Things are getting intense in Avatar: Seven Havens as Book 1: Survival enters its second half. A mysterious group of bandits called the Faceless has infiltrated Ellora, taking benders like Bending Brigade member Uki and raiding supplies. Rumors of the Avatar’s return have everyone on edge and a strange entity called the Anomaly is inflicting residents with intense fear. Or is it only amplifying the fear they already feel? Things are dire enough that Chancellor Kayoko does the unthinkable and asks the other havens for help. After the group defeats the Anomaly together with energybending, Pavi and Nisha suspect it’s the key to finding out what happened to their parents.
Episode 7: What Lies Beneath
It’s been weeks since Chancellor Kayoko reached out to the other six havens, but none of the other delegates have arrived. Commander Karthik tells her not to give up, since they should reach Ellora any day now.
Meanwhile, the twins are trying to understand their connection to the red diamond Anomaly. After Jae’s meditation lesson fails to help either twin get in touch with their spiritual side, Pavi convinces Nisha and Jae to return to the hospital and touch the red crystals the Anomaly left behind. Pavi gets a vision of herself being carried away by a strange man who could be her and Nisha’s father. When Nisha asks what she saw, Pavi says the crystal made her feel broken.
Then Pavi senses a massive surge of power underground. The group finds ancient tunnels covered in Anomaly crystals, leading to an old facility from the Old World, presumably built by Asami Sato. When Pavi’s cat monkey Geet accidentally turns on the power, the trio watch a “mover” of a new Future Industries building opening. We even catch a glimpse of an older Korra with her wife Asami, both wearing traditional betrothal necklaces.
Pavi wanders off toward a glowing pit of bubbling red energy, hoping it will help her find her parents. Instead, touching it pulls her into a vision of a worried Korra flying toward Republic City. A second vision pulls in both twins and shows Korra during the Cataclysm ripping out the city’s infrastructure, specifically pipes that leak energy as they’re torn from the walls.
But why? Before the vision ends, Korra is surrounded by purple energy, the same wild spirit energy Kuvira used to power her weapons in Book 4 of The Legend of Korra. Was that the real source of the Cataclysm all along?!
The twins realize they’re linked to Korra because they are her, in a way. Still, Nisha reminds Pavi that Korra’s choices belong to Korra, not them.
Elsewhere, Jae runs into Uki and learns she wasn’t kidnapped at all. She joined the Faceless willingly to escape Ellora’s mandatory conscription of benders. She was forced into the Brigade at ten after setting her father’s chair on fire, when all she ever wanted was a quiet life farming or herding camelodillos. To spare her family embarrassment, she staged her own disappearance.
Jae wants to bring Uki home, but he and the twins are captured by Zi, the Faceless leader. She notices a maker’s mark on the twins’ jewelry, the kind that identifies the craftsperson who made it. Before the twins can learn more, a spirit demon attacks the hideout! Uki helps everyone escape and tells Pavi that the lullaby she and Nisha sang in episode 3 is called “Return to Me” and comes from the Eastern Outskirts. Before leaving, Jae manages to capture Zi. The episode ends with the envoys from the other havens finally get close to Ellora.
Episode 8: The Envoys: Part One
With envoys from New Ba Sing Se, Akasha, and Feather Mountain now in Ellora, preparations for the summit are underway. Karthik and Kayoko interrogate Zi, the supposed Queen of the Faceless, but she won’t reveal where the rest of the group is hiding. Kayoko orders her held in solitary so she can “ponder how heavy that crown is.” Zi is only amused: “Silly woman. I’m not the one you need to worry about.”
The summit starts smoothly. Empress Yeshe of Feather Mountain slips away from her bodyguards and chats with Jae. Kayoko’s offer to the envoys is this: the other havens need food, and Ellora needs benders to protect itself. But bender shortages aren’t unique to Ellora, and the other havens won’t share unless Ellora offers something in return.
Meanwhile, the twins start to drift apart. Pavi wants to keep investigating their parents, but Nisha wants nothing to do with them. She’s convinced they abandoned her and Pavi, and after seeing Korra’s vision, she’d rather prove she can be a better Avatar than Korra. Pavi still isn’t interested in being the Avatar, which Nisha misinterprets as rejection.
“Are you really going to choose strangers over me?” Nisha asks.
“Mom and Dad aren’t strangers! And I’m not choosing,” Pavi says.
“Go then. Who needs you?”
So Pavi leaves. That’s actually good news for Karthik, because the top White Lotus members from Akasha and New Ba Sing Se, Nobuo, Tanushree, and Rehan, have arrived. They’re unhappy that Karthik cut off communications and demand that Nisha undergo the White Lotus Trial. Interestingly, they know nothing about Pavi, which would explain why Karthik cut off contact.
Nisha passes the air test, but the others are harder because the leaders dig deep into her psyche. She loses her earthbending match to Tanushree and is scolded for losing her temper over a little teasing. For Nobuo’s fire test, she must keep a small flame burning while focusing on her feelings, but her abandonment issues and fear of losing Pavi make her fail. She never gets to Rehan’s water test, because the leaders declare her too volatile to be the Avatar. Afraid of ending up with “another Korra,” they decide to remove Nisha from Ellora to sever her emotional attachment to Karthik. She runs out of the training room while Karthik objects that these methods will create the very threat they’re trying to prevent.
In many ways, Nisha is just like Korra but also not. The young earthbender has inherited all of Korra’s worst traits (arrogance, stubbornness, overly aggressive, doesn’t think things through, volatile temperament, has an unhealthy attachment to her identity as the Avatar) but Korra was at least willing to admit her mistakes and was open to change. Nisha isn’t there yet and remember what Korra said at the end of Book 4 of The Legend of Korra? That all the suffering she had to endure was necessary for her to become more compassionate? Nisha will probably have a similar journey. The universe will be particularly cruel to Nisha to break her down until she has no choice but to change her ways. And keep in mind this is a little nine year old girl we’re talking about here!
On the other side of town, Pavi teams up with a thief named Amow to trace the jeweler records for the mark on her brooch. They get some major breakthroughs. Pavi and Nisha’s parents were two metalworkers, Saumya and Pramodh, from the Eastern Outskirts. The lullaby comes from their neighborhood, and Karthik was originally told to find Nisha near a local Bristlethorn tree there.
Jae steps up and explains that in Ellora, everyone works together to improve their chances of survival, which convinces Akasha and Feather Mountain to cut a deal. But just as Kayoko goes to announce the agreement, the Faceless launch a surprise attack! Zi is free, and the real leader of the Faceless is… Agam the snack shop owner?!
Episode 9: The Envoys: Part Two
Agam explains to the summit that her father, the original owner of the snack shop, was drafted into the Brigade after they discovered he was an earthbender. He died serving the city. Horrified by the pride Ellorans take in benders’ forced sacrifices, she ran away and formed the Faceless so benders could choose their own paths.
She introduces the “missing” benders, including Uki, as willing recruits and invites anyone to join her journey to the Republic Forest. This Lost Haven cut itself off from the others ages ago, but Agam believes the area is free of the storms plaguing the rest of the world. When Kayoko threatens to label any bender who leaves a traitor and have them arrested, it backfires. More Brigade members accept Agam’s offer, seeing Kayoko’s outburst as proof the Council views them as tools.
Nisha, who came to the summit looking for a snack, steps up to stop Agam. But Agam has an ace up her sleeve: she’s an earthbender like her father, specializing in a style completely different from the Elloran style Nisha knows. Pavi is back, watching from a window outside, unsure what to do. Pushed to her limit, Nisha begins bending air and fire to gain the upper hand, revealing herself to everyone. “I’m the Avatar!” she declares after defeating a stunned Agam.
The reaction is worse than expected. Everyone is terrified of Nisha. The room shifts its focus from the Faceless to her, seeing only the reincarnation of the destroyer of humanity instead of a little girl. The collective stress summons the Anomaly, which bursts through the ground and afflicts several envoys. One blames Nisha for starting a “second Cataclysm,” and she insists it isn’t her fault. In the chaos, the Faceless slip away, though Agam seems to genuinely feel bad for Nisha.
Karthik finally arrives to save Kayoko from the Anomaly. It sinks in for Kayoko that he knew about Nisha and has been lying to her all along. He tries to explain that history has lied about the Avatar, but the Anomaly’s attacks make that impossible. He urges Nisha to use energybending to push the red energy back, but her fear makes her fail.
Pavi intervenes, drawing the energy toward herself and leading it to the underground tunnels. When she demands to know what the Anomaly wants from her, it lets her make contact. She finds herself on the same spiritual path Aang and Korra walked, but she doesn’t see herself in the Avatar State as they did. At the end, she faces seven black circles with colored rings matching the seven havens. They don’t just represent the havens but their blocked spiritual energy points, or chakras.
When Pavi touches the red circle resembling Ellora, the root chakra tied directly to fear, the Anomaly fades up into the ceiling in the real world rather than disappearing into the ground as before.
Back at the failed summit, Kayoko orders the Brigade to capture the Avatar. Karthik, Hamka, and Shilpa expose themselves as White Lotus members to protect Nisha. With her bravado gone and the Ellorans’ reaction taking its toll, Nisha regresses into a scared child cowering behind Karthik. When Shilpa and Hamka are beaten down, Karthik airbends Nisha out of the chamber and seals the door so she can run.
Furious at the betrayal, Kayoko demands the Brigade “end” the White Lotus. Then Jae arrests Karthik and tells Kayoko the Commander manipulated him into joining the White Lotus and hiding the Avatar, insisting his true loyalty is to Ellora. His boyfriend, Datu, says he’s proud of him. Kayoko forgives Jae and promotes him to Commander of the Bending Brigade. But look closely: Jae scratches his ear while speaking to Kayoko, a tell that he’s lying. I plan to elaborate on that in a separate article.
In the end, every unafflicted envoy cuts off support to Ellora, though Empress Yeshe leaves the door open to forgiveness once Kayoko stabilizes the situation. Kayoko locks the city down, enforces a strict curfew, and orders the arrest of any benders who refuse to serve.
As the episode closes, Pavi’s whereabouts are unknown. The last we see of her, she’s unconscious after her encounter with the Anomaly, with Geet carrying her to safety with one paw. Nisha barely escapes Ellora as guards announce Kayoko’s orders and close the gate. She can only look back at her former home one last time as Ruhi takes her far away, to parts unknown.
