The Big Picture
- Avatar: The Last Airbender's "The Puppetmaster" introduces bloodbending, a horrifying method of physical manipulation and body horror.
- The episode expands the world-building of the series and explores the untapped potential of bending styles.
- Despite being a children's show, "The Puppetmaster" stands as one of the most terrifying moments in TV animation, showcasing the creative and thrilling possibilities of the medium.
Just as most other genres build on preconceived expectations of content and tone, horror media sets an immediate precedent to explore terror in all of its forms. Whether it's psychological dread or good old-fashioned slasher thrills, the horror genre embraces the peaks in adrenaline and often thought-provoking introspection that occur when tapping into the primal and modern fears that dwell within anyone who watches it. However, horror is of course not the only genre to capitalize on the unknown darkness of the world, and some of the most bloodcurdling stories can come from the most unexpected and even child-friendly places. From the start, Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino’s Nickelodeon animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender billed itself as a young adult-oriented martial arts fantasy epic overtly inspired by various Asian cultures, mythologies, and the anime style. From global politics to spiritual philosophy, Avatar was a show that incorporated a wide range of tones and themes that grew with its audience as its characters matured along their journey to restore balance to the world. They could naturally juggle bizarre surrealist comedy with heart-wrenching drama and character pathos. In this spirit, the latter season featured a genuinely morbid survival tale of body horror that expanded on the possibilities of one of the series’ long-established abilities.
'Avatar: The Last Airbender's "The Puppetmaster" Has Ominous Build-Up and Chilling Pay-Off
.jpeg)
The eighth episode of the show’s third and final season, ominously entitled “The Puppetmaster”, first finds the heroes of Team Avatar continually roaming the dangerous Fire Nation countryside in disguise, blending in as normal citizens as they make their way through the enemy kingdom to a rendezvous point to meet with their allies’ invasion forces for the upcoming “Day of Black Sun”. As the team is getting ready to rest for the night in a makeshift camp in the woods, they meet a seemingly friendly old innkeeper named Hama, voiced by Tress McNeille. The elderly woman gives the team shelter for the night, and they begin to learn more about her secluded life in the fire nation. This culminates in the discovery that she is actually a waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe, which relieves the team and particularly excites Katara (Mae Whitman), who thought she was the only waterbender in her tribe.
Taken with Hama’s stories of survival against the fire nation invaders that wiped out the other waterbenders of their tribe, Katara is eager to learn from Hama the southern style firsthand and how to adapt like she has. While this is going on, Aang (Zach Tyler Eisen), Sokka (Jack De Sena), and Toph (Michaela Murphy) investigate a series of mysterious disappearances that have taken place in local villages in the nights surrounding the full moon. By bending all the water out of a field of flowers, Hama shows Katara that water can be found in any living thing and pulled right out of thin air, teaching her that a waterbender must be creative in looking where to find bendable water to survive in war, especially while in the Fire nation.
The episode ultimately builds to the terrifying revelation of how Hama escaped fire nation captivity. By manipulating the blood inside the rats in her cell and then the very guards that kept her prisoner, Hama created the art of bloodbending, making her a macabre puppetmaster that the episode’s title alluded to. The technique is only possible for particularly gifted waterbenders during the night of a full moon, which was previously established in the first season as offering waterbenders enhanced bending strength. After revealing that she was the one making villagers disappear during the full moon, Hama offers Katara the chance to learn the skill to help her take further vengeance on the nation that nearly wiped out their tribe years ago. After a lengthy battle with Hama, Katara is forced to use bloodbending herself in order to save her friends and the episode concludes with her devastated by the ability she now possesses.
RELATED: From Koh to Azula: The Top 9 'Avatar' and 'Legend of Korra' Villains
Bloodbending Gave the World of 'Avatar' a New Fear
The introduction of bloodbending as a method of physical manipulation and genuinely disturbing body horror grippingly expands on the scope of Avatar’s world-building and reexamines the possibilities of the series’ first established bending styles. As the series progressed from its first season, it began to slowly reveal the untapped potential and sub-styles of the established original bending styles. Toph learns how to bend metal, Zuko (Dante Basco) learns to redirect lightning and each bending style is revealed to have its own set of advantages and limitations. Bloodbending answers the morbid curiosity of it being possible to bend the liquids within the human body. The way Hama controls the bodies of her victims through bending is portrayed in an unnatural and torturous physicality akin to something out of Evil Dead or The Exorcist. Characters under Hama’s control are animated eerily like human puppets and the sound design incorporates the visceral tension of bones and veins whenever blood is bent.
Bloodbending is scarcely featured in other Avatar media after this episode. It is revealed in the sequel series The Legend of Korra that bloodbending is an incredibly rare skill that is treated as taboo among benders and overtly outlawed. The villain Amon (Steve Blum) uses bloodbending to not only control his victims but also to block their chi and steal their bending away permanently.
The horror genre is far and away a reliable source for speculative horror fiction and fantastical dread, but the tonal limitations and censorship put on "children's media" ironically grants their creators the opportunity to creatively imagine entirely new concepts to thrill and scare young viewers. “The Puppetmaster” stands among the ranks of Courage the Cowardly Dog as one of the most terrifying moments in TV animation history to instill terror in new and exciting ways. Just as the art of bending was envisioned as a way to have action without straightforward violence, bloodbending used the world-building and rules of Avatar’s world to create imagery and scenes that reach farther than conventional horror genre tropes. The reason the horror of “The Puppetmaster” is so effective is that, while it is shocking, it stands as a natural progression of the themes and tone the series had been maturing to along with its audience.
