Avatar: The Last Airbender is an animated television series and franchise that is known to be a pinnacle project when it comes to western animation, even rivaling many of the most popular animes in a variety of ways. The story of the show holds a complete plot full of emotion-stirring moments, enticing character development, and beautifully immersive lore. Throughout the three-season run of Avatar: The Last Airbender, we have had the pleasure of being introduced to many diabolically villainous characters who have added much to the story by raising the stakes for our main characters, Team Avatar, while offering varying levels of threat to the future of the world.
While Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel, The Legend of Korra, have given audiences some incredible heroes, those same characters have taken a back seat to the series’ more cynical and evil characters at times. This is not to say that our main cast of protagonists is uninteresting; rather, it is a testament to the fantastic presentation and development of the villains of both series. Even though it’s a commonly shared opinion that the sequel series had thestronger cast of villains, that isn’t equivalent to Avatar: The Last Airbenderhaving incompetent villains or poor writing of them. Without comparing the series’ villains too much, let’s go through the villains of Avatar: The Last Airbender and rank them according to threat level.
7 The Bloodbender Hama
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The character Hama is introduced to the show during the third season and, on the surface, seems like a normal, reclusive, elderly waterbending woman. Unfortunately, the truth behind her past and present situations is nothing less than horrible and fairly traumatizing. At the time, Hama was the only known practitioner of an incredibly powerful waterbending subsection known as bloodbending, and was using this skill to enact a secret evil revenge plan upon innocent Fire Nation citizens. She would heinously abduct wandering citizens during full moons (the only time she could use bloodbending due to the moon grating waterbenders’ immense power), and imprison them in a cave at the top of a hill.
Team Avatar, specifically Katara, puts an end to her wrongdoings after the truth is unveiled, and her deception is seen through. Hama tried her best to befriend Team Avatar when they came to meet each other, giving them shelter at her inn and attempting to slowly indoctrinate Katara into becoming a bloodbender in order to harass more of the Fire Nation, continuing to seek revenge for her people’s suffering. Hama taught Katara bloodbending as well as other waterbending techniques, before being ousted and defeated by Katara during a spine-tingling battle under a full moon.
6 The Spirit Koh (The Face Stealer)
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The Spirit Koh is an incredibly horrid and malevolent entity who resides in the spirit world, seeking faces to “collect” off of anyone who it comes into contact with, especially from individuals who have committed wrongdoings. This centipede-like creature offers advice and answers to any brave soul who would risk losing their face in pursuit of them; the key is to stay emotionless in the presence of Koh. Koh is an ancient spirit, having met many Avatars, even stealing the face of Avatar Kuruk’s lover, Ummi, centuries prior to meeting Aang. Koh offers a great horror factor in the series, and while it isn’t a villain in the classic sense, Koh definitely holds a huge threat level when you face him; you better have your best poker face at the ready or else. Koh appears in a few Avatar: The Last Airbender episodes and is disturbing in every appearance.
5 Admiral Zhao
Admiral Zhao, formally General, is a Fire Nation Admiral who was tasked with recovering the Avatar only after Aang was confirmed to have returned following a 100-year span without him (being trapped in an iceberg and all). While Admiral Zhao holds much authority in the Fire Nation military, being the leader of its navy, and commands a huge fleet of ships, soldiers, and artillery, he is such a failure every time we see him. We are introduced to Zhao fairly early in the series, during the first season, and he takes a backseat to Prince Zuko as the main antagonist from the start. He is overconfident, arrogant even, which gets in his way during his missions to capture Aang for the Fire Nation.
Admiral Zhao managed to be a thorn in the side of Team Avatar for a good portion of the series’ first two seasons, and even captured Aang for a short time. He is a very experienced fire bender, capable of beating most benders in the world, and is as physically gifted as anybody in the series. Zhao may have been bested by Team Avatar, Zuko, and the Northern Water Tribe on a handful of occasions, but he is still a decorated, leading figure in the tyrannical Fire Nation and holds great power over its military might.
4 Prince Zuko
While Prince Zuko ended up becoming a core member of Aang’s Team Avatar and a key contributor to the combined efforts to stop his father and the Fire Nation’s 100-year conquest of dominance, he started off as a bitter antagonist struggling to find the elusive avatar. Thanks to people like his mother and his uncle Iroh, Zuko has an incredibly pure heart, though he has suffered so much at the hands of his father, Fire Lord Ozai, and the Fire Nation that his destiny was unaligned for quite a while. He had his mother ripped out of his life, was subjected to a severe beating at the hands of his father; was constantly harassed by his sister Azula, and was exiled from his nation, with his only hope of returning, being him finding and capturing the Avatar.
Zuko possesses great firebending power and skill, ranking among the top firebenders in the entire Avatar franchise, but he offers much more than just technical and procedural ability. Zuko tracked down the avatar through sheer resiliency, in addition to the constant support and wisdom of his uncle Iroh, only accompanied by his own ship and very small crew. Even after becoming a legit outlaw of the Fire Nation and having to hide amongst citizens in Earth Kingdom cities, he was still a huge threat as the anti-hero, The Blue Spirit. During Avatar: The Last Airbender, Zuko has had Aang and/or other Team Avatar members in his clutches, but has been unable to secure the capture or elimination of them due to unforeseen aid, or a conflict of immediate interest.
Even after his acceptance back into the Fire Nation, after he was ordered off the trail/mission of securing Aang, and before his turn to good, Zuko sent a mercenary to eliminate Team Avatar. The Combustion Man was an incredibly dangerous mercenary who could shoot explosive beams out of his forehead, a highly unique firebending technique. He was successful in injuring Toph and really backed Team Avatar into a corner before meeting his timely death by a perfectly thrown boomerang attack from Sokka. In short, Zuko was a mastermind in many ways, being extensively crafty, showing great resiliency, and honing many formidable skills from the young age of 13; if he didn’t realize his destiny was to help Aang learn firebending and become part of Team Avatar, the war could have definitely gone in the favor of the Fire Nation.
3 Long Feng (& The Dai-Li)
Long Feng is an incredibly diabolical and increasingly greedy character in the Avatar World, being the leader of a CIA-like undergrown organization, the Dai-Li, who operate outside the Earth King’s rule. Long Feng works to undermine the Earth King’s best wishes and decisions by maintaining an underground black market as well as abducting Earth King citizens and indoctrinating them into an M.K. Ultra-type mind control program. While the Earth King is the ruling figure of the nation, Long Feng being his right-hand man, he isn’t really the person calling the shots; Long Feng is under the control of most of the Earth Kingdom’s affairs underhandedly and is a de facto dictator. Long Feng held such sway in the Earth Kingdom that even after his uncovering and unraveling, leading to his arrest, the Dai-Li continued to do dirty work and wrongful deeds for decades.
Long Feng was an extremely formidable earth bender, though even more proficient at bending the truth. Long Feng kept the Earth King in the dark about the entire 100-year war as well as the poverty-stricken parts of the Earth Kingdom, making it much easier for him and the Dai-Li to control events in their country. Long Feng held captive Appa, Aang’s trusted animal companion, in a sort of liar under the Earth Kingdom capital city of Ba-Sing Se, which would end up being the thing that led to his downfall.
During the captivity of Appa, Avatar Aang led his team into the tunnel infrastructure, and only with the help of Zuko as the Blue Spirit and the ragtag freedom fighter group led by Jett were they able to recover their missing flying bison friend. If it was just Team Avatar on this mission, up against Long Feng and the Dai-Li, Aang may not have been able to fulfill his destiny of putting an end to the tyranny of Fire Lord Ozai and ceasing the great 100-year war. Because of Long Feng’s pull in the Earth Kingdom, leadership over the Dai-Li, and overall mischievously diabolical personality, he was one of Aang’s and Team Avatar’s greatest threats.
2 Princess Azula
Princess Azula, daughter of Fire Lord Ozai and brother to Prince Zuko, was the most villainous and inheritably evil of all of Aang’s enemies. Since her adolescence, Azula has been cruel, power-hungry, secretly insecure, and highly manipulative towards nearly everyone, her mother and brother included. While she has many strong character traits, such as determination, power, assurance, and enthusiasm, these qualities are motivated by some of the worst reasons. She wishes to have no one above her, only subordinates and subjects who fear her. Throughout the series, she undermines her brother’s best ideals, ruins his best chances, and actively harasses him to the brink of mental breakdown.
While her torment and abuse of Zuko is apparent and increases in volatility, her pursuit of Team Avatar equally shows her to be an exceedingly evil antagonist in Avatar: The Last Airbender. There are many instances in the show where Azula both actively and second-handedly has missions that directly add to more conflict for Aang and his allies. She sends mercenaries after Team Avatatar, sets up a unique three-woman task force to track Team Avatar—made up of herself, Ty Lee, and Mai (two friends of hers that offer incredible fighting prowess), and even plays dirty by luring Aang to the Earth Kingdom after overthrowing King Kuei.
Azula is more than just a wicked character who craves more power and fearful respect; she has a plethora of mental obscurities and issues. She holds self-resentment deep within herself, through all the layers of her inherited anger, rage, and unquenchable thirst for dominance. As the series builds up to the climatic third season’s end, all of her self-hatred issues and deep-rooted mistakes come to the surface as she loses grip on herself and her mental state worsens. It will be extremely fascinating, yet heartbreaking, to see a live-action portrayal of a character who is naturally powerful, gifted, and mentally unstable claw their way to more control in a tyrannical nation fueled by hatred and self-proclaimed dominance.
1 Fire Lord Ozai
Fire Lord Ozai, there isn’t much that needs to be said about his inherited malicious intent, like his daughter Azula, and the evil ways instilled in him from such a young age. This tyrant was the third in a lineage of Fire Nation rulers during the 100-year Great War, which began after his grandfather, Fire Lord Sozin, betrayed Avatar Roku and began a conquest for world domination. Ozai is extremely hellish and holds incredibly deranged intentions in which he continues the crusade of ridding the world of the Avatar in order to complete the ongoing war efforts begun by his grandfather. He is the series’ main antagonist and holds, hands down, the best firebending style and technique in the entire series.
But, Lord Ozai is unapologetic, willing to do whatever it may take to finish off the remaining world’s rebellious efforts that offer any competition against his nation’s war. He was known at the time to be the greatest of all the Fire Lords, surpassing the status of even his grandfather, Sozin, thanks to his power and intelligence, only matched by his brother’s, Iroh’s, technique and wisdom. Throughout the series, Ozai is instrumental in continuing dominance during the 100-year war, tracking down Team Avatar, and nearly finishing the war efforts in favor of the Fire Nation during the firebending power-up of Sozin’s Comet. Thankfully for the world, Avatar Aang is no pushover; even though Aang couldn’t bring himself to eliminate Ozai and take a life, he was blessed with the knowledge of the mythical Giant Lion turtles and learned how to extract someone’s bending forever.
Ozai committed countless atrocities during his reign as Fire Lord, granting him the number one spot on our list. Ozai deserved no father of the year award after mutilating, then banishing, his only son, Prince Zuko, and brainwashing, then shipping off his wife in the hopes of breaking Zuko and Azula’s attachment at such a young age. His unending desire to rule the world as Phoenix King Ozai, coupled with the overwhelming evilness in his bones, made for one hell of a vile tyrant and antagonist of the Avatar World.
