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After Avatar: The Last Airbender, Katara and Aang started a life together. Where did they decide to raise their family?
Avatar: The Last Airbender‘s satisfying series conclusion neatly ties up the story’s many dangling threads, including the unresolved romantic tension between Aang and Katara. As revealed in the sequel show The Legend of Korra, these two go on to live a full and happy life together for nearly seventy years, giving birth to three children and changing the world for the better along the way. But where exactly do these powerful lovebirds decide to settle down after the end of the first series?
After defeating Fire Lord Ozai and putting an end to his oppressive regime, the Gaang faces a new, equally daunting task: the rebuilding of a war-torn world. The story of these unsteady years, as Aang and his friends attempt to rehabilitate the battle-scarred Nations and broker a lasting peace, is detailed in the post-Avatar graphic novels released by Dark Horse Comics.
The heroes eventually succeed in creating this new reality, with Republic City — the setting of most of the action in Legend of Korra — as the capital and crowning jewel of their efforts. But it takes years of hard work, conflict resolution and negotiation with world powers to get there. During these turbulent times, Aang, Katara and the rest of the Gaang continue the fairly nomadic existence they lived throughout the show, traveling to the Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, South Pole and other places to solve problems and restore balance.
One of the most pressing concerns immediately after the conclusion of the Hundred Year War is the Fire Nation’s ongoing occupation of Earth Kingdom territories. In the Promise trilogy of graphic novels, Aang and the newly crowned Fire Lord Zuko join forces with Earth King Kuei to begin dismantling these colonies and send Fire Nation colonials home. This campaign, the Harmony Restoration Movement, runs into trouble when Zuko begins to doubt the ethical validity of tearing blended colonial communities apart.
The resulting conflict between supporters and detractors of the Harmony Restoration Movement puts stress on Aang’s most important relationships, and his love life is no exception. Katara points out that their own romance will lead to a blended, bicultural family, just like the ones the Movement is threatening to destroy. This, among other factors, leads Aang to change his mind and work out a different solution with Zuko and Kuei, laying the groundwork for the eventual birth of the United Republic of Nations. This new sovereign state is formed from the oldest and most integrated Fire Nation colonies, a place where benders and non-benders of all cultures are welcome.
Nowhere are the economic and technological benefits of a multicultural union more apparent than in the story of Republic City’s founding. It begins with the Earthen Fire Refinery, the world’s first international business venture. The refinery’s runaway success attracts people from around the world looking for work, and the area soon becomes known as Cranefish Town. The town’s troubled early days, and the beginnings of its transformation into the bustling metropolis of Republic City are covered in the Imbalance series of comics.
As the area experiences an unprecedented economic and population boom, class tensions and bender versus non-bender sentiments become serious problems. The Gaang’s intervention in these issues leads to the creation of such important institutions as the first iteration of Republic City’s police force. At one point, Aang and Katara stumble across an uninhabited island just off the coast of Cranefish Town while searching for a peaceful place to discuss the critical situation in the growing city. That fateful find proves crucial when they decide to stay and help guide the city’s development.
It is here that they finally make their permanent home, one that grows alongside their own family. The couple oversees the transformation of the island into Air Temple Island, which becomes the main hub for the renewed Air Nation — this is where Korra comes to live with Tenzin for airbending training decades later. Although Aang travels often throughout his adult life, spending plenty of time at each of the four abandoned Air Temples as he conducts restoration work on them, Republic City and Air Temple Island form his home base. All three of their children are raised on the island.
Katara and Aang’s married life on Air Temple Island isn’t discussed much in canon, though the characters reference that period occasionally in The Legend of Korra. Tenzin talks about growing up with Toph’s daughter Lin, implying that he and Aang’s other children spent a fair amount of time in the city proper as well as on Air Temple Island. In the one-shot comic “Clearing the Air,” Tenzin tells his children a story from when he was growing up that illustrates the conflicts the Air Acolytes faced with residents of the city, and how those issues were mediated by Aang’s leadership.
As Katara notes during the Harmony Restoration Movement crisis, the union of an airbender Avatar with the last Southern Tribe waterbender holds great meaning and symbolism for the direction of their world. The family she and Aang go on to create and the contributions they make to the Republic are a testament to the power of their bond and the strength of their convictions. Although fans don’t get to see much of their married life on the page or screen, it’s fascinating to witness the events that lead up to that time in the comics and the new world of Korra that is born from their intertwined lives and efforts.
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