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"This place is depressing" - another sign of Azula's hidden depths

Azula has cultivated a persona that's so formidable and so air-tight that not even those closest to her can see through it. Yet, there are brief blink-and-you-miss-it moments when the person underneath the mask peeks through. Most of the heavy lifting happens in "The Beach" and during the mirror scene in "Sozin's Comet, Part 3: Into the Inferno." Here, I want to draw attention to a scene that doesn't get talked about a lot: when Azula comes to retrieve Zuko from their family's old beach house on Ember Island.

"Come down to the beach with me. Come on. This place is depressing."

This scene in "The Beach" is framed in such a Zuko-centered way that it's easy to forget that Azula was also present during this time in Zuko's life. She also has memories and feelings about her family and childhood. Just because she doesn't brood about it doesn't mean that those memories and feelings aren't there.

She's like Sokka in that way. His mother's death clearly has a profound effect on him, but he doesn't talk about it as openly as Katara does, so it's easy to forget he lost a mother too. The fact that Sokka's not as demonstrative with his grief as Katara is leads to her insinuating that Sokka doesn't love their mother as much as she does.

(While I'm on "The Southern Raiders," as much flak as Azula gets for teasing Zuko, Katara goes for the jugular way worse than she does. Making fun of Toph's blindness in "The Chase" was so mean-spirited. Telling Sokka, "You didn't love her [their mother] the way that I did," was cruel in a way that nothing Azula said ever was. Katara gets a lot of shit from fandom for some nonsense reasons—Oh, she's "too bossy"? Fuck off—but it's weird how this part of her character gets overlooked or glossed over.)

"I thought I'd find you here."

The Azula who comes to the old family beach house to retrieve Zuko is completely unlike the Azula the audience has been primed to expect. There are many interesting words people use to describe Azula, but "gentle," "comforting," "soft," or "empathetic" are generally not among them.

One would expect, from the way Azula has behaved thus far, for her to make a cutting remark telling him to lighten up and stop being pathetic. But that's not what she does here. Here, she demonstrates the thing so many in fandom assumes she's incapable of: empathy.

How can she do this? Because she also has memories of this place she'd rather forget. She also carries deep sadness about her childhood. The royal family vacation house triggers the same feelings in her that it does in him. She just hides it better. (Much like the ways she's been abused, but we're not going there right now.)

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