Aang

Aang was a male Air Nomad born in 12 BG and the Avatar during the Hundred Year War, succeeding Avatar Roku and preceding Avatar Korra. As the Avatar of his time, he was the only person capable of using all four bending arts: airbending, waterbending, earthbending, and firebending. He was also one of a select few Avatars and one of the first in many cycles to learn the ancient art of energybending and the first Avatar known to have actively used the technique.
Shortly before the beginning of the Hundred Year War, Aang was frozen in an iceberg for a hundred years; he later emerged, still biologically twelve years old, into a world engulfed by war. During his absence, the Fire Nation had waged war upon the other nations and managed to completely wipe out the pacifistic Air Nomads. It fell to Aang, the Avatar and the last airbender, to end the War by mastering the other three elements and defeating Fire Lord Ozai. He remained a kind and goofy kid at heart throughout his year-long struggle, despite the overwhelming loss of his people and the heavy burdens he was forced to bear. After his victory over the Phoenix King, Aang began a romantic relationship with his close friend, Katara. The couple eventually married and raised a family of three children: Bumi, the oldest, a nonbender who became an airbender later in life; Kya, a waterbender; and the youngest, Tenzin, an airbender.
Aang was born to two Air Nomads in 12 BG. After selecting the Avatar relics from among thousands of toys, thereby inadvertently confirming his identity as the Avatar, he was taken away by the monks of the Southern Air Temple, who kept his position a secret from him. As an Air Nomad, Aang traveled extensively around the world. During his childhood, Aang was housed, raised, and educated at the Southern Air Temple, under the guardianship of monk Gyatso, who served as his father figure, counselor, and tutor. After some time, he and several other young Air Nomad boys were taken to the Eastern Air Temple, where they each chose a sky bison as their lifelong companion. Aang approached his soon-to-be sky bison Appa and offered him an apple, which Appa accepted, thus marking the start of their deep and lifelong friendship.
Aang was always able to excel at any new bending moves he learned; at the age of six, he was a better airbender than children twice his age, and by the age of ten, Aang had proven himself to be better than his own teachers. He earned airbending tattoos and the status of an airbending master by the age of twelve for exhibiting prodigious talent with his native element and with his invention of the air scooter, making him the youngest airbending master in Air Nomad history.
In his childhood, Aang also visited the other air temples, as evidenced by his obvious familiarity with the Western Air Temple, as well as cities in the Earth Kingdom, such as Omashu, where he developed a lasting friendship with the good-natured but eccentric Bumi. He bonded closely with children in the Fire Nation, like Kuzon, with whom he went searching for a dragon in the mountains and saved a dragon egg from poachers.
Due to the signs of a possible war approaching, Aang was told about his status as the Avatar at the age of twelve, four years earlier than the traditional age of sixteen. Aang felt burdened by his status as the other children refused to play with him anymore, and he came to spend more time practicing airbending with the monks. Monk Gyatso was the only one who showed an understanding of Aang's burden, having been good friends with Avatar Roku, Aang's past life, and tried to help ease Aang through the transition from childhood to adulthood by providing Aang with balance through fun during the upheaval in his life.
However, Aang later discovered that he would be sent to the Eastern Air Temple in order to complete his airbending training far away from Monk Gyatso, whom the other monks thought was too soft on him. Afraid and confused, the young airbender ran away with his flying bison, Appa, though they became caught in a storm shortly after, which caused them to crash into the water. Aang saved himself and Appa from drowning by semi-consciously entering the Avatar State and freezing them both in a sphere of ice through a combination of airbending and waterbending. The Avatar State kept him alive, albeit not fully conscious, in the iceberg for about a hundred years while the war raged on.
One hundred years later, Aang was found and freed from the iceberg by siblings Katara and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe. He quickly befriended them and almost immediately attracted the attention of Prince Zuko, who sought to capture him on the command of his father, Fire Lord Ozai. A newly formed Team Avatar set out to find a waterbending master who could teach Katara and Aang, evading Zuko's attempts to capture them on their journey to the North Pole. While helping rid Senlin Village of Hei Bai, a spirit that was destroying their village, Aang crossed over to the Spirit World where he met Fang, the animal guide of his predecessor, Avatar Roku. He was instructed to visit the Avatar Temple on Crescent Island during the winter solstice so he could talk with Avatar Roku. Despite a confrontation with most of the Fire Sages, whose loyalty had turned from the Avatar to the Fire Lord, Aang managed to speak with Roku, who warned him about the impending arrival of Sozin's Comet, which would grant the Fire Nation enough power to win the war.
Roku urged Aang to master the three remaining elements before summer's end when the comet was due to arrive, or no one would ever be able to restore balance to the world. When Aang was later captured by Admiral Zhao, Zuko came to his aid under the identity of the Blue Spirit, freeing the former so that he could capture the Avatar himself. Aang, Sokka, and Katara continued their travels to the Northern Water Tribe, while developing a tighter bond, as Aang began to develop a crush for Katara. Upon the group's arrival at the Northern Water Tribe, Aang was displeased to learn that the waterbending master, Pakku, would not teach Katara due to the law barring women learning combative waterbending, and was instead instructed to heal. However, she was able to change Pakku's mind, and they both began to learn from him. The period of calm was brief, as Zhao commanded an attack on the Northern Water Tribe with a large fleet of ships. At Princess Yue's suggestion, Aang decided to seek the guidance of the Ocean and Moon Spirits, patrons of the Northern Water Tribe. Aang learned through a spirit named Koh that the spirits existed in the mortal world, but his physical self had been captured by Zuko while he was in the Spirit World. Aang's friends managed to rescue him, but not before Zhao arrived at the Spirit Oasis and killed the Moon Spirit, who was the source of power for waterbenders. Determined not to fail the Water Tribe, Aang merged with the Ocean Spirit and proceeded to annihilate the Fire Nation ships, winning the battle and forcing them to retreat.
Aang and his friends left the North on a ship with Pakku and several others before flying to an Earth Kingdom base, from where they were to be escorted to Omashu in order for Aang to learn earthbending from King Bumi. The trio decided to travel alone as the general commanding the fortress tried to force Aang into the Avatar State, causing chaos and destruction. Upon arriving at Omashu, they learned that the city had fallen to the Fire Nation. Seeking to save the king, Aang and his friends evacuaded citizens from the city in order to aid the Omashu Resistance, but in the process, the governor's son Tom-Tom followed them out. Team Avatar was sent a messenger hawk reporting that the governor would trade the king for his son, but Princess Azula reneged on the deal, leading to a skirmish between the Avatar and princess's allies. While he managed to find Bumi, the king told Aang that he would not leave Omashu, and encouraged him to find a master who embodied the principles of neutral jing. While in the city of Gaoling, the team heard about and attended a tournament that supposedly featured the best earthbenders in the world, hoping to find an earthbending teacher for Aang. At the end of the tournament, they witnessed the final fight between one of the popular contestants and the current champion, a blind girl. During the match, Aang realized the girl was the same one he had received a vision of while lost in the Foggy Swamp and noticed her technique of waiting and listening before attacking, easily defeating her opponent. The ringmaster offered a sack of gold pieces to anyone who dared to face the Blind Bandit. Aang accepted the challenge in order to talk to the girl, but she ignored him after he caught her off guard by deflecting her attack with airbending.
The group learned that the girl belonged to the Beifong family and visited their estate, posing as a formal visit by the Avatar. However, he learned that the earthbender, a girl named Toph, was hiding her true abilities from her family. When she and Aang were kidnapped, Toph managed to fight off all the attackers, revealing her skill to her parents, and ran away from home in order to join Aang's group. Due to earth being the elemental opposite of air, Aang struggled to learn earthbending, but within the first day of training, he managed to stand his ground and successfully earthbend. Soon after, Team Avatar was separated during a Fire Nation ambush. As they were searching for Katara, Aang, Toph, and Sokka captured a Fire Nation soldier. Aang was left disturbed by this encounter, as the young man frantically believed the Air Nomads to be evil. Team Avatar was soon reunited with the aid of Jiang's pirates.
While taking a brief vacation to Misty Palms Oasis, the group was led to Wan Shi Tong's library in the middle of the Si Wong Desert and learned valuable information on a solar eclipse that would leave the firebenders powerless. After emerging from the library, they discovered that they had lost Appa, who had been captured and sold by desert tribesmen. After meeting the kidnappers and learning of Appa's fate, an enraged Aang entered the Avatar State and destroyed the tribes' sand-sailers. In spite Appa's absence, the group aimed to travel to Ba Sing Se and inform the Earth King in order to plan an invasion of the Fire Nation. After finding their way out of the desert and crossing the Serpent's Pass, the group discovered a giant Fire Nation drill trying to penetrate the Outer Wall of Ba Sing Se. General Sung was reluctant at first to accept the group's help, but after witnessing the quick defeat of his Terra Team at the hands of Ty Lee and Mai, he gladly accepted the Avatar's assistance. In a joint effort, the group managed to defeat Azula's team and destroy the drill.
Upon reaching Ba Sing Se, Aang discovered that the city was the site of a conspiracy; true power did not lie with the Earth King, but with Grand Secretariat Long Feng, who controlled the Dai Li, Ba Sing Se's secret police. The group learned of and infiltrated Long Feng's secret base in Lake Laogai, believing that he was holding Appa captive. After reuniting with the sky bison, they stormed the palace and informed Earth King Kuei of Long Feng's betrayal. After convincing the king to arrest Long Feng and plan for an invasion on the day of the eclipse, the king's men searched Long Feng's office and found a message for Aang from Guru Pathik that had been tied to Appa's horn. The message was a request for Aang to meet the guru at the Eastern Air Temple and learn to control the Avatar State. After journeying to the temple, Pathik helped Aang open all his chakras but one, the Thought Chakra, as he refused to let go of his connection to Katara after receiving a vision of her in danger. Aang reunited with Sokka and Toph on the journey back to the city, and learned that Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee had infiltrated the city. After reuniting with Katara in the Crystal Catacombs, the pair began to fight both Zuko and Katara, before the arrival of the Dai Li, who had turned to the side of the Fire Nation princess. Aang successfully entered the Avatar State, but was struck with a lightning bolt fired by Azula. The severe attack rendered his seventh chakra impossible to re-open and mortally wounded him while he was in the Avatar State, severing the connection of the Avatar Spirit to the world and threatening the end of the Avatar Cycle. Katara caught Aang while he fell to the ground, being able to escape thanks to Iroh's unexpected intervention. While escaping the city on Appa, Katara used water from the Spirit Oasis to revive him, restoring the Avatar Spirit in turn, but he still remained grievously injured.
For several weeks, Aang remained unconscious as he recovered from his injury. Aang awoke in the Spirit World, where he underwent a long journey to reconnect with his four most recent incarnations in order to heal the Avatar Spirit. When Aang awoke, he had no memory of his time in the Spirit World, finding himself aboard a Fire Nation vessel and sporting hair, leading him to believe that he had been captured, though he soon learned that the ship was commandeered by Team Avatar and their allies. Upon reaching the Fire Nation, the team prepared for the invasion on the day of the eclipse, and disguised themselves as civilians. However, the team soon encountered a mysterious assassin that they dubbed as Combustion Man, who tracked them down across the Fire Nation. On the day of the eclipse, Aang, Sokka, and Toph searched for Fire Lord Ozai in an underground bunker beneath the capital, but were kept at bay by Azula for the entire duration of the eclipse. Realizing that the day had been lost, they retreated to the Western Air Temple with their youngest allies.
Team Avatar split up after the Hundred Year War, and Aang devoted his time to restoring peace and order in the world. He helped to repatriate many Fire Nation colonists. After one year, however, Zuko unexpectedly withdrew his support for the decolonization efforts. Disturbed, Aang and Katara traveled to the colony of Yu Dao. There, the Fire Lord and Avatar could not agree on a course of action, as Zuko regarded the oldest colonies as prosperous communities which had the right to exist, while Aang saw them as a continued threat to the balance between the four nations. Regardless, Aang and Katara pledged to find a peaceful solution, deciding to address Earth King Kuei to this end. In Ba Sing Se, Aang was surprised and happy to discover the Official Avatar Aang Fan Club, a group that had devoted itself to learning the ways of the Air Nomads. In contrast, the meeting with Kuei went poorly, as the king decided to remove the colonies by force. Aang and Katara hurried back to Yu Dao to convince the locals to leave before a new war could ignite. Faced with obstination from the colonists as well as Earth Kingdom nationalists, he struggled to find a peaceful solution until the chaotic Battle for Yu Dao erupted. Fearing that he would have to kill Zuko to prevent another war, Aang eventually concluded that it was no longer possible to keep the nations apart and that the Fire Lord was right. To this end, the Avatar stopped the battle and convinced Kuei to allow the old colonies to stay, albeit as self-governing polities. He also transformed the Official Avatar Aang Fan Club into the first Air Acolytes to revive Air Nomad culture.
After solving the Yu Dao crisis, Aang, Katara, and Sokka decided to help Zuko in his search for his long-lost mother, Ursa. Doing so, they were forced to work with Azula, who had crucial information on Ursa's whereabouts. After a tense encounter with a wolf spirit, the group arrived in the remote village of Hira'a. There, they stayed at the home of two friendly actors, Noren and Noriko, but lost track of Zuko's mother. However, the group learned that Ursa's ex-boyfriend Ikem had disappeared in the nearby Forgetful Valley. At this deeply spiritual forested area, the Avatar and his comrades met Rafa and Misu, Water Tribe siblings who were seeking the aid of a powerful spirit known as the Mother of Faces. Aang offered his help, crossed over into the Spirit World, and convinced the ancient spirit to grant them one wish. Team Avatar decided to spend the spirit's goodwill to help Rafa and Misu. However, Azula interjected and took the wish for herself, causing the Mother of Faces to reveal that she had helped Ikem and Ursa to start a new life by granting them new faces, those of Noren and Noriko, while also wiping Ursa's memories. Azula promptly took off, followed by Zuko and Sokka, as Aang and Katara attempted to convince the Mother of Faces to grant a second wish to help Rafa and Misu. A fight ensued, as the Mother felt that the humans were disrespectful and sent her spirit followers to attack them. While fending off the spirits, Aang accidentally blew off Rafa's mask, revealing that his face had been stolen by Koh, the son of the Mother of Faces. Revealing that an Avatar had once spared Koh, Aang managed to convince her to grant Rafa a new face. Soon after, the spirit also restored Ursa's face and memories. Aang and his friends consequently accompanied Zuko, Ursa, Noren, and their daughter Kiyi back to the Fire Nation Capital.
After the Hundred Year War and the tensions of the Harmony Restoration Movement conflict, Aang managed to maintain peace. Together with Fire Lord Zuko and the rest of their friends, he transformed all the former Fire Nation colonies into the United Republic of Nations. Cranefish Town, renamed "Republic City", became the new state's capital and the home to people from all nations. Aang worked closely with Zuko to allow Republic City to grow into a prosperous and safe environment and had to deal with a growing number of bending criminals from the city's early days.
Aang also spearheaded the restoration of the four ancient air temples and constructed a fifth air temple near the heart of Republic City, called Air Temple Island, where he housed a herd of surviving flying bison, along with a new type of winged lemur, the ring-tailed winged lemur, both of which he found some time after the war.
Sometime during this period, Aang married Katara, and they had three children: Bumi, a nonbender who gained the ability to airbend in 171 AG, Kya, a waterbender, and Tenzin, an airbender. When Tenzin turned five, Aang began to collect a series of stories and mementos from his life for his youngest son to read following his death. Despite the peace the world was experiencing, family problems plagued the Avatar. Due to Aang's second responsibility of preserving Air Nomad culture, he spent more time and traveled more extensively with Tenzin, his only airbending child, so as to instill him with Air Nomad traditions. This made the elder siblings feel somewhat distant from their father. Despite this, Kya was still comfortable enough to reveal her sexual orientation to him; being completely acceptable in Air Nomad culture, Aang was naturally supportive of her.
In 128 AG, the city was suffering from a high rate of crime due to a notorious crime boss named Yakone. The fact that he was a master bloodbender, yet managed to stay out of the law's reach for a long time, caused Aang to find it necessary to assist the Chief of Police, Toph Beifong at the time, in his arrest in order to bring him to justice. Aang, Toph, and her metalbending officers apprehended the crime lord at Kwong's Cuisine. The criminal did not resist, and despite Aang saying that they knew that he was a bloodbender, Yakone claimed that he would beat the charges again. After attending his arrest, Aang was present at Yakone's trial and sat behind the defendant in the gallery, where Yakone was convicted of his crimes. However, before the sentence could be carried out, Yakone used his powers to subdue everyone in the courtroom, leaving them unconscious. Aang was capable of holding out longest, but he lost consciousness as well after Yakone used his skill to levitate the Avatar in the air and throw him against the stairs leading up to the court's platform.
However, employing the Avatar State, Aang regained his senses, allowing him to pursue the criminal. He effectively halted Yakone's getaway by severing his mount from the carriage he was perched upon with an air swipe. Hovering around on an enhanced air scooter, Aang was subdued a second time by Yakone's bloodbending, who now fully intended to kill him. Entering the Avatar State, however, allowed Aang to break free of Yakone's grip, and he swiftly captured Yakone in an earth shell before utilizing energybending to permanently remove his bending.
The one hundred years Aang had spent frozen in an iceberg while in the Avatar State drained much of his inherent life energy, and by his later years, the strain of this began to weigh heavily upon his body. With his health failing and sensing his end was near, Aang tasked the Order of the White Lotus to search for and watch over the next Avatar. Eventually, at the relatively young biological age of sixty-six, Aang passed away. He was reincarnated into a headstrong, hot-headed, and rebellious girl named Korra from the Southern Water Tribe.
A massive statue of Avatar Aang was created on Aang Memorial Island, a small island located in Yue Bay. A teenage Aang is depicted wearing Air Nomad monk robes and holding a staff with the airbending symbol on top, overlooking the city he founded with the help of his friends. The statue was created and donated by the Fire Nation as a sign of peace and goodwill.
As is tradition, a statue of Aang was also added to the inner sanctuary of the Southern Air Temple in order to keep the line of statues of past Avatars up to date. His statue stood in the middle of the assemblage.