WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Avatar: The Last Airbender story "Matcha Makers," available now from Dark Horse Comics.
A new Avatar story arrived on Free Comic Book Day with the publication of the story "Matcha Makers" (by Nadia Shammas, Sara Alfageeh, Savanna Ganucheau, Richard Starkings and Comicraft's Jimmy Betancourt). The story provided a wonderful insight into the peaceful retirement of everybody's favorite mentor, Iroh, but with one disruptive problem.
The cosmology of the Avatar world is brought into question by the new story. With the casual appearance of spirits in the human world decades before the Harmonic Convergence of The Legend of Korra, the lighthearted tale presents some serious problems.
Iroh's deep spirituality dates back to the very first season of the original series. Although the wise Firebender was once feared as the Dragon of the West while on campaign for the Fire Nation, in his later years a crisis of conscience led him to step away from violence and focus on more spiritual matters. The first season included repeated references to how Iroh could actually see spirits in the human world invisible to all others. The unique talent was an efficient way to show the yet untold depths of the spiritual master, particularly given how mysterious the Spirit World was at the time.
The Spirit World became significantly less mysterious as it saw further exploration throughout the series, and by the time of The Legend of Korra, set decades after the original series concluded, it received more focus than ever. When Avatar Korra kept the spirit portals open during Harmonic Convergence she instigated a great shift in the spiritual energy of the planet. Airbenders sprung back into existence, opening portals that united the Spirit World with that of the humans, and spirits began to walk freely among civilization. But the latest Avatar comic portrays that latter detail as though it were always the case.
The story itself is lighthearted and unconcerned with the major mythology of the world. Instead, it focuses on Iroh's peaceful retirement in Ba Sing Se where a new customer in his tea shop attracts his eye. Spirits appear to secretly nudge Iroh toward asking the woman on a date, and they appear to be the same kinds of spirits who would later befriend Jinora and Bumi decades later. The problem is that those friendships could not happen until after Harmonic Convergence.
It's not as though spirits were completely closed off from the human world, and their presence among humans caused many problems even in the original series. Whether it was Hei Bei plauging the town near his destroyed village or the Painted Lady appearing to thank Katara, it seemed far easier for spirits to occupy the mortal realm than for the reverse to happen. But their appearances were always scant, often troublesome, and never so common place as those that attend Iroh in "Matcha Makers." It robs Harmonic Convergence of much of its significance to imply that dozens of spirits were always present even in the average Ba Sing Se tea shop. The detail stands out as either a puzzling choice for the mythology or an even more puzzling continuity error.
The story should still be enjoyed in its own regard. There's something very in line with the series to see that even the wise old Iroh still has a lesson of his own to learn, and there's much fun in watching him learn it. But it would perhaps have been a better lesson for him to learn from Zuko, or while seeking spiritual guidance during meditation, than to blow the lid wide open on the ability for spirits to pass between their world and that of humans.
The Kyoshi novels made great significance over the specifics required for dark spirits to invade the world of humans. Avatar Kuruk spent much of his life closing those passages off. It invalidates much of the previous Avatar's arc to suggest spirits could freely come and go as they pleased. There is still plenty for Avatar creators to reveal about the mechanism about how this works, but for the time being "Matcha Makers" seems to have befuddling implications for the overall continuity of Avatar.
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