Not the Last Airbender? ("Avatar - The Last Airbender" Theory)

Hello, dear humans and fellow aliens!

It’s good to analyse a children’s TV series again. There’s something refreshing and reassuring about the calm of a kids’ show, knowing your soul won’t be crushed by characters’ early deaths (probably).

Whatever, today, I decided to talk about “Avatar – The Last Airbender”.

From the first moment I watched this series, I thought “I’ll theorize the hell out of this”. And here I am, the second post about this show, an honour only “Death Note” has ever had in this blog (and possibly “Gravity Falls” in the future, stay tuned).

Also, let’s celebrate, because THIS is my TENTH THEORY. It’s a special number to me (even though my favourite numbers are 9 and 7, which sort of align with the one I put more work into and the one I really liked researching, respectively).

Anyway. You’re probably as sick of the introduction as I am, let’s get to the point.

Today, we’ll be discussing Sparky-sparky Boom Man.

I’m so glad this isn’t a video because I would not be able to say that with a serious face. Heck, I can’t even write it with a serious face.

Jack DeSena (voice actor for Sokka) is truly a talented actor.

Back to the point: Sparky-sparky Boom Man. You can call him Combustion Man, if you want.

I never really thought about him as something to theorize about, since he barely appeared, but he is rather strange.

His power seemed very odd to me: shooting explosions out of his forehead, through the chi tattoo of a third eye.

Third Eye? Could he be part of the Doki Doki religious cult? (*overdramatic music*)

Argh! I need to stay focused! I can’t get distracted or this will get super confusing!

So… Combustion Man creates explosions from his head: combustionbending (yes, dear reader, that is an actual word).

But hold up a minute! Explosions aren’t firebending, they’re airbending!

It is true that firebenders can cause explosions, but not like Sparky-sparky Boom Man.

Look at how firebenders cause explosions:

The blasts are caused by the target suddenly catching fire. It’s like when you light a candle. At first, it’s a really strong flame, but then it “calms down”, just like firebenders’ explosions. Their targets keep burning after they have finished, as evidenced by Jao destroying his boats. If it’s inflammable, it will certainly keep burning. You can see the fire that comes out of their fingers, feet or mouths while they do this. It’s actual fire.

Now, look at Sparky-sparky Boom Man.

We see only air (and that ring of fire, we’ll take care of that later). The air is moving on its way to his target, not fire.

Unfortunately, the easy part is over. We now leave the lore and move on to cold hard science.

*sigh*

There are three types of explosions: nuclear, chemical and physical.

We can definitely exclude nuclear explosions from the realm of possibilities because there would have been serious radiation poisoning and a mushroom cloud. Which, if you have forgotten, there isn’t, it’s a cloud-cloud.

What is a physical explosion?

Basically, it’s when something is under a lot of pressure and the suddenly stops being under pressure. How do you put this scientifically…?

Imagine you have a spray can of ink, completely full. And you, for some strange and stupid reason, decide to cut it open like a madman. It will release an extreme flow of ink and, if you lay it on the ground, it will move on the opposite direction of where the ink is going.

This is possible because, when things in high pressure come into contact with things with lower pressure, they create a shock wave, creating an explosion.

Unlike what you might think, an explosion isn’t a sudden burst of fire, it’s a shock wave going through the air, dragging fire behind as a consequence.

For it to be possible, Sparky-sparky Boom Man would have to be able to change air pressure in a certain zone to do this.

Have we seen him do that?

No. Let’s move on.

Then, we have chemical explosions, in the circumstances I am focusing on a certain kind of chemical explosion that involves oxygen and decomposition of matter. When certain materials containing oxygen are decomposed, sometimes by a chemical reaction, they produce combustion gases created at high temperatures that, when expanding, create a shock wave. Hot air tends to occupy more space because the particles are moving around like “Wee! Look at me! I’m a hot particle!”.

Don’t mind me, I’m just explain stuff my way (I do it a lot, TRUST ME, you don’t want me explaining you the Renaissance or anything about Hitler’s life, it’s weird).

You know that stuff we breathe all the time? It’s a gas named oxygen. And explosions really need it to survive because it’s the most common oxidizer out there.

While burning, flames “breathe in” oxygen and release carbon dioxide, the stuff we breathe out (unless you’re a plant).

So, if you heat up the air just right, it will burn. I’m not kidding. Hydrogen gas is really inflammable, it can be burned easily.

Roy Mustang uses it while he’s trying to burn Lust (just to give you an outside reference, it’s from “Fullmetal Alchemist”). With alchemy, he separates the H₂ from the H₂O and BAM, it burns like crazy.

That’s what firebenders do to firebend: they burn the hydrogen in the atmosphere (by the way, our atmosphere is 0.00005% hydrogen gas and I know it looks like a small number, but have you seen how big the atmosphere is?).

Whatever, that’s not what Sparky-sparky Boom Man does. You can’t see the helium burning, just the shock wave.

In “Avatar”, moving air is represented in white or light blue. Sparky-sparky Boom Man’s shock wave is supposed to be transparent if it was in real life.

Therefore, since he moves air, he must be an airbender. It doesn’t matter if he creates fiery aftwewards, that’s just heating the air. Airbenders can change the air’s temperature, as Tenzin said in “Legend of Korra”, airbenders can keep themselves warm with only their breath, that’s why Aang never uses a blanket to sleep and he never seems to be cold, even in the poles.

So… this would mean that Aang is not actually the last airbender. I don’t think it matter that much to the plot but…

So… this concludes my theory for today, hope you liked it. I know it’s kind of lame, but I’m working on something better (at least I’m trying, I don’t know if I’ll make it to the end).

And… I still haven’t got that catchphrase…