Is this the best episode of The Last Airbender? “The Ember Island Players” parody episode did what many shows were afraid to do: made fun of itself. A lot.
Episode 3×17 of The Last Airbender took parody to a whole new level when the Gaang travelled to Ember Island right before the finale. What better way to recap the series than calling yourself out for all of the tropes and cheesy elements you knew you didn’t get away with? Plenty of cultural commentary was also thrown in, making this episode gut-bustingly funny.
Here are some of our favorite moments from The Last Airbender episode 3×17, “The Ember Island Players,” as represented with select GIFs.
“Honoooor!”
Poor Zuko. All he’s ever wanted to do was regain his place by his father’s righthand side. In what’s become a joke for the fandom after Zuko’s redundant statements about regaining honor, the creators decided to take this joke one step further by acknowledging it.
“My name’s Toph, cause it sounds like tough!”
The male representation of Top was fantastic. A six foot man playing a young girl? You couldn’t be any more off!
Thankfully, Toph appreciated her representation as much as we did.
“Hope!”
Katara’s character was oversexualized and dramatic, and we loved every moment of it. The Katara in the play couldn’t be any farther from Katara! We’d call this more of a commentary on female protagonists by the fabulous Mike and Bryan.
Seriously, they really laid on the cheese with this one.
“Your scar’s on the wrong side.”
Jeeze, Zuko, you really should’ve tried harder to cosplay as Zuko! You obviously didn’t pay attention to all of the details.
In that we’ve been to both San Diego and New York Comic-Con, we can relate to this situation in that at times, the real actors of characters would go on the showfloor dressed as their character and get called out for not being authentic enough. Little did the critics know…
The special effects
The special effects were the best part of the play, as was noted by the Gaang. Similarily, the same is often said about a certain live-action interpretation…
“You know, it was really unclear…”
This. Line.
It explains everything. We’ve used it many times, including dedicating the title of a an episode of Glee Chat to it.
The moment Sokka is referring to is Jet’s apparent death both on stage and in canon, both of which were left unclear. Creators Mike and Bryan have gone on in commentary to say that they were forced to leave his death ambiguous per the children’s network that their show airs on.