There was a time when humans and spirits lived in constant conflict with each other. However, after embarking on a journey of self-exploration and fighting against the strongest spirit in the world, Avatar Wan decided to separate the two worlds so as to end the conflict once and for all. But the naive Avatar was unaware of the fact that humans are inherently savages who rejoice in bringing themselves doom, creating carnivals of self-destruction. As the spirits left the physical world, human greed took over. The small settlements used their bending powers to attack each other for land and resources. The world once again turned to chaos, and therefore, Avatar Wan made it his life’s mission to promote peace and harmony among fellow humans. However, one lifetime wasn’t enough for such a task, and therefore began a cycle of rebirth where each Avatar was bestowed the duty to maintain balance in the world. Everything was going perfectly until Fire Lord Sozin found a comet and used its power to fuel his ambitions.
In Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender series, Aang questioned Uncle Iroh about the motives behind the Fire Nation’s hundred years of war. Evidently, he didn’t have a simple answer to it. Iroh tried to explain it through fire’s inherent nature to expand and consume, and maybe that was all there was. Sozin, for example, wanted to expand his empire to the corners of the world and consume everything on his way. But to serve his goal, he needed a greater power at his disposal and therefore sought help from his childhood friend, Avatar Roku. However, Roku wasn’t just a Firebender. He was the master of the four elements and had the duty to protect the four kingdoms of the world so as to promote peace and diversity. When Roku refused to help Sozin, the Fire Lord waited for the Avatar’s death so that he could use the opportunity to give flames to his plan. Sozin was aware of the Avatar Cycle, which meant that when the Avatar died, he or she would take birth in the next earth element in the cycle, which in this case was air. In simple words, Sozin knew that the next Avatar would be an Airbender, and therefore he started a campaign to wipe out all the Airbenders before the next Avatar could train himself to stop the Fire Lord.
The Firebenders tend to draw their powers from the sun spirit, just like the Waterbenders became the most powerful during a full moon phenomenon. In the Avatar universe, the great comet acted as a small ball of fire that passed through the Earth’s orbit, thereby giving an extra boost to all the Firebenders on the planet. It could be seen as a mini-sun passing through the planet’s vicinity. Now, the lure didn’t explain how Sozin found out about the great comet, but he indeed used the comet’s power to launch a full-fledged attack on the Airbenders in order to wipe out their existence and kill the new Avatar in the process. But someone failed to do so, as Avatar Ang, going through an existential crisis of his own, had left the temple before the Fire Army arrived and, therefore, was able to survive. However, he indeed faced a devastating water storm that night, and in order to protect himself, he triggered his Avatar State, which covered him in a ball of ice inside which Ang hibernated for 100 years.
In Ang’s absence, Sozin and his army continued the conquest and attacked the two remaining kingdoms with all their might. The Water Nation was no match against the Fire Nation’s army and, therefore, eventually surrendered. However, the Earth Kingdom retaliated and resisted the attack for hundreds of years, which became the reason why the war continued for such a long time. Now, back to the present time, Sozin was long dead, but he had passed on his great ambitions to his sons and grandsons, who still struggle to bring the Fire Kingdom to its knees. Uncle Iroh tried to penetrate the huge walls of Ba Sing Se but failed to achieve victory and later returned to the kingdom after he lost his son. Iroh’s younger brother, Ozai, used his brother’s defeat for his benefit and requested that his father strip Iroh of his birth right so that Ozai himself could sit on the Fire Throne. Later, he resumed the campaign against the Earth Kingdom once again and trained his kids, Zuko and Azula, for the same. But Ozai, like his grandfather, always knew that taking down Ba Sing Se wouldn’t be a trivial task, and therefore, he needed to harness the power of the greatest weapon they had at their disposal: the comet.
Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender series ended with a post-credit scene where it was revealed that Ozai’s loyal priest had tracked down the comet for him and could guess its arrival, which would mark the date of the siege on Ba Sing Se when Ozai would finally be able to complete his grandfather’s unfulfilled desire. But if the creators of the live-action series are going to follow the original animated series and the books, then the entire comet fiasco won’t be needed, especially to capture Ba Sing Se, as Azula and her friends will be more than capable of doing so. Spoilers for those who haven’t seen the original animated series: It wasn’t Azula who captured Omashu; it was just some other Fire Nation military leader. So, showing Omashu’s fall at the end of season 1 could mean that the creators of the live-action series are indeed going to change the course a bit, or maybe not. Omashu was an important kingdom in the series because Ang will return to his friend Bumi’s kingdom so as to learn Earthbending from him. But after the fall of the city, the team Avatar will be forced to change their course and go to Ba Sing Se. In the meantime, Ang will also find out about the comet and will have to speed up his training so that he can defeat Ozai before the comet arrives in Earth’s orbit, as after its arrival, it will be impossible even for an avatar to stop the fiercest nation in the world.
