In this episode, Aang, Sokka, and Katara are still on their journey with their flying bison, Appa, opening the episode over a beautiful overview of mid to high level clouds and suddenly make their way to a large forest covered region that seems to have a huge section of the forest that seems to be torched to destruction; possibly by the Fire Nation. Aang feels saddened that he couldn’t keep such destruction from happening until he truly learns all that he must know to be a successful Avatar. Suddenly Katara throws an acorn at Aang and Sokka, and reassures Aang that the forest will grow back in due time.
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Aang is still not too sure of himself, but is willing to try his luck at such a challenge, leaving Katara to remain quite confident in him, and Sokka to remain very sarcastic.
It's nightfall, and as Aang tries to get the spirit’s attention it seems like everything ends easily, but not until the spirit suddenly appears from behind, standing at an incredible size compared to Aang. The spirit starts to move at very high speeds across the village, destroying buildings, causing a large mess. Aang tries everything from being very nice about asking the spirit to leave, to suddenly being very authoritative. Most of Aang’s tactics are almost useless. Realizing this, Sokka grows aggravated about the situation, and runs out to the location of the fight between Aang and the spirit. The spirit moves past Aang immediately and grabs ahold of Sokka, beginning a high speed chase between the spirit and Aang as they chase through the small forest path that separates the village and rest of the forest. Katara, on the other hand, is left to wait at the village until Aang gets Sokka back and rescues the village.
Meanwhile, the chase is still taking place, and as Aang closes in towards where the spirit is still holding a good grip on Sokka, the spirit and Sokka both disappear, leaving Aang to suddenly fall off of his glider and hit a small circular looking clearing, laying unconscious on the ground for a while. Suddenly ,Aang wakes up and feels that he has failed. He gets back to the village where Katara and the people of the village are located, and walks to Katara and tells her that he has failed. The only problem is that Aang is in the spirit world, where he can only see Katara and the village people, but unable to communicate with them or anyone in real world mode.
This episode ends with the spirit finally being calmed, and members of the village, including Sokka, returning to the real world, and to the village. Aang had managed to talk to the spirit, and tell the "Hei Bai" that the forest will grow back, and that he understands the frustration and the anger.
Sokka and Katara both ask where Aang has been for the past while, and Aang explains that he was in what seemed like a quick spirit journey, where he learned that one of the ways that he could talk to the right person about being “The Avatar” was at a temple sitting high on what seemed to be a mountain range. The bad news is, the temple is located in the location of the Fire Nation.
This was a deep feeling episode, filled with excitement and, once again, spooky moments considering the speed and appearance of the spirit, "Hei Bai." The moments of being at the [Fire] temple, and watching time go in high–speed was a beautiful sight, almost cinematic. Avatar: The Last Airbender continues to be a must see on Friday nights at 8 PM Eastern / 7 PM Central on Nickelodeon.
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