Avatar: The Last Airbender Characters

A twelve-year-old Air Nomad and the current Avatar, raised by the monk Gyatso at the Southern Air Temple. He ran away when the monks decided to separate him from Gyatso to begin his training, was caught in a storm, and sealed himself and his bison in an iceberg for a hundred years — waking to find his people gone and a war nearly lost. He is playful and evasive by temperament and treats killing as off the table, which turns the final confrontation with the Fire Lord into a moral problem rather than a test of strength.

A fourteen-year-old from the Southern Water Tribe and the only waterbender left in it when the story begins. She has had no teacher, which is why she and Aang set out for the North Pole — where Master Pakku refuses to train a girl until she challenges him to a duel. By the end of Book One Pakku names her Aang's waterbending teacher. Her mother's death at the hands of Fire Nation raiders sits under most of what she does, and it is the reason she takes the longest of anyone to forgive Zuko.

Katara's fifteen-year-old brother and the only member of the core group who cannot bend. He makes up for it as the strategist: he finds out about the solar eclipse, plans the invasion of the Fire Nation around it, and takes command of it when his father is injured. He begins the series dismissive of the Kyoshi Warriors and ends up asking their leader to train him. In Book Three he studies under the sword master Piandao and forges a blade from a meteorite.

The blind daughter of the wealthy Beifong family, kept at home by parents who believe she is fragile while she secretly wins underground earthbending tournaments as the Blind Bandit. She senses her surroundings through vibrations in the ground, a skill she learned from badgermoles, and it makes her the teacher Bumi described — someone who waits and listens before striking. She runs away to teach Aang earthbending, and later teaches herself to bend metal, something no earthbender had done before.

The banished prince of the Fire Nation. At thirteen he spoke out of turn in a war meeting, was made to face his own father in a fire duel, refused to fight, and was scarred and exiled for it with one way home: capture the Avatar. He spends two Books chasing that, including one night as the masked Blue Spirit when he frees Aang from a rival. He turns on his uncle at Ba Sing Se, gets everything he wanted, and finds it hollow. He confronts his father during the eclipse and leaves to teach Aang firebending.

Zuko's uncle, a retired general once known as the Dragon of the West, and the elder brother passed over for the throne. He lost his only son, Lu Ten, during his own siege of Ba Sing Se and abandoned the campaign. He travels with Zuko as something closer to a father than Ozai ever was, mostly by way of tea, the board game Pai Sho and patience. He belongs to the Order of the White Lotus, and it is the Order that retakes Ba Sing Se in the finale.

Zuko's younger sister and a firebending prodigy, sent by her father to bring her brother and uncle home as prisoners. She conquers Ba Sing Se without an army by taking over its secret police from the inside, and strikes Aang down with lightning while he is entering the Avatar State. She rules by fear, and it fails her when her two closest friends choose Zuko over her. Left in charge of the Fire Nation on the day of the comet, she unravels and is beaten by Zuko and Katara together.

The ruler of the Fire Nation, father of Zuko and Azula, and the younger brother who took the throne Iroh was born to. He burned his own son's face for refusing to fight him and favours Azula only as far as she is useful. When the comet returns he names himself Phoenix King and sets out to burn the Earth Kingdom from the air. Aang defeats him and takes away his bending rather than his life.

The leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, the all-female fighters who guard Kyoshi Island and model themselves on the Avatar it is named for. She captures the group on their first visit, beats Sokka in training and then agrees to teach him. Her warriors are defeated by Azula in Book Two and she is held in the Boiling Rock prison until Sokka and Zuko break her out. She stays with the group through the finale.

A governor's daughter and one of Azula's two childhood friends, recruited at Omashu for her aim. She is flat, bored and unimpressed by almost everything, and she is also the person who breaks Azula's hold: at the Boiling Rock she holds off the guards so that Zuko can escape, and tells the princess that she loves him more than she fears her. She is imprisoned for it and freed after the war.

Azula's other childhood friend, a cheerful acrobat who ran away to join a circus so that she would stop being one of seven identical sisters. She fights by striking pressure points, which paralyses limbs and temporarily shuts off a bender's abilities. When Azula moves to strike Mai at the Boiling Rock, Ty Lee turns the technique on the princess herself. She is last seen having joined the Kyoshi Warriors.

The eccentric, elderly king of Omashu and a childhood friend of Aang's from before the iceberg, which makes him well over a hundred. He puts Aang through three trials and a duel before making him guess who he is. When the Fire Nation takes his city he surrenders without a fight and refuses to be rescued, telling Aang to find a teacher who waits and listens. During the eclipse he takes Omashu back on his own.