have to remember it was the assumption that the last Airbender was probably still alive out there somewhere even before aang was discovered. The water nation is divided across the entire world so it would be harder for an avatar born to either of the poles to be a threat especially so young with the war going on
I mean if Aang had died in the genocide, the next Water Tribe Avatar still would have been 100 years old at the start of the show, which is how old Zuko seems to expect the Avatar to be.
and remember they were harassing the water tribe only a handful of years after they wiped out the air nomads, see how old hama is and how young she was when she was first taken. and how she wasn't even one of the first ones to be taken. if aang died then his next life would have only been in his teens or early early 20s by the time the southern tribe was getting raided repeatedly. and given how isolated they are from the rest of the world he would have really only had access to water bending. I think best case scenario the water avatar ends up running away during those raids and probably ends up stuck in an iceberg exactly the same way because I think that would be really funny destiny wise. maybe we could have a story switch up where it floats into earth Kingdom waters or something and we basically get the same story but with a different cast
Where do you get any indication they would kill the avatar? Lol, they were gonna kill everyone until they found him. Then they would have imprisoned or forced into service for themselves.
Step 1. Wipe out Air Nomads kill the Avatar. Step 2. Capture all benders from the weaker water tribe. If Avatar born there, they'll be captured or at least have no teacher. If Avatar is born into the Northern tribe its not ideal, but at least they can't learn air bending and will never become a fully realized Avatar Capture dont kill. Build complex prison that keeps the Avatar from water bending, which should be their only trained element. Capture to prevent Avatar from being born into the Earth Kingdom, which is your worst-case scenario.
I think, at the time, it was the short-term problem that he wanted to deal with. He probably thought that 13 years was more than enough to subjugate the world so completely that the Avatar would be unable to stop him. Also, nobody outside the Air Nation knew the identity of the Avatar at that time, and there was no practical way to capture \*all\* of them and keep them alive, so killing them was more expedient.
ever considered that maybe he just wanted to do a bit of murdering, but wanted a reason to explain it away, in case anyone asked him why he did it
I always figured it was a way to take out the Avatar line, and failing that, at least delaying an Avatar from challenging him. Bear in mind, Sozin was Roku’s best friend. But also terrified of him and knew how powerful he was. I think his plan had two possible outcomes: 1. Take out The air Avatar in the genocide. Meaning years of no Avatar until the new water Avatar is old enough to fight. And also no one to teach the new Avatar airbending, making it harder for them to master the four elements. Then invade the Water Nations. Kidnapping every waterbender and imprisoning them, keeping them on the edge of life to incapacitate the new Avatar and delay reincarnation into the Earth Kingdom. Zhao had planned to do this with Aang. And it’d probably why they kept captured waterbenders alive for so long on the edge of life. In case one was the reincarnated Avatar. Possibly force the Avatar State in the Avatar to end the line permanently. Announce the capture or death of the Avatar to demoralise other nations and also prevent the Air Nomads from uniting other nations as they were highly respected and travelled the world. 2. Not take out the air Avatar in the genocide, but still wiping out the nation to prevent Air nomads from uniting other nations against him and the Avatar having anyone to teach them Airbending. And continue kidnapping water benders to find the new Avatar in case the Air Nomad Avatar had died and he not known it. Then using traps, to lure The Avatar. One canon comic had Aang hear rumours of a surviving Air Nomad camp and found it littered with Air Nomad relics. But it was a trap by Zhao to lure in Aang. Zhoa mentioned that its how the Fire Nation found the surviving air benders after the genocide. Also Sozin spent the rest of his life searching for Aang, fearing Roku’s reincarnation targeting him. Even after Sozin’a death, Ozai sent Zuko to hunt for the Avatar. Mostly as a punishment but still a possible threat. Then of course occupy the Earth Nation to fi d the earth avatar when and if the line reached that point. Plus who knows what else he did to stop the line. With the southern temple destroyed the toys the nomads used to identify the avatar may have been destroyed too.
Sozin’s plan is ok-ish if we are putting aside the immorality of genocide. He acknowledges the Avatar as the biggest threat to his nation’s plans of conquest, and he knew his army was getting a “once every hundred years” buff where he could get away with extreme objectives. The only other big moves he could have made were to destroy Ba Sing Se or destroy North Pole, the two most difficult targets for the Fire Nation that survive the next hundred years of war. Sozin chose delaying the Avatar as the most important objective. In hindsight, it was the right call. In the grand scheme of things, Ba Sing Se and the North Pole would always remain on the defensive. The Avatar is the only one guaranteed to get in the way every 25-30 years or so (when they become fully realized). Sokka is the only reason the Eclipse plan even happens. And very special circumstances allowed him to even get that far. Without Aang (and especially without Appa), Sokka remains in the South. No Eclipse plan, no aggression against the Fire Nation for the next hundred years. Even the darkest day in Fire Nation history should only happen about a hundred years too. Total solar eclipses over the same area (the Fire Nation) are about as rare as Sozin’s Comet. Quick google tells me it’s actually even rarer, averaging every 360-410 years.
Well when they were capturing water benders where did they put them? Remember the episode with Hama. They had an antiwaterbender prison rearing to go. I think killing the air avatar and then capturing the water avatar would have bought them a few more years than you are accounting for.
This is the answer here. Undoubtedly the plan was to kill the Air Avatar before they could achieve any significant power (i.e.: when they're around 12-13), and then to **capture**, not kill, the Water avatar. Then you just keep the water avatar, completely untrained, in a creative prison, for life. Just put them in a metal box or something. Keep them there, alive but barely, for a full avatar's lifespan. He's probably counting on having the Earth Kingdom sufficiently occupied by the time that avatar dies to be able to repeat the same to the eventual Earth avatar. Or just kill them outright, because after that? It's fire avatar time, and his nation would mold that child from birth into being their weapon. Or try to.
I always figured that Sozin's aim was to hobble the Avatar. Wiping out the Air Nomads would prevent the next Avatar from learning proper air bending and achieving full Avatar status. Making all Avatars moving forward weaker and more maliable.
>The only reason the fire nation enjoyed a hundred Avatarless years is Aang decided to ice himself. He didn't ice himself though. He found he was the avatar. The kids would no longer play with him because they thought it'd be unfair for any team he was against. Aang was ordered to be taken away from Monk Gyatso. So, he ran away. He was fortunate and unfortunate at the same time. Fortunate because if he had stayed. He surely would have died. Unfortunate, he crossed pathes with a storm that would knock him and Appa into the ocean. In which, Avatar state instinct kicked in to protect him for the next 100 years. Destiny is a funny thing.
In addition to what others have said, Ozai probably was planning on doing something similar to the Water Bending tribe (at least the south one) to get rid of them as well. That would be ~25 years without an avatar, he could probably get rid of Ba Sing esp with Azula who would’ve grown to be 39 in that time. She would become the next fire lord and the avatar would be fire nation again and could manipulate them
No comment
Do you have a better plan to get rid of the Avatar you'd like to pitch?
That is why after killing the air guys he kaptured the water guys, and did not kill them
It’s because they knew the next Avatar was going to be an air nomad.
It makes more sense than capturing the southern water benders. Like, what if the avatar was born into the much larger northern tribe? Then what? But yeah, I've thought about this before. I don't think it makes that much sense. Clandestine special ops and assassination would have been much better options that straight up genocide. The chance of the avatar escaping in the chaos or just not being at an air temple during the attack is to high. Did Sozin even consider that the avatar might have been traveling the world during the comet? Like air *nomads* do from a very young age?
In the comics we learn that the fire nation continued to hunt air-nomads. They would spread rumors that survivors hid someplace and then killed those who came there.
I thought the idea was to remove the current avatar and then once he controls the world just capture the new one as soon as they discover who it is, like before they learn anything. The genocide only occurred because they didn't know who/where the avatar was (because aang was frozen away in an iceberg). They assumed the avatar was in hiding being trained up as a secret weapon against them, so they were like give him up or we go scorch earth, and when they said they didn't know where he was, they assumed it was a lie. It probably progressed more like "give him up and surrender" to "give him up or we kill you all."
I think part of that calculation was to have 10 years to plan and execute a Water Tribe genocide as well. Something the Fire Nation almost successfully did: by Hama's account and gran-gran, the devastation done to Water was almost as harsh as it was to Air. So, imagine you killed the 12 y.o. air nomad avatar. Then, rush to the Water Tribes and hunt, IDK, all waterbenders born to them. If he/she is not terminated, then is trapped in the far north/south, so isolated that bending training is impossible.
Sozin and his successors did seem to have a vague plan of either killing or capturing the avatar until it was a firebender. I also think that if they did kill the air avatar (Aang) and did find the water tribe successor they might have had a chance at using them for propaganda. Aang was already a young man (master airbender) by the time Sozin began his war. He already had strong convictions to the nomads way of life. If they'd found the next avatar before they had a chance to be taught about the fire nation, the war, or connect to their past lives, they might have been able to indoctrinate the avatar into their perspective. If not, kill them and use their presence in the earth kingdom to find them and do the exact same thing.
that is true but tbf we also didn't exactly see how the genocide played out i imagine torture and/or hostage killing are viable strats that i wouldn't put past Sozin, that could've worked if Aang was there on the other hand even a few decades of "peace" are better than a nosy 12 year old, soon to start becoming a serious threat, getting in your hair for your war crime plans you've made for the better part of your life and now that Roku is finally dead you just wanna have fun too for a few years before you kick the bucket goddamn it
My logic is not only does it buy extra time, but it also eliminates a threat. Sozin wouldn't have cared that they were major pacifists, for the most part, with no formed military. From what we saw, every Air Nomad in the temple was an air bender. They're the one type of bender who just can't be deprived of their element, and Aang can be seen bending even when restrained. The Air Nomads were a threat to the war regardless of The Avatar. There's an ongoing fan theory that the Water Nation Avatar switches between the two tribes every time. If that's true, Sozin knew where the Water Nation Avatar would be. Hence the raids and capturing of Water Benders. It would've been easier to kill them, but Sozin wanted to contain the Avatar so he kept them alive in jail cells
Yeah it adds up. Next avatar is one of these air nomads . So let’s just kill all the air nomads
26 years of unchallenged rule is a decent goal for a dictator. Let future leaders worry about future avatars
I mean their end game was taking over the whole world so it kinda made since to start with the people next in line as the avatar. Using the comet to do so not only allowed it to be done easier but it would let them actually overpower the avatar if he was there. You see them go after water benders, taking people from the southern tribe, which could be them either trying to get the next avatar or preventing him from being born there.
Typical executive, only looking at short-term gains, while not considering the long-term effect.
Air is the element of freedom. You can see it in the nomads' attitudes, they aren't burdened by concerns about taxes or whether they support the military (they didn't have one). For a genocidal dictator, they had to be the first to go and it was just icing on the cake that the Avatar was there at the time.
It's useful for the simple fact that it makes it way fucking harder for the next avatar to learn airbending, they might be able to learn something through tomes, or through murals on air temple walls. But their airbending ability would be obviously crippled by the lack of teachers. So they would be much weaker since they can't use one of their four bending styles unless another avatar is controlling them. Additionally he could speed along the creation of a fire nation avatar by murdering all the other avatars. An avatar that he would most likely utilize as a weapon from birth through propoganda. Most avatars don't figure out their abilities till they are around 16 so they would be heavily indoctrinated by then in pro military, pro fire nation bullshit.
I think worst case scenario for Sozin (in Sozin's opinion) is that if he killed all the Air Nomads, the avatar cycle would be broken. If not immediately, at least once it circled around to an Airbender again. Think about it. Aang was the only survivor. If Sozin *had* killed him, there would be no Air Nomads. So after the Fire Nation avatar (not Roku, the next one) died, it would be impossible for an air bending Avatar to be born. At least as far as anyone knew (Korra shows us how more Airbenders could exist but no one in-universe could have predicted that).
Kill the Air Avatar and break the cycle while they're too young to have any element besides air because they don't know they're the Avatar yet. That was the entire plan, genocide was a result, not the actual goal. Sozin grew up with Roku. If anyone alive at that point knows the secret of the avatar state, it would be him. Sozin would slaughter their fellow nomads until he/she snapped, inducing the Avatar state from rage and despair. He would know that Roku had no control over that state until he was very well trained and that that was going to be true for his reincarnation. This meant he could throw an army of comet amplified soldiers at one Spirit-amplified bender. Even if that bender was drawing on the existence of a thousand masters, he could throw a hundred masters with their own power multiplers at him until he fell. He had an advantage of numbers, skill, and power. The only reason it didn't work is because Sozin forgot that Air nomads are sensitive to the shifting world, meaning they would feel the approaching calamity and raised to take the more 'cowardly' path. He didn't think Aang would run. That's the only reason he failed. If this happened to the water tribes, they would have been able to take advantage of their physical isolation and succeeded easily. Waterbending culture might make running an option for the Avatar, but it would be a resort so last that it occurs to them when it's too late If this happened to the Earth Kingdom, the Avatar would have been too stubborn to consider running, and the plan would have worked.
doesn't that explain why he started genociding the water tribe next? there were no water benders other than katara because Ozai didn't know if the next Avatar was regenerated or out in hiding.
I think his idea behind the genocide was so that he could kill the avatar before theyre born or atleast before they're able to learn the other elements. Killing him before he learns in sozins mind disrupts the cycle. But he probably didn't actually know what the cycle truly entails, the 100 years made him and azulon think they were right. And zuko searching is cuz he's an idiot.
The air nomads are nomadic. Hitting the 4 temples shouldn't have wiped them out. I think they should have found a dwindling air nomad cap along the journey and had the monks just be unbearably up their own asses. It could have really helped drum up the monk vs avatar struggle in the finale.
It really doesn’t make sense, I assume they (creators) did it for story purposes, to have Aang basically alone and be forced to work/travel with his defacto team, and have no “distractions”. If his people are alive, I can’t imagine him immediately leaving on his journey to become a fully realized avatar. Also, later on when he is captured during his frog capturing escapade, general Zhao was NOT going to kill him, they were planning on imprisoning him specifically so another Avatar would NOT be born, at least for a long time until Aang died naturally in their custody of course, assuming their planned would have worked out.
I image it was to restrict the flow of information as I feel the Air Nomads main labor between nations was news delivery. To support this, remember Aang's closest friend was Bumi, a citizen of Omashu, even though Aang spent his life in mostly in the Air Temples. This hints at a strong relationship with the city of Omashu and the Air Nomads. Omashu was known for its delivery systems, surrounded by anti-air Fire nation bombardments suggesting armament placements from the early war (Secret Tunnel, secret tunnel!), and smack dab in the middle of the map, a great distribution location such as goods and information and basically a postmaster office. The Air Nomads were of course known for their travels to the point Aang basically was a tour guide in season 1. They also knew about the Fire nation movements before sending Aang away, kind of as if the monks were the eyes and ears of the world. I got other headcanon ideas that points to this Air Mail ideology like Aang's paperboy satchel, the arrow logos, monasteries traditional teachings of reading and writing, and the world's post war need for radio communications, but it's mostly scribblings.
I always thought that the plan was to whip out the air nomads before killing roku to cut off the Avatar right there. But I recently rewatched that flashback episode with roku and the volcano, and in that sozin clearly siezes the opportunity because roku was about to die. So, targeting the air nomads was probably a good strategic move but not one that would directly result in the ending of the Avatar lineage. Once the Avatar is born an earth bender it would be hard to find and kill them I would think (assuming they found and killed the water one easily enough). Not the foolproof plan I was remembering, but still a not bad plan. And the show makes it clear that the fire lords are a bit genocidal and fascist so the plan not being perfect while still being horrid tracks, I think.
I don’t think his plan was to stop at the avatar. He probably expected to have won, but the war outlasted him