The 15 Best ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Episodes — Ranked!

As Netflix premieres its live-action reimagining of Avatar: The Last Airbender, there’s no better time to look back on the original animated series and why it keeps capturing people’s hearts and minds. 

Set in a fantasy world inspired by Southeast Asian culture, the series follows Avatar Aang, a 12-year-old chosen one who can “bend” all four of the classical elements — water, earth, fire, and air. Alongside his friends, he must stop the tyrannical Fire Nation.

With three seasons and 61 episodes (counting multi-parters), Avatar: The Last Airbender is the type of linear narrative that wasn’t often seen in American children’s programming — certainly not among the show’s contemporaries on Nickelodeon. 

Picking the show’s best of the best is an Avatar-worthy challenge. Fair warning, your favorite episode may not be on here, but that just speaks to the overall quality of Avatar: The Last Airbender. 

Here are the 15 best episodes of the series:

15. Bitter Work (Season 2 Episode 9)

This show isn’t quite an anime, but it still has a training episode. Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 Episode 9, “Bitter Work,” where Toph Beifong puts Aang through Earthbending classes — as an Air Nomad, the people of spirituality and freedom, he struggles with a martial art that requires stubborn focus and coming down to Earth. 

In the other half of the episode, Iroh trains with Zuko; his speech about the strength of the Four Nations underpins the series’ thesis of balance. The ending of “Bitter Work,” where Zuko screams at a storm to strike him down, and his tears blend into the rain, is the most desperate we’ve seen him, and voice actor Dante Basco more than passes his assignment. 

What’s helped Avatar: The Last Airbender endure the most is the show’s ensemble, so episodes that slow down the story to sit with the characters are vital.

14. The Chase (Season 2 Episode 8)

“Bitter Work” is preceded by one of the most propulsive episodes: Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 Episode 8, “The Chase.” Aang and co. are pursued at night by the relentless posse of Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee.

Compare the half-hour-long pursuit sequence from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or Battlestar Galactica Season 1 Episode 1, “33,” where constant evasion of Cylon pursuers leaves the heroes sleep-deprived.

The initial mystery of Team Avatar’s pursuers makes “The Chase” extra ominous, and the revelation does nothing to alleviate the feeling our heroes are in real danger. 

The episode closes out with an everyone-for-themselves fight between Aang, Zuko, and Azula that shifts to a team-up against the Fire Nation Princess, hinting at how well Zuko could work with his foes if he’d see the light.

13. The Desert (Season 2 Episode 11)

This is not the kind of cartoon where everything goes back to normal in the next episode. So, on Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 Episode 11, “The Desert,” the gang is stuck walking without water after nomads stole Appa in the last episode. 

The loss of his best friend is the toughest trial for Aang yet; the show is about him growing up, and here, he must learn to control his anger. 

Somehow, this sad and sometimes scary episode has the funniest moment in the entire show: Sokka and Momo, desperate for water, drink the hallucinogenic juice of a cactus. 

My favorite part: as the shot goes wide and tilts to the sky to show off the vast desert surrounding them, a delirious Sokka asks: “How did we get out here in the middle of the ocean?!”

12. The Tales of Ba Sing Se (Season 2 Episode 15)

Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 Episode 15, “The Tales of Ba Sing Se,” is another downtime episode. This time, it’s an anthology, putting each of the main characters in smaller solo adventures. It’s a clever way of making the time they spend in the city feel longer than what the audience sees. 

What everyone remembers this one for is “The Tale of Iroh,” though. It’s his son Lu-Ten’s birthday, the same son who died when Iroh tried to take the city he now calls home for the Fire Nation.

Filled with regret and with only a portrait to remember his son, a teary-eyed Iroh sings “Leaves From The Vine,” about a “brave soldier boy” who fell in war. Just to make it worse, the tale ends with a freeze-frame caption, “In Honor of Mako,” Iroh’s voice actor who passed away in 2006 before the series was completed.

11. The Puppetmaster (Season 3 Episode 8)

In Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 3 Episode 8, “The Puppetmaster,” the show delves into horror — not with a hard swerve, but by digging deeper into the fundamentals of its setting and magic system.

Team Avatar meets the elderly Hama, a Waterbender of unsound mind who prisoner-created a new martial art: Bloodbending, or controlling living matter like she can plain water. To defeat her, Katara must learn the dark art too. Both the visuals and oozing sound design of Bloodbending take the show as close to body horror as it can go.

When a writer builds a world as full of possibility as Avatar: The Last Airbender, it’s always a treat to see them work through the more gruesome ones. Writer Tim Hedrick does just that in “The Puppetmaster.”

10. The Avatar and the Fire Lord (Season 3 Episode 6)

Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 3 Episode 6, “The Avatar and the Fire Lord,” has all my favorite qualities of this show: vital character development for Zuko, parallels between said Fire Nation Prince and Aang, and flashbacks that flesh out this marvelous setting. 

“The Avatar and the Fire Lord” features both Aang and Zuko researching the past. Aang is shown the life story of his predecessor, Fire Nation-born Avatar Roku.

Zuko receives a mysterious note imploring him to learn about his great-grandfather’s death.  Not Fire Lord Sozin, the man who started the war and wiped out the Air Nomads, but his maternal great-grandfather: Roku.

Once more, the two sides of Zuko are literalized, for he carries the warring good and evil of the Fire Nation in his blood. The episode, directed by Ethan Spaulding, complements this twist with some mindful framing; take note of how the prison bars of Iroh’s cell partition Zuko’s face. 

9. The Siege of the North (Season 1 Episodes 19 and 20)

Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 1 is the show’s weakest; not bad, just outdone by what the creators made once they’d refined their craft in the next two seasons. Even so, the first season ends on a two-part knockout: Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 1 Episodes 19 and 20, “The Siege of the North.”

It’s this season finale where Avatar: The Last Airbender starts to feel like true epic fantasy, with the stakes that follow. Aang’s encounter with the terrifying Koh The Face Stealer in the Spirit World.

Zuko and Katara’s first duel, matching water against fire, the moon against the sun. Princess Yue’s sacrificial rebirth as the Moon Spirit and Admiral Zhao’s watery grave. Like the characters themselves, the show is beginning to hit its potential.

Avatar: The Last Airbender had never felt bigger before “The Siege of the North” and rarely did afterward.

8. Lake Laogai (Season 2 Episode 17)

The Ba Sing Se arc that closes out Season 2 is one of the most exciting, tightly-written, consequential, and just plain strongest stretches of episodes in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Were it not for the back half of Season 3, I’d even say it’s unquestionably the strongest.

That arc comes to a head in Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2, Episode 17, “Lake Laogai,” when Team Avatar infiltrates the underground base of Ba Sing Se’s secret police, the Dai Li. What puts this episode up a notch from the (also great) ones beside it is Zuko’s big scene.

Iroh finally loses his temper, berating Zuko for not thinking for himself. It’s a lynchpin scene in the pair’s honorary father-son relationship, and Mako’s performance is a sad reminder of how much he’s missed.

7. The Day of the Black Sun (Season 3 Episodes 10 and 11)

Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 3 Episodes 10 and 11, “The Day of the Black Sun,” is the conclusion of Season 3’s first half and a thread that had been spun for about 20 episodes.

Team Avatar and all their allies gather to invade the Fire Nation while an eclipse takes their Firebending away. The battle is epic, but their defeat is inevitable. 

Thankfully, by now, Zuko has finally had a change of heart, leading to the series’ most cathartic moment, where he confronts his father during the Eclipse, finally calling him out and renouncing him. 

Zuko’s rejecting redemption in Season 2 may have stung, but it was the right writing decision; he needed to get Ozai’s approval to learn why he never needed it in the first place. His finally choosing good in “The Day of the Black Sun” shows how satisfying diligent character development is.

6. The Boiling Rock (Season 3 Episodes 14 and 15)

This might be the most purely fun episode on this list — Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 3 Episodes 15 and 16, “The Boiling Rock.” The second and longest of the “Zuko field trip” episodes, this one features him and Sokka infiltrating the Fire Nation’s most secure prison (an island surrounded by a boiling lake) to free Sokka’s father, Hakoda, and his girlfriend, Suki.

Sokka and Zuko make an incredible pairing, with both comic chemistry and complementary skills. It’s this episode, more than any others, that makes me wish there were more episodes of Zuko just spending time as part of Team Avatar.

Plus, Suki gets a long overdue moment to shine as a warrior (not to mention a spot on Team Avatar), while Mai and Ty Lee’s betrayal of Azula in the climax is a long overdue defeat for the Fire Nation Princess. With so many big moments and character chemistry to explore, “The Boiling Rock” earns its two-part status.

5. Zuko Alone (Season 2 Episode 7)

Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 Episode 7, “Zuko Alone,” is a fan-favorite for good reason.

The episode is a Western homage: Zuko rides an (ostrich) horse and wears a straw hat akin to a cowboy’s, the climax is blocked like a gunslinging duel, and the last shot is Zuko riding off into the sunset, the orange glare coloring the frame and making Zuko himself look like a silhouette. From this visual language to the different focus, no other Avatar: The Last Airbender feels quite like “Zuko Alone”

The story of “Zuko Alone” specifically takes after the 1953 Western Shane. In that film, a gunslinger comes to a town, stays with a family, and bonds with their son while trying to ward the boy off the path of violence. Unlike Shane, Zuko leaves because the townsfolk won’t have him after he reveals his Firebending.

Flashbacks to Zuko’s youth explore how he became the troubled boy we know, while his trials in the present help create the man he becomes. 

4. The Crossroads of Destiny (Season 2 Episode 20)

Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 leans a lot on the structure of The Empire Strikes Back. There are no secret twists about anyone’s father, but the season does have a darker narrative, a relentless antagonist (Azula does her best Darth Vader), and the season finale Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 Episode 20, “The Crossroads of Destiny,” creates a downer ending. 

The episode’s title refers mostly to Zuko, though. He’s faced with appeals from the good and bad parts of himself (personified by Iroh and Azula). In the episode’s climax, Zuko makes his choice — and chooses bad.

The results are devastating, but they lead to the best fight in the series up to this point; a two-on-two duel with Aang and Katara fighting Azula and Zuko. In an underground cavern surrounded by all the elements, the four turn their environment into their weapons; the kind of action that makes the show sing.

3. Sozin’s Comet (Season 3 Episodes 18-21)

The legend ends here with a four-part finale, Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 3 Episodes 18-21, “Sozin’s Comet.” 

The stand-out battle is the last Agni Kai between Zuko and Azula in Parts 3 and 4. The battle is scored and choreographed like an opera, with the searing roars of the fire drowned out by Jeremy Zuckermann’s string music. The blue/orange contrast is simple and beautiful.

A series’ worth of growth and unmasked insecurity are thrown against each other, with Zuko and Azula’s fighting styles mirroring their characterization. Grey DeLisle, after a series of voicing Azula as sly and cunning, has a ball with maniacal laughter before wrenching into her soul for Azula’s final breakdown.

The highlight of the finale, though? It’s got to be Zuko and Iroh’s reunion, where Iroh forgives Zuko and helps his nephew forgive himself. I promise those two aren’t the only ones crying in this scene.

2. The Storm (Season 1 Episode 12)

And here we are, the first great episode: Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 1 Episode 12, “The Storm.” As you might’ve guessed, there’s a storm and while it rages, so does the inner turmoil in both Aang and Zuko’s hearts.

The former is confronted by the guilt of having failed as an Avatar while it’s finally revealed how Zuko is a kind boy forced to grow up in a culture and family that burn up good hearts.

If you can only have a single episode to understand Avatar: The Last Airbender, it’s “The Storm.” The essentials of Aang and Zuko’s journeys (one reluctant to embrace his destiny, the other trying hard to fulfill what he thinks is his) are laid here, and they are the two hearts of the show. 

1. The Southern Raiders (Season 3 Episode 16)

I’m going to make an unconventional pick for #1. Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 3 Episode 16, “The Southern Raiders,” is a well-liked episode but usually not ranked as the number one episode. It doesn’t quite have the epic scope of “The Crossroads of Destiny” or “Sozin’s Comet,” but it’s no less climactic.

Written by Elizabeth Welch, this episode features Katara finally confronting the Fire Nation soldier who killed her mother Kya. It’s the culmination of her arc, externalized in her Waterbending mastery, and everything great about the show.

This is Avatar: The Last Airbender at its most mature. It’s not a simple “revenge is bad” message, but rather that healing is complicated. Katara confronts her pain and makes her choice; killing isn’t right for her, and through this trial, she understands herself better. 

“The Southern Raiders” teaches its young target audience how to process conflicting emotions and how life often doesn’t have panaceas. 

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