A glowing path suspended in house. Pockets of coloured non secular power. A younger Avatar making an attempt to know how any of this cosmic imagery connects to the bodily world they’re destined to save lots of. The ultimate moments of Avatar: Seven Havens episode 9 really feel deeply mysterious and massively vital, however Avatar: The Final Airbender followers have been right here earlier than with Aang. To raised perceive what Pavi (Saheli Khan) could have encountered in her imaginative and prescient, it’s time to revisit an eccentric previous man and his nasty banana-and-onion juice.
“The Guru” is the penultimate episode of Avatar: The Final Airbender Guide 2, and it introduces Guru Pathik (Brian George) as Aang’s (Zachary Tyler Eisen) non secular information. After receiving an invite through Appa, Aang visits the Jap Air Temple hoping to learn the way he can grasp the Avatar state. As an alternative, he will get an elaborate lesson on the character of non secular power and its relationship to the chakras. Almost twenty years after its authentic launch, “The Guru” feels much more related than ever earlier than.
Spoilers observe for Avatar: Seven Havens by way of episode 9 and Avatar: The Final Airbender Guide 2.
Pavi ends episode 9 strolling alongside a path made of sunshine in a cosmic void, approaching a purple image that appears to be related to Ellora. To anybody accustomed to the idea of chakras, that connects Ellora itself with the basis chakra, usually related to the colour purple. As Guru Pathik tells Aang, the earth chakra governs survival, and concern blocks its move. That appears like an apt description of life within the Haven of Wind and Sand given the character of the Anomaly, so the Pathik’s different classes would possibly wind up being simply as vital.
Aang’s most uncommon instructor makes the summary really feel easy
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Picture: Nickelodeon -
Picture: Nickelodeon -
Picture: Nickelodeon
Aang arrives on the Jap Air Temple anticipating a lesson about mastering the Avatar State. As an alternative, he’s instructed he should open the seven predominant chakras of his physique in order that non secular power can move freely by way of him. Pathik takes Aang to a sequence of swimming pools linked by a stream. Particles obstructs the move of water. Clearing it restores the move. Emotional burdens have an effect on non secular power in a lot the identical method.
It’s a chic demonstration, and Pathik’s persona makes it much more approachable. He’s affected person, cheerful, and completely prepared to let a little bit of pleasure seep into an in any other case deeply critical lesson. He provides Aang room to ask questions and resist concepts he doesn’t perceive. That heat issues when the coaching entails asking a 12-year-old to confront his trauma.
As Pathik explains, every chakra has a objective and could be blocked by a particular form of “emotional muck.” As he proceeds by way of the seven chakras, Aang experiences visions, beginning with every thing he’s afraid of as he opens the earth chakra.
“You’re involved in your survival, however you will need to give up these fears,” Pathik says. “Let your fears move down the creek.”
Every step within the course of entails acknowledging that which blocks the chakra and letting it go; in different phrases, a sure diploma of emotional detachment is important to open every chakra. Guilt makes Aang revisit working away earlier than the Air Nomad genocide and all the individuals he’s damage. Disgrace forces him to acknowledge his rejection of firebending after unintentionally burning Katara. Grief returns Aang to the lack of his individuals, however Pathik reframes it as an expression of affection that ceaselessly stays inside his coronary heart.
Aang’s recollections flip every lesson into an examination of his character and one thing of a poignant recap that revisits the sequence’ extra emotional beats. We’ve watched him carry these experiences for nearly two seasons. Pathik lastly asks him to take a seat with them and replicate. The fifth chakra represents the voice and is blocked by lies. The sixth is the sunshine chakra that offers with perception and is blocked by phantasm, chief amongst them the phantasm that every thing is disconnected when it’s, in actual fact, united. In some methods, that looks like one of many extra vital classes of all.
The chakra lesson basically adjustments how bending works
“The Guru” additionally finds a superb strategy to make this philosophy matter outdoors Aang’s coaching. Whereas Pathik explains that every thing is linked even when we understand them as separate, Toph is locked inside a steel field. Her captors assume they’ve discovered the proper strategy to restrain an earthbender. However that is the enduring second when Toph Beifong discovers the particles of earth throughout the steel and invents metalbending. This dramatizes the precise level that Pathik is making on the excellent second, giving us a bodily expression of the non secular lesson.
Aang interprets the concept in a extra easy method: whereas the 4 nations seem divided, they’re all a singular individuals. Pathik compares it to the 4 components as nicely. Although they seem totally different, they’re every an expression of the identical non secular power flowing by way of an individual and expressed within the bodily world.
Now consider the Seven Havens, which really feel way more divided than the 4 nations ever have been. The individuals of Ellora are dominated by concern of the storms rolling in from the Harshlands, and that concern solely grows with the arrival of the Anomaly. If we have a look at the power move of your entire world — which is probably going what Seven Havens desires us to do — we see a world damaged not by storms, however by adverse feelings that drive individuals aside.
Pavi’s imaginative and prescient appears to attract a direct relationship between the Avatar’s non secular life and the broader world. “The Guru” provides the framework for interested by that relationship, even whereas Seven Havens hasn’t made any of this express. When Pavi seems to be at chakras within the cosmos, are they hers, or the world itself? Is Akasha affected by lies and deceit? Do the individuals of New Ba Sing Se expertise nice disgrace? Is the Anomaly purple in Republic Forest?
The toughest lesson is the one Aang can’t settle for
The ultimate chakra complicates every thing Pathik has taught Aang up thus far. He guarantees Aang full management and consciousness over his actions. The thought chakra offers with pure cosmic power and is blocked by earthly attachment. When he thinks about these attachments, all he sees is Katara. He instantly struggles with the obvious contradiction: Why would coaching that helped him embrace love now demand that he let her go? “Three chakras in the past, that was a superb factor!” he says.
Aang desperately desires the power to guard individuals, however the one strategy to let pure cosmic power move in is to let these sorts of attachments go. As Aang walks alongside a stream of sunshine towards an unlimited cosmic model of himself out in house, he senses that Katara in peril. He turns away, the trail collapses, and he abandons his coaching to assist her. And sure, it’s extraordinarily Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Again.
Pavi’s imaginative and prescient on the finish of Seven Havens episode 9 is clearly supposed as a visible callback to this actual scene. However the emotional connection on the coronary heart of it’s in all probability simply as vital. If Aang noticed an enormous model of himself within the Avatar state, and Korra later walked an identical bridge to attach with a equally large astral projection of herself, what does it imply for Pavi to as an alternative see seven monumental chakras? Does the cosmos reveal to every Avatar that which they need, that which they should fulfill their mission, or extra broadly the scope of their future and function within the cosmos itself?
One factor’s for positive: the imagery and themes at play clearly affiliate Ellora with the basis chakra, and the truth that there are seven Havens maps far too neatly onto all the chakras that there must be a higher significance right here. Whether or not or not we’ll get a clearer concept of what this implies is dependent upon what really occurs in the remainder of Seven Havens season 1. That stated, rewatching “The Guru” looks like important homework for anybody who desires to higher perceive what’s occurring in Seven Havens — and what’s going to occur transferring ahead.
Avatar: The Final Airbender is at the moment obtainable to stream on Paramount Plus and Netflix. The ultimate 4 episodes of Avatar: Seven Havens season 1 will likely be launched on Paramount Plus on Oct. 30.
