Avatar: The Last Airbender's creators had an idea of a trio of firebenders hunting Aang that didn't make the pilot but instead evolved into Azula's elite squad.
Avatar: The Last Airbender was originally going to have an elite team of female firebenders, but the idea was eventually dropped. Creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko spent years refining their original concept into the show beloved by many fans today. In their book Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Art of the Animated Series, DiMartino and Konietzko reveal that one of these changes involved cutting a team of female firebenders, a team which bears a striking resemblance to Azula's team introduced in season 2.
Season 2 adds Princess Azula, Zuko's ruthless, ambitious sister, to its cast of characters. Tasked with capturing Zuko, Azula recruits the help of two of her closest friends from the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, Mai and Ty Lee. While neither are firebenders like Azula, both characters are capable of inflicting severe damage on enemies. Mai is an excellent markswoman, incapacitating opponents with her small blades and arrows. Ty Lee is both an expert gymnast and chi blocker. Her ability to temporarily remove a bender's powers makes her a deadly foe and an incredible asset to Azula's team.
Even though this fearsome trio did not appear in the first season, DiMartino and Konietzko had a similar idea for a group of female Fire Nation antagonists early on in the show's development. In Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Art of the Animated Series, they say that for Avatar's pilot, which differed greatly from the final show, "we had an idea about an elite group of female firebenders hunting Aang, but unfortunately it never found its way into the series." Even though this first iteration of their idea did not appear in Avatar, Azula's team does seem like a natural evolution of this concept.
A trio of fierce Fire Nation women, Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee are incredibly elite fighters. While neither Mai nor Ty Lee are firebenders, they are still highly skilled and can hold their own against some of the world's most powerful benders. When the group's focus shifts from solely hunting Zuko to also hunting Aang, they also come closer to the creators' original idea for the team.
This is not the only time ideas for Azula's team have shifted drastically. Azula was originally accompanied by a team of ninjas before the creators decided having individual companions with different skill sets would be more interesting. Both Mai and Ty Lee helped round out Azula's character: their friendship specifically helped set up Azula's arc in Avatar: The Last Airbender's final season, as their betrayal worsened her mental health. Even though DiMartino and Konietzko did not use their first idea for the trio of elite firebenders in the pilot, it is fascinating to chart the concept's evolution into the fascinating squad of fighters that is Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee.
From Screen Rant:
Avatar: Why Azula Had Blue Fire In The Last Airbender
Avatar: The Last Airbender villain Azula was the only character in the Nickelodeon show to use blue fire - why was her firebending ability so unique?
Nickelodeon's 2005 series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, showcased a wide variety of characters with immense strength and power, but Azula's firebending prowess trumps them all with the might of her unique trademark, her blue flames. In the world of The Last Airbender, the Avatar is the strongest person in the world, having total mastery over all four elements of nature and utilizing the spiritual, yet powerful Avatar State. Regardless of that power, Azula's ability to master her birthright as a firebender and perfect the technique of emitting blue fire is immaculate, but why her specifically?
With the introduction of her arrival at the end of the first season and within the second season, Azula's demeanor as the next intimidating threat for Team Avatar to encounter had the audience understand that this is someone not to be taken lightly. As this formidable foe, Azula's power and authority were unmatched every time she was on-screen. The fact that she's powerful enough within the show to even possess the ability to wield blue fire, but control it to her whim is a key reason she stands out as the only firebender who can utilize it.
One notion many believe in is that her proficiency in the "cold-blooded fire", also known as lightning generation, caused Azula's main source of fire to turn "cold" or blue as a result. This doesn't entirely fit, though, as in the sequel series, The Legend of Korra, Mako could generate lightning from his fingertips and still use normal red or yellow fire. Throughout the series, it is suggested that the creators based her strength and control over the blue fire through the simple scientific principle of fire. A blue flame has been proven to occur at a higher temperature than yellow or red fire and become complete combustion. However, this isn't the only reason Azula may be able to wield blue fire in the show.
Throughout her life, Azula was praised as a natural-born prodigy by her family. Her power and ability in firebending caught the eye of her father especially. When she was 9-years-old, Azula demonstrated and even flaunted her firebending prowess to her grandfather, the late Firelord Azulon, even surprising him how great she is for her age. She grew to love this constant attention and become somewhat of an exhibitionist overtime as she would typically demonstrate her power and sadistic nature over her peers to garner their attention too. After her brother was banished from the capital to look for Aang, Azula spent the next three years relentlessly training her bending, strategy, and combat until she concentrated her skills down into her refined, advanced blue fire technique.
One final notion may be based on the creators' having personified Azula on color symbolism alone. While her namesake in the Avatar universe derived from her grandfather, Azulon, but her name also comes from the Spanish translation of blue, which is Azul. As she is the only one who is personified as blue amongst a nation of red, this makes her stand out even more as a character. Moving forward with that concept, the creators could have structured her as a sort of contrast to her nation, especially her brother, Zuko.
While throughout the series, Zuko had been very passionate, hotheaded, and impulsive, Azula had been depicted very even-tempered, cunning, logical, and a perfectionist. However, someone who personifies the color blue showcases confident and self-controlled, but under the surface, may be hiding vulnerabilities. Although there are many possibilities for why Azula was gifted with blue flames as her signature technique, her upbringing as someone who must always strive for perfection and attain a flawed ideology of world domination is one major reason she was able to achieve her iconic ability in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
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The pilot of Avatar: The Last Airbender can be watched here, and the recently released second printing of Avatar: The Last Airbender — The Art of the Animated Series is now available from Dark Horse. The follow up, The Legend of Korra: The Art of the Animated Series-Book One: Air, will receive a second reprint in February 2021, also from Dark Horse.
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More Nick: Toph Beifong to Feature in Her Own Standalone 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' Graphic Novel!
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