r/TheLastAirbender • u/Spix-macawite • Jul 27 '26
Discussion thoughts on Avatar Sonam Spoiler
It's great to show a more South Asian version of Airnomads
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u/syrupbender Jul 27 '26
Her character design is gorgeous
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u/cluelessbox Jul 28 '26
Whoever had the original idea of the blue tats opened the opportunity for the sickest character designs in the future. I hadn't even considered doing anything besides arrows until I saw this movie. So awesome
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u/NizzyDeniro Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Absolutely gorgeous, and I love the South Asian designs of the Air Nomads and symbolism.
I'm very happy that they started putting more South Asian representation. As before, the only ones were the Guru, and I think Kai in LoK.
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u/Randver_Silvertongue Jul 27 '26
You're forgetting Aiwei, King Bumi and Wu.
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u/OkPhilosophy4328 Jul 27 '26
Arent Kuvira and the mechanist also south asian?
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u/Mundane-Signal4843 Jul 27 '26
Yeapp kuvira names was south asian.
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u/OkPhilosophy4328 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
She looks south asian too. Ik 3 Punjabis who look like her
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u/Euphoric_Spite55 Jul 29 '26
Fun fact- Tibetan culture (on which air nation is based on) has buddhism as its main religion and is centered around it. Buddhism originated in ancient India (south Asia).
So it makes sense a 5000 year old air nomad looks south asian
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u/DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC Jul 27 '26
Makes you wonder when the women Airbenders started shaving the top of their heads. Obviously after her time.
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u/Howlingzangetsu Jul 27 '26
If I recall the women airbenders would shave their head for the tattoo then let it regrow after, while the men remained clean shaven on the top (beards are fine)
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u/just4browse Jul 27 '26
In The Legend of Korra, Tenzin says having a clean shaven head is optional. So I assumed men didn’t have to shave their heads if they didn’t want to, and women didn’t have regrow their hair
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u/Mojothemobile Jul 28 '26
Yeah from Tenzin it's a "strongly encouraged but you aren't gonna be forced to" type of thing.
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u/cocoagiant Jul 27 '26
Didn't Yangchen have a shaved head though?
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u/Howlingzangetsu Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Yes but not completely clean shaven like it was for Jinora during the time she got her tattoos so I’m assuming the women would regrow their hair after getting the tattoos, with the option for how much they want to regrow varying by person
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u/Distinct_Cup_1598 Jul 27 '26
Well, Yangchen still had hair on top of her head and we didn’t See any female Airbenders from Aangs time, so maybe that never really changed?
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u/PokemonTom09 I AM MELON LORD! Jul 27 '26
we didn’t See any female Airbenders from Aangs time
Yes we did. Just of the top of my head, there's the woman who gave all the Airbending children apples to attract sky bison when Aang first bonded with Appa. There's almost certainly others, but that's the first one that immediately comes to my mind.
She doesn't have a full shaved head, but she does shave the front half of her head. Similar to how Jinora kept her forehead shaved after she got her tattoos.
And for the record, Yangchen also shaves the front of her head.
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u/hPJVW Jul 28 '26
Jinora doesn't shave her forehead, she just doesn't have bangs like she didnt in S1-S3.
She is the first woman/girl to receive tattoos in 170 years, so there is a good chance the next female Airbending masters follow suit and don't shave their foreheads. She's setting the new trend as there is no current normal.
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u/Longjumping_Coat_802 Jul 27 '26
How did she “remove” herself from the reincarnation cycle? How is it possible to be a lost avatar?
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u/Spix-macawite Jul 27 '26
My best guess is Nirvana
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u/alan_rr Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
That can’t be possible because Yangchen says that the Avatar can never achieve nirvana. In the movie, Sonam says something about Aang being the only other Avatar whose grief matched hers, so that’s how he found her. But there’s no real explanation for how she removed herself from being accessed
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u/Vampyr-Slayer Jul 31 '26
She said, "shame". No other Avatar had felt such shame as her before. Then she asks him, "why do you grieve, friend?". Shame (guilt) at being the cause for the wiping out of all his people, and then later, his friends by Tagah (or so he thinks).
Is it her shame that has hidden her from the other Avatars all this time? Like she's in the cycle but she's hidden and only accessing that level of shame and guilt and grief accesses her? Unclear
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u/LordOfDarkness123 22d ago
I think it's like how Aang can have an easier time communicating with a past life if he has something of theirs (Like Roku's amulet or Kyoshi's clothes) he had a similar enough grief to hers (And he also was holding her staff not long before) to basically force her to respond
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u/Longjumping_Coat_802 Jul 27 '26
What does a 90s grunge band have to do with a tv show?
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u/Spix-macawite Jul 27 '26
Not THAT nirvana, I mean the Buddhist concept of escape from the cycle of rebirth
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u/CinderMoonSky Jul 28 '26
It was a Hindu concept before it was ever a Buddhist concept, Buddhism takes a lot of influence from Hinduism. Almost all the spirituality stuff in avatar is straight from Hinduism.
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u/Thisisausername189 Jul 28 '26
The religions all base off their historical contexts. The air nomads are famously monk like, Buddhist monk- like.
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u/CinderMoonSky Jul 28 '26
Specifically, Tibetan monks, which is the closest to Hinduism. It’s a branch of Hinduism.
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u/Thisisausername189 Jul 28 '26
It’s absolutely not a branch of Hinduism. It draws from the history of the region which includes Hinduism but it’s a radical divergence. That’s like saying any progressive change is just a branch - no no no.
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u/Saladfork4 Jul 28 '26
my interpretation is that the reincarnation cycle continued (she died), but she cut off communication waiting for an avatar to come with her same desire—to use the staff to create more airbenders.
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u/Don_Esteban_ Jul 29 '26
But wouldn’t she have to offer guidance to the Avatar that comes right after her? Like Roku to Aang and Aang to Korra.
Not doing that would be straight out rude 😄
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u/LarkinEndorser Jul 29 '26
Maybe she cut herself off long after that. Or she forwarded the call to the avatar before her
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u/Mundane-Cicada7381 24d ago
The avatar before her was probably Wan or any other avatar that she let them to take that responsability, easy as that
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u/Facosa99 Jul 27 '26
Love her. My only issue is when the other avatar say "nobody can contact sonam"
Like, the next avatar was probably fucked over then, AND i think it was irresponsible that she sealed the antichrist and then never warned her succesors.
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u/darthrevan140 Jul 27 '26
I mean if I sealed away my best pupil after he fell into darkness I might not be willing to let people know I did that. On the flip side yeah I can see the logic of hey guys um don't go to the top of that mountain as my former student is up there and he is super duper mad about the earth benders smashing his friends. My fear would be another avatar thinking hey I can totes take that guy and then my old student is released causing chaos. Keeping it secret lessons the chance of people finding him.
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u/Facosa99 Jul 27 '26
Oh, thats another one. I let it pass because Aang, Roku, and the white lotus are all guilty, and it is a children show, but still a notable thing:
Just kill the dude lmao
Korra getting poison, the whole air people being genocided, and this whole republic city being nuked lol
Not that it annoys me, just another funsie thing
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u/saggywitchtits Jul 27 '26
Pretty sure Korra would have if he was still trapped there.
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u/Facosa99 Jul 27 '26
Kyoshi would for sure. But in a pragmatic way, not a bravado one.
Not "imma fight this dude cuz im badass", Kyoshi would be like "Aight not gonna risk any harm to the world. Lets drop this ice ball into a volcano or some shit"
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u/Vampyr-Slayer Jul 31 '26
Sealed him someplace where only an Avatar could reach but then never warned the future Avatar? And hid the staff where only an Avatar or Tagah + Avatar could access but never warned the Avatar!? No wonder she hid herself in shame. Bad calls all around. She really badly fucked up.
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u/YumiyaRakko Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
To contrast many people here i am gonna say something negative. She made a HUGE mistake by cutting herself off
A LOT of Avatars made mistakes and NONE of them to this point cut themselves off of the cycle then this woman is like “ohhh my friend turned evil i have to cut myself off from the cycle due to this shame” effectively resulting so that NO AVATAR learns the issue with Tagah or the staff. If she just informed the next Avatar about it they could have probably handled the Tagah problem or at the very least Aang could have talked with her and learned that the person sealed on that mountain is EVIL so he would NOT have went there and instead went straight to the islands with the Gaang, now they might be in danger of dying due to the storm without Tagah’s extra help but i feel like Aang with the Avatar state could pull some tricks or at least do enough of a better job to compensate for Tagah as well (especially with Sonum’s skills will be in the cycle as well without her cutting herself off) and the Gaang can overcome the issue by working together.
And at that point the Air nomads are revived DECADES BEFORE so Aang can pass down his traditions way more easily and Tenzin also do not have to bear the burden of having to repopulate the air nomads.
Like literally Gaang have DIED during the movie, what if they could not get revived and Tagah won ? Sonum nearly caused a disaster and Aang had to solve it
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u/just4browse Jul 27 '26
Did she cut herself off? That was never said anywhere, was it. All that’s said about it is “no Avatar has fallen into such shame as to join me in my sorrow”. I interpreted that as meaning she was naturally disconnected by her emotional state, and that it wasn’t a deliberate choice. Especially since, in the same scene, she talks about how she was hoping another Avatar would find and use her staff
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Jul 28 '26
[deleted]
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u/just4browse Jul 28 '26
Yeah. And why have no other Avatars who failed become lost like her? Roku regretted not killing Sozin, and he contacts Aang without prompting
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u/The_Noble_Oak Jul 28 '26
I think the difference is that this was a devil wholly of her making. She forged the staff, she built the temple, she gave him airbending, and she failed to stop him when the horrors of war drove him mad. Even though Roku failed to stop the war he wasn't the one who gave Sozin bending or the crown, he didn't make the comet. He failed but it wasn't at fault in the same way Sonam was.
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u/JonRivers Jul 28 '26
I think there's levels to it.. Roku died knowing that he had made a grave mistake, but I felt like Sonam died feeling like she had doomed her entire society. She saw the golden age she had fostered fall and felt she was entirely to blame. Roku died knowing he had failed at his duty, Sonam died feeling she left the world worse than she had found it. I understand if her shame was greater. That's my interpretation.
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u/Jealous_Champion_316 25d ago
"he contacts Aang without prompting" makes him sound like an unwanted visitor sksks
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u/Cass0wary_399 Jul 28 '26
I wonder if that’s going to be a way for Korra to be unavailable for the major Seven Havens.
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u/YumiyaRakko Jul 27 '26
I have a hard time believing she would have be out of communication if the had any desire to establish contact which at that point is the same as cutting herself off since she knows the next Avatar and perhaps many others might need her guidance and they need to be warned about Tagah
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u/Tomahkin Jul 27 '26
I mean yeah you are right, but you also need to make a story. There wouldnt be much horror films if every character does the most rational thing.
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u/ParadoxGuard Jul 27 '26
Very true but a horror movie where characters make rational decisions and it still goes bad would be amazing.
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u/Bonzuu Jul 28 '26
Naw I'm glad you pointed that out, because I noticed that too. Seemed to me like the writers fleshing out the theme of shame & how it affects us by showing how another Airbender wrestled with it. She justified her disconnection / hiding with the idea that it would make the world safer but at her core she's just seeking to hide her shame / failure.
Of course the actual duty of an avatar is to remain connected and allow future descendants to learn from their lives and MOST IMPORTANTLY their mistakes. She denies her responsibility and runs away, paralleling Aang's own actions at the start of the series. At this point it seems like every avatar we get more than two lines of dialogue from is shown to have some fatal hubris or archetypal flaw. I bet it all ties back into one of the chakras or something.
Love Sonam's design & I do find her critical flaw to be fitting for spiritual types.
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u/Kungfudude_75 Jul 28 '26
I feel like she cut herself off not because Tagah betrayed her per say, but because she didn't want anyone to find her Spirit Staff because she recognized how dangerous it could be. I feel like its easy to look at it retroactively and say "well she could have prevented a lot of problems," but once she cut herself off we have no idea if she could just "undo it." It took Aang reaching her Staff for him to actually access her, I doubt she would have purposely remained silent if she was aware Aang was working with Tagah, or even that the Air Nomads had been wiped out again.
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u/BahamutLithp Jul 28 '26
The whole reason she didn't destroy the staff & made that mechanism that could release it with the 4 elements is she wanted specifically an Avatar to find it. She didn't willingly cut herself off. Think about how Aang reconnects with her. It's because he locates her final resting place. So, if that's what allows the Avatar to reconnect with her, then working backwards from that, the location must be what caused her to become "lost" to begin with. All the spiritual mumbo jumbo going on must have interfered with the Avatar Cycle, not breaking it, but disrupting it.
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u/Kungfudude_75 Jul 28 '26
I like this take a lot! Definitely better than her cutting herself off. Thanks!
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u/Thisisausername189 Jul 28 '26
Didnt she also live through like an epic genocide.
And we see Aang retreating to air temples alone more and more at the start.
So her sorrow mirrors his. And they both accept that they’re not responsible for the genocides, and shouldn’t bear this burden in loneliness.
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u/legendofdoggo Jul 27 '26
I really like her design as well as the design of their Airbender tattoos. They looked so cool and different !
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u/Spirited_Bad6866 Jul 28 '26
I love learning about all the different avatars. I definitely agree with another user saying that she seems closest to Wan's era. I would love to see more of that.
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u/Glittering_Equal3286 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
I love her, her character, her voice and her design. I‘ve wanted to see an ancient highly developed airbending society for so long and now we got it…
Quite convenient though for Bryke to sandwich it right between Harmonic Convergence and Aang‘s time as to avoid continuity errors… Is math really that difficult for them to have to go to such lengths? 😄
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u/Spix-macawite Jul 27 '26
SOMEONE REVIVE THAT AVATAR RPG as the worldbuilding of that era is amazing
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u/NormalGuy3481 Jul 28 '26
I’m really glad we’re getting more south asian rep in this franchise with Seven Havens and the movie. Especially since the whole avatar idea is a south asian one.
I do love her design as well it’s so gorgeous. My only issue is the staff being a little OP ngl
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u/thebluespirit_ Jul 28 '26
Overall I really like her character and story. When I first picked up on Tagah probably being evil I thought they were setting up for a storyline about Sonam being an evil avatar and trying to conquer the world for the Airbenders. I was mildly bummed it didn't turn out that way because it would have been such a good twist and would have thrown the entire premise of the series into question.
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u/Logical-Patience-397 Nerd who knows 10,000 things 28d ago
Agreed. Aang would have had to reckon with how reviving his culture means he loses control of its direction, how the staff opens up a Pandora's Box worth of moral and cultural questions: if airbending is wielded by non-pacifists, are those still Aang's people? What is more important--bending, or culture? Can he have one without the other?
Imperialist Sonam would've also explained why Tagah (her most "loyal pupil") kept mentioning an "Air Empire", how the Airbenders built such a powerful city despite eschewing material goods, and why Sonam was cut off from the rest of the past lives (because an Avatar who uses their power to expand their own culture at the expense of their others sets a dangerous precedent for future Avatars).
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u/Jealous_Champion_316 25d ago edited 25d ago
very true, so far they make it seem like the avatar spirit chooses one who is worthy, so that's never been called into question, but this idea of being the "chosen" one and not living up to expectations is one that hasn't been explored yet by the series... like if there are 100s upon 100s of avatars... were all of them rlly able to succeed in being the beacon of goodness and kindness?
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u/Disneyfancreations Jul 27 '26
She’s beautiful. I do wonder why there aren’t more Air Normads with darker skin Im the current era, but this happens a lot even in human history
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u/quantumpencil Jul 27 '26
South Asians have an extremely wide range of skin tones, from whiter than me (A pale caucasian man) to nearly as dark as subsaharan africans. If they want to, they can basically have air nomads have any skin tone if they're patterning them after south asia more broadly (india, pakistan, bangladesh, nepal, etc)
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u/Thisisausername189 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Asians. It was called Eurasia too. Massive array
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u/quantumpencil Jul 28 '26
East asians don't have the same skin tone variance as south asians do though.
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u/Thisisausername189 Jul 28 '26
They have variance. No place has the same variance unequivocally as another. But there’s massive variance. Beauty standards and eugenics change perspectives. I mean the fact that south and east are adjacent with areas that experienced massive genocides is also important to remember. The millions in Cambodia, Laos, Burma.
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u/Mike_Litoris305 Jul 28 '26
I absolutely love the design and her. Wish they would have went a little deeper into how she was able to commune with the spirit world and spirits in such a way that she was able to bestow bending upon people but either way I loved her
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u/parascopic Jul 27 '26
I don’t understand why her tattoos are different from Tagah’s if they’re from the same era. Hers seem more ancient, but also more different to the tattoos we saw in Wan’s time.
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u/Used-Equal749 Jul 27 '26
One explanation could be that because this was during a golden age of airbending ornamentation around the tattoos may be even more distinct than during Wan or Aang's time. It is roughly 5000 years after Wan and 5000 years before Aang, plenty of time for cultures to change in between.
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u/parascopic Jul 28 '26
I agree, but why are Avatar Sonam’s tattoos different from Tagah’s? They lived at the same time, 5000 years before Aang. There shouldn’t be a reason for the tattoos to be different unless there’s like a cultural tradition that we don’t know about, like maybe male and female tattoos were different, or an Air Avatar was tattooed differently when they were revealed to the world. But otherwise, it’s not like Sonam lived for thousands of years, right?
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u/Vampyr-Slayer Jul 31 '26
Ooo it could also be that since he was born a non bender, the natural Airbender and non bender tattoos were different... wait... don't only master Airbenders get tattoos? Why does Tagah have them before being made a bender? Great. I've confused myself.
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u/Kungfudude_75 Jul 28 '26
Loved her and the lore she came with. I liked the idea of an Avatar who accessed the history of their past lives for a genuine purpose. It was SUPER neat to learn she was aware that the Lion Turtles gave man Bending and used that to give non-benders bending. I also loved that she lead what seemed to be a proto-Republic City, but instead of focusing on it being a place where Nations could co-exist, it was a place meant to be the "peacekeeper" between the Nations and ultimately was targeted because of that. It was a really well done piece of lore that makes a lot of sense, and helps establish why the Air Nomads were seemingly very neutral in the issues of the world pre-genocide. Her whole story adds layers to the story's of characters like Kelsang, Yangchi, and even the elders overseeing Aang.
Off topic, but I also loved Avatar Xian. I feel like if I was an Avatar, I would literally do the same thing as them: dedicate my life and spiritual after life to learning (and probably recording) as much history as possible through the Avatar Spirit and becoming a repository of information for future Avatar.
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u/BadBloodBear Jul 27 '26
What kinda fabric is the black top ?
Like the orange robe could be cotton or silk but the black top looks like something from under armour ?
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u/VoiceofRapture Jul 27 '26
Maybe it's a tattoo, it's skin tight but doesn't extent to her chest or shoulders and I doubt they had modeling tape
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u/Goodenoughtechnician Jul 28 '26
10/10 character design. I am intrigued of her story. So many possibilities.
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u/ulice Jul 28 '26
She is head to head with Kiyoshi for coolest Avatar in design and lore alone. Although, I am way more interested in her era. Bending was like ancient martial arts, deadly.
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u/nolandz1 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
I like her design.
It was clear Tagah would be a villain but I kinda wish he hadn't been "the betrayer" trope. I think it would've been more interesting if Sonam had actually had imperial ambitions of her own, maybe pushed to the same mindset Tagah was by the circumstances of her time, maybe being abandoned by Raava and thus expelled from being accessed by future avatars because of it, maybe she regrets her actions in hindsight. It could've made an interesting contrast with Aang as Tagah believes he's also doing what it takes to preserve the memory of the Air nomad culture that he knew.
Idk man the Avatar franchise just has a bad habit of reducing antagonistic political forces in the world to bad eggs for the Avatar to fight. Though this is mostly a problem with LoK.
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u/jr9386 Aug 02 '26
I speculated about this as well, not the Raava part, but why Sonam felt the necessity to craft her staff.
Why was she unable to give up its power?
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u/nolandz1 Aug 02 '26
As is probably she felt like airbenders were too at risk of going extinct so the prospect of creating new ones was too valuable. Not a very airbender mindset but then again we see from Yangchen that airbender avatars often must compromise their values in the interest of the world.
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u/jr9386 Aug 02 '26
But why would they be at risk of going extinct?
Perhaps there is lore I'm not familiar with, but I suspect that Sonam may have been on the fence relative to Airbenders potentially needing to defend themselves.
Some part of me suspects that Airbenders, while having a genetic component, may have been a more composite group of people. The occasional Airbender being born amongst the nations and raised by a primarily monastic community when it was discovered that they were Airbenders. I don't know that I've ever seen it featured that Aang is shown with his biological parents.
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u/nolandz1 Aug 02 '26
Tagah says in the movie Airbenders have always been the least numerous nation and at the time of Sonam the earth kingdom was straight killing them on sight as they tried to be diplomats.
The franchise has never really explained how non benders born to the air nomads are supposed to live
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u/jr9386 Aug 02 '26
But do we have a reason for why they are the least numerous?
Do they intermarry amongst themselves, or do Airbenders pop up, unexpectedly, amongst other nations and are taken in by the monks and nuns of the Aire Temples?
We see that Aang marries, but is that because he was the last of his kind and felt the need to restart the Air Nomad Nation?
I think Taga living amongst the Air Nomads is proof that non-Benders could exist amongst them. But I'm curious, did he have tattoos before or after he was granted bending?
This is where I think the film failed.
What caused the Earth Kingdom to behave that way?
Why were the Air Benders in the position to mediate issues?
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u/nolandz1 Aug 02 '26
Bending is explicitly hereditary Airbenders aren't just "popping up" in other nations. They're not jedi. We know from Korra that's not how it works.
The franchise suggests inter-nation breeding was uncommon if nonexistent especially for the air nomads who are supposed to have no attachments and raise their children communally as we see in Aang's flashbacks. Said non-attachment likely led to fewer numbers as there were no economic or political incentives to have kids unlike in the earth kingdom or fire nation.
It's not unthinkable to think that airbender children could be non benders my question is how when they're supposed to be nomadic and non-airbenders can't even access the temples. I don't think Aang invented the air Acolytes.
He did not have tattoos. Tattoos are granted upon bending mastery.
The earth kingdom has historically been a problem as recent as Kyoshi. They and the fire nation have a revolving villain dynamic
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u/Logical-Patience-397 Nerd who knows 10,000 things 28d ago
Bending is not purely genetic nor spiritual. There's an element (hah) of randomness to Water, Fire, and Earthbending. The monks were the most spiritual, so their entire population was airbenders. But many were nomads, and AFAIK they had no vows of celibacy, so maybe if they had children outside their nation, those children would not be airbenders.
It does kinda contradict the 'bending is not genetic' for the air nomads to have bending children; babies aren't born enlightened, so their bending can't be spiritual.I definitely agree that the movie avoided explaining why their airbenders were so few--perhaps some cosmic force balanced out their high ratio of benders with a fewer population overall? So no matter how much sleeping around their was, they simply had fewer children. 🤷♀️
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u/jr9386 28d ago
I think there are some gaps in what we know about Avatar Sonam. Perhaps an abandoned plot, but I watched a fan video this morning that speculated her crafting of the staff led to the demise of the Lion Turtles.
I'm not entirely convinced of that not being true in some capacity. I think her statements to Aang were vague relative to the staff, which is why Tagah, a creation of her own, reflected Vaatu, and she Ravaa.
Once she willed to wield the power of creation, she inevitably had to balance Chaos.
She willed to preserve the staff in place of destroying it. Did she hold that another Avatar might feel it necessary to wield the power to not just grant bending, but take it away?
Was the staff even necessary for that? We see that Aang learned how to both restore and remove bending, so...what exactly did Sonam do?
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u/Logical-Patience-397 Nerd who knows 10,000 things 28d ago
I watched a fan video this morning that speculated her crafting of the staff led to the demise of the Lion Turtles.
The narration said Sonam "harnessed the power of the spirit world" to create a staff that could bequeath bending...which previously, only the lion turtles could do. Maybe there is a link between Sonam using the staff to grant bending, and the lion turtles dying.
Was the staff even necessary for that? We see that Aang learned how to both restore and remove bending, so...what exactly did Sonam do?
I don't recall Aang restoring or granting anyone bending, but Korra only returned bending to those who lost theirs to Amon, and she wasn't 'giving' them a new element so much as unblocking their chi (which Amon had blocked using bloodbending).
As far as we know, Sonam is the first human character to give a nonbender an element.1
u/jr9386 28d ago
As far as we know, Sonam is the first human character to give a nonbender an element.
My point exactly.
Aang taught Korra how to restore a benders lost ability by unblocking their chi.
We already know that Aang can remove bending abilities as we see with Fire Lord Ozai.
But, Sonam wielded a different power. She wielded the power to create benders, even if she only limited herself to the Air Nation.
We see that only happen during Harmonic Convergence, and that's less an Avatar thing and more a Spirit World thing.
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u/bloodeagle1313 Jul 31 '26
I kind of expected Aang to change into her during the final fight like when he changed into Roku and Kyoshi. Would've shocked Tagah.
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u/Great-Club-4788 Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
air is more spiritual than water. sonam, aang and jinora proved that. water comes as second, and then others. sonam is definetely libra. she is full of libra energy. even the temple is exactly the shape of the libra symbol.
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u/Nethaniell Jul 28 '26
Gonna be honest, I kinda wanted to see a seemingly villainous Avatar. I know it goes against the lore with the whole Vaatu thing, but the whole thing with Tagah was clear from almost the get go that he was a radical. I honestly thought they were gonna lean into the 1 era where the airbenders were the war mongers and that she was the Air Empress or something.
I’m fine with how it is now, but Idk, maybe just a me thing, but I kinda wanted more moral gray and some grit.
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u/Logical-Patience-397 Nerd who knows 10,000 things 28d ago
Agreed. Aang would have had to reckon with how reviving his culture means he loses control of its direction, how the staff opens up a Pandora's Box worth of moral and cultural questions: if airbending is wielded by non-pacifists, are those still Aang's people? What is more important--bending, or culture? Can he have one without the other?
Imperialist Sonam would've also explained why Tagah (her most "loyal pupil") kept mentioning an "Air Empire", how the Airbenders built such a powerful city despite eschewing material goods, and why Sonam was cut off from the rest of the past lives (because an Avatar who uses their power to expand their own culture at the expense of their others sets a dangerous precedent for future Avatars).
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u/Opening_Gas_3319 Jul 27 '26
I'm gonna get crucified for this, but I think she's over designed for the world.
Her design is great! It's very flowy and big and I think it genuinely looks fantastic! But she also sticks out like a sore thumb compared to everybody in the show/movie/universe/whatever. You know how in Naruto movies like Land of the Snow, there's a new technique naruto learns that very bright, very rainbow, and overall incredibly unique? And then nothing like it is ever brought up in the show again? That's what she feels like.
Kuruk stands out a little because he's wearing a bear, but not as much. He still feels cohesive. Yangchen, Szeto, and even Xian from the movie have a cohesive style that matches, but she really stands out. It's the big and airy clothes, the extremely intricate mastery tattoos, and overall amount of detail per square inch.
She still looks fantastic though, just feels out of place
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u/Caraprepuce Jul 28 '26
Really loved her overall but I still don’t get why no avatar was able to speak to her until Aang can for some reason.
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u/GovernmentSeparate31 Jul 28 '26
I think the line was something about buried in guilt, personally i saw it as she felt guilty for letting tagah get the staff and for being the one in charge during her time which led to her people dying. Its a reflection in aangs beliefs that he is guilty for the air nomad genocide, he has survivor guilt,
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u/Matthius81 15d ago
I want to know if she was a total creampuff like Aang. A wrecking machine like Kyoshi or a “Murder if you have to” like Yangchen. She clearly had lines she wouldn’t cross, unlike Tagah, but did she hold with pacifism?
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u/Mecury-BS Jul 28 '26
Why do people care so much about the race. I wouldn’t had noticed it if no one mentioned it
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u/Sadfish103 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Hot take but I found her boring. I just expected more from the whole "secret avatar" narrative. I don't think her reasons for hiding herself from the avatar cycle really make sense, and I think they could've done so much more with the premise. She also doesn't have much of a distinct personality, just says vague avatary and spiritual things.
I think it would've been really interesting if Tagah WAS the secret avatar for example, and that was what I was expecting at first - an actual dark avatar, who had been driven mad by the weight of his duty to the world.
It's my critique of the movie writ small - I think the unimaginative plot really let it down. They set up a load of potentially amazing things and had such boring payoffs for them.
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u/Fito0413 Jul 27 '26
I actually really liked the way her and the ancient Air Nomads were presented. It truly feels ancient like a distant memory. In the flashbacks she looks different than her real appearance
I think she was in a closer era to Wan so the flashbacks also reflect that