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sweetsummerchildofmine · 4 years

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Catra vs Zuko - or, how Catra got the redemption arc we never dared to dream for Azula

Ok so since She-Ra’s finished and ATLA’s back on Netflix and everyone’s having a super fun time comparing the two, here’s a long rant about redemption arcs that absolutely no one asked for.

[spoiler warning for both obviously??]

So Prince Zuko is still, correctly, held up as the redemption arc ideal.

Look at this boy of course he is.

As an excellent recent post I can’t currently find why don’t I ever tag things reminds us, the great thing about Zuko is that we always want to see him redeemed. Even though he starts out with bad hair and a bad attitude and on the wrong side, he’s a main character and a sympathetic one.

Iroh is introduced as a wise and lovable uncle to us all, so if he believes in his nephew, then so do we.

But it’s not all about how Iroh sees him. As this brilliant video from Melina Pendulum that I’m essentially just riffing on here rightly points out, Zuko always has a strict code of honour. He generally believes he’s doing the right thing, that the Fire Nation is doing the right thing, and that he can and must make a difference in the world… and is kind of a huge dufus. Now that’s getting a lot less Catra and a lot more…

In a lot of ways, Zuko is wayyy more of an Adora than he is a Catra. As another post that I can’t fucking find points out, it would have been incredible and hilarious if Zuko had somehow turned out to be the Avatar he was searching for all along. Mostly, I’m thinking that if a magical destiny and a new support group hit Zuko square in the face in the early ATLA episodes, we might have got something like the instant turnabout arc that Adora got. But Zuko didn’t get a magic sword – he had to figure out the evil of the Fire Nation slowly, coming to the final understanding that he couldn’t continue fighting for it, not even when it meant giving up all the love and prestige he’d ever sought in his life.

But much as Adora left the hoard and had to unlearn a lotttttt, she hadn’t exactly done anything bad out in the field yet. It’s Catra that’s our redemption arc poster-girl here. Because she actually causes a lot of innocent deaths and nearly destroyed the world but hey nobody’s perfect.

Like Zuko, Catra is introduced as one of our main characters, and she’s even more of an instantly loveable one than he is. She’s not an honourable follower of rules – that’s hammered home in her first scene -

- but she’s relatable. She’s in love with her best friend, she struggles to take things seriously, mostly as a defense mechanism, and she’s bitter about the fact that she’ll never be anything but second best. When it comes to Adora, despite her jealousy and teasing, she’d do almost anything to protect her. This is something we see throughout season 1, right up until The Promise – the friends might be at odds, but she doesn’t want to see Adora hurt. Especially not if that hurt is coming from their childhood abuser.

So many people have written about the great ways both shows handle the trauma of child abuse and how it won’t necessarily look the same across a family, so I’m not gonna go hard on that. But as a recap – Zuko literally walks around with half his face badly burned off because he embarrassed/disappointed his warlord father. Thanks to a lifetime of negative reinforcement Catra believes herself to be worthless, and she’s noticeably twitchy whenever someone touches her unexpectedly. Growing up with Adora, Catra was the scapegoat kid, taking on most of the blame for all their perceived failures (and giving Adora her intense responsibility complex and belief that everything is somehow her fault yay).

It’s a less clear-cut dynamic for Zuko and Azula – partly helped by the fact that we never get much of Azula’s POV.

..she’s kinda Catra without the benefit of narrative sympathy.

Where SPOP never stops reminding us that Catra is a vulnerable, lonely, insecure teenager beneath it all, ATLA barely ever lets us glimpse it in Azula. And maybe it’s not really there yet.

When Catra gives her infallible villain speeches, we know that’s not all there is to her, and the narrative pokes fun at the heroes for believing she’s really that cool or unstoppable or evil.

The joke is…. That’s not Catra. But for most of ATLA we have no reason to question it in Azula.

When Catra has her breakdown after getting everything she ever wanted, but with no loyal friend left at her side, it’s Azula she most resembles. We get our madness, our lashing out, our losing it publicly. But unlike with Azula, Catra is able to learn and grow from that. Because unlike Azula, Catra has always been a prioritised main character, whose feelings constantly help drive the plot.

For Azula, this moment was a private one for the audience. It let us know how much her friends’ abandonment had affected her, and gave us an excuse for her approaching defeat.

The ATLA writers did have a plan for Azula’s arc from there, which involved Zuko being pivotal for her and every day I remember it existed I want to die a little –

"Azula loved Zuko, more than anyone save her father. She also felt competitive with him for their parents’ attention of course, but since she had alienated herself from her mother, she focused her energy on pleasing dad… which of course meant acting in more and more intense and possibly evil ways. By the end of the series, of course, her loss of her friends shatters the part of her identity that she could somehow control affection and love through intimidation. As a result she spirals… I did however intend to leave a kernel of humanity, and had we made a season 4 Azula would have completely bottomed and we would have explored the possibility of a path to redemption. True story!"

- Aaron Ehasz

This is uhhhhhhhh...

...this is Catra’s story. She just gets to hit that rock bottom and has that hand up held out to her.

- but it’s pointless to speculate about how well or meaningfully the ATLA team would have handled this particular redemption arc because they didn’t get the episodes for it. Azula’s story ends with her, the new Fire Lord’s insane little sister, defeated and locked up to stop her hurting anyone else. yes I know the comics exist I am not gonna talk about the comics.

No adult ever seems to worry about Azula. Not even Iroh expresses belief that she’d ever be better than she was acting. Which seems… unfair, considering his infinite patience for Zuko, and the fact that he himself was the biggest most effective bad guy the series never saw up until his son’s death.

So back to the Zuko/Catra comparison. Although Catra starts out reluctant to do much damage to Adora and therefore the rebellion hopes she represents as She-Ra, and Zuko starts the series at his most inflexible and serious, they follow a similar journey. Both reach a point where they’re allowed a period of happiness, and the audience hopes that if they do rejoin the war it might be for the good team.

Hurt and discarded by the hoard for daring to show sympathy towards a prisoner, Catra’s sent out into the Crimson Wastes on a fool’s errands, with only her loyal, loving only friend beside her, urging her to choose happiness, to choose herself.

Catra definitely has more fun in the Crimson waste than she does throughout most of the show.

Zuko too, when he lets himself ease into his customer service job, starts to smile. He goes on a DATE, he mellows out, he has fun being a vigilante on his own terms, he’s making his Uncle proud.

But they can’t choose it, because they’ve been forced into it. They need to get the thing they think they want first before they can decide to give that up. So when the chance to return triumphant to their old life falls into their laps, it’s too big a temptation to give up.

And though they want similar things – prestige and respect as part of a colonialist war machine – their motivations for wanting them are completely different.

Our good boy Zuko believes he’s a good boy. He has that strict code of honour and he never wants to let anyone forget that that’s what he’s all about. It’s not until he’s subject to the cruel effects of the Fire Nation himself that he understands how wrong it is. Until then he believes the Fire Nation is in the right, and needs to be proven that they’re not – again, Adora vibes.

Catra, again, does not care about honour. She’s all about trickery. No one needs to convince her she’s the villain of the tale – she’s fully self-aware of that.

And the thing is……. She thinks she deserves to be bad, that they all do, but her especially.

This isn’t an angsty revelation for Catra. This is something she did on purpose as vengeance on a world she feels has only ever hurt her. She genuinely feels that hurting people is all she’s ever been good for, that the best one good thing she could do would be to make the ultimate sacrifice and take herself off the chessboard.

Zuko has never had to doubt that he mattered. His choices always mean something, and if he’s ever in danger of forgetting the truth or weight of that, his uncle is always there to offer love and patience and council.

Zuko’s issue isn’t that no one ever tried to get him to try harder or be better – it’s that so many different people tell him this that he doesn’t know which version of better is right.

Catra’s never had anything resembling a loving and guiding parental presence in her life. No one really holds her accountable to her actions until that rad time when Adora punches her in the face.

The first time Catra sees that there’s an option to deal with bad mistakes that isn’t just giving up and doubling down is when she sees Glimmer work to fix hers.

No one was ever going to stand patiently and unconditionally by Catra’s side. Adora couldn’t (rightly). Catra always kept Scorpia as much at arms length as she was able to, because she knew that one day she’d go too far and lose her. (and she does! again, rightly.) And of course though Shadow Weaver briefly fakes being the caring parent she never was, she’s in this for herself.

Catra didn’t need to be told she was fighting on the wrong side – she knew that - what she needed to learn was that she was loved, so that she could believe that she was worth making herself something better.

She needed to know that there was an option to turn back and stop slipping further down the villainy slope.

Family drama aside, Zuko grew up loved and in luxury. He grew up used to hugs, presents and fancy things. Up until season 2, he goes around with his own warship, his own room, and no one to answer to. Catra has none of that she’s hoping to get back to, or to win.

No matter how high Catra’s star rises in the hoard, the closest she ever gets to luxury is in Adora’s dream vision for them. Unlike most of SPOP’s female leads, Catra is no Princess. Not only has she never known parental love and support, she’s spent her whole young life as a child soldier, training to be a weapon. Adora and Catra have never eaten cake, or petted a horse. They’ve never not worn some kind of uniform. They’re used to bunk beds and a sky grey with ugly fumes.

The most we ever see Catra get for herself is a slight addition to her outfit. There’s no fine clothes or room or food for the chief strategist of the hoard – she’s just a cog in the same machine. It’s control and protection Catra’s chasing – not materialistic gain.

She doesn’t even want power– she just wants to be respected and safe and trusted.

On ATLA - as brilliantly pointed out here – Zuko gets his big moments with Aang, Sokka and Katara, but not with Toph. I do think that was because there was nothing personal he needed to make amends to her over (recent assassination attempt aside), but more practically it was about the others needing to learn to trust Zuko. Yes, Zuko needed to make amends but we don’t actually see much of that in season 3 - what we do see is the Gaang learning to trust him.

The Best Friend Squad basically trusts Catra immediately. Unlike the Gaang with Zuko, they’re not worried that Catra’s about to betray them- she’s already made the ultimate sacrifice for them, and has no bargaining power with Prime. Where Zuko was a new friend when they did make him one, Catra was already everything to Adora and that’s not news. Glimmer and Bow love Adora, and they know she needs Catra.

Catra’s redemption is important for her story, but it’s not what our heroes need from her. Before she can have a chance to be redeemed, she needs to be rescued. Save the cat indeed.

Again, it comes back to the fact that Zuko had things back in the Fire Nation to give up, but by the end of things with Catra, she has no one, and she’s a brainwashed pawn. Unlike Zuko, who they worry might betray them again for the family, girlfriend and title he left behind, the BFS have no reason not to trust Catra.

There is nothing for her to flip to. She’s on their side because she has nowhere to go.

Zuko approaches the Gaang, seeing in them his new and only path to honour – the Best Friend Squad go out and get Catra, because she’s part of the hero’s prize.

To even make himself tolerable for the Gaang, never mind a prize, Zuko needed to change – to let his pride turn to humility, to let his prickly lone wolf act die. But Catra needed to mostly stay who she is – a tactical genius, a suspicious rebel who’s “never listened to anyone in her life” who is desperately, selfishly in love with Adora, our painfully self-sacrificing hero.

Zuko, unlike Catra, basically trusts his new friends, because he chose them. He’s known them on some level for years, and is prepared to take any punishment they feel he’s earned. But Catra spends most of the immediate time after her rescue terrified that someone’s about to enact revenge on her – she needs to learn to trust them.

There was no reason it HAD to be Zuko who taught the avatar fire-bending other than it making a nice narrative circle with his family history and because we’re already invested in his development. But to save She-ra and Etheria, it had to be Catra. Because only Catra was the thing Adora selfishly wanted for herself – only Catra loved her completely as Adora first, She-Ra second.

So what fuelled the fire of this messy disjointed rant was seeing a lot of people claim that no redemption arc since Zuko’s has been written so successfully.

Certainly, Zuko gets forced to reckon with his actions and make an active choice to do the right thing and make amends. Our heroes don’t all immediately forgive him and the narrative doesn’t imply that they should. I can see how, with less episodes interacting with the group (but really only just) Catra can be seen as “getting off easily”.

In getting into arguments about redemption at all I think we’ve got to look at justice and forgiveness. Justice is good and important to seek in a story for kids about writing the wrongs of an unjust war. But justice should be about the people who have been wronged getting what they need, not about punishing the character who wronged them. No single character that’s been wronged owes the one who hurt them their forgiveness - but if they give it, what then?

In the same way Aang letting the Fire Lord live had nothing to do with Ozai, and everything to do with Aang and what he’d be comfortable with as a pacifistic child, Catra doesn’t have control over the fact that the people she’s spent seasons scheming against or hurting are instantly prepared to put that behind them.

On a morals front? Sure, it’s good to let kids know that when you fuck up and act like a bad guy that you work to earn redemption from those you’ve harmed. But it’s also an entertainment show. And what we want to see as an audience for our wayward heroes is the reconciliation with the person who loves them the most, that they let down most personally - the closest the two of them have to loving family. For Zuko that’s Iroh. For Catra it’s Adora.

Zuko meets Iroh last, so when they do hug it out, we’ve watched him change and grow a lot - it feels earned. But Adora is the first one Catra sees - who doesn’t even ask her to change yet, just to keep fighting, to live.

“That’s how she would have gotten out, and changed. With the faith and love of someone she had hurt, but who stuck by her anyway. Just as he had been saved by faith and love from someone he had hurt, but who stuck by him.”

- Aaron Ehasz on Azula and Zuko

I might wish we’d gotten more episodes of She-Ra for Catra to interact with the whole crew and make amends, forming individual bonds just like Zuko was allowed to do, but I’m so grateful, that, unlike in Azula’s case, we got those episodes at all.

Noelle said in a recent interview when asked about whether Adora had gotten over the whole believing-her-worth-was-based-on-what-she-could-do-for-others thing that it probably wasn’t something she’d fully worked through yet. But she’d started working on it. At the end of the show, Catra hasn’t finished with her issues either – so maybe the bulk of any real amends she needs to make are still to come.

Zuko does get a more complete “redemption” but his journey was always different to Catra’s, and in many ways much more like Adora’s. The very nature of Catra’s story is about questioning how much she needed redemption in the first place, or at least, how much more than the rest of them. Scorpia, Entrapta, Hordak’s a whole other ball-game, Adora, Glimmer, Huntara, Lonnie, Rogelio and Kyle were all involved in doing bad, and some of them got the time to strive to make up for it. Catra’s redemptive moment doesn’t just come right after she just got everything she ever worked for and hates it – it’s when Glimmer, someone she arguably did the most to hurt, is also at her lowest.

SPOP may give us less of an epilogue, but there’s a certainty now that the hoard is gone. The Fire Nation very much does not go away, and only limited attempts at reparations are made. So yeah, maybe Zuko gets a harder time before getting crowned the new Fire Lord, but Catra gets no prize out of her redemption. Just life, and the knowledge that Adora loves her.

None of these characters make for exact mirrors of each other that are easy to compare. Their creators were telling different stories and She-Ra had that all-important gay agenda to work in. To preserve that, Noelle Stevenson’s talked in multiple interviews about them having to make Catra and Adora’s romance central to allowing both their plotlines and the endgame for the show to function.

(Though as correctly noted here I’m not saying that it wouldn’t have improved things if Avatar had felt like pushing for that)

I’m not gonna lie – I have not always been a ride-or-die crewmember on the good ship catradora. I mean I was here for it, I saw and loved and hated Buffy season 3, I knew what was missing in my life, but maybe I just hadn’t seen enough stories like theirs work out in either fiction or real life before and didn’t dare to hope it would all work out ok.

And tbh the crew crafted such wonderful characters I was in a very comfy multishipping place as a viewer for most of the show. (as late as 5x03 I was still yelling that glitter/catra and scorpia/adora were both underrated ships which deserved way more screentime.)

Again, really not the best person to say it without a load more research, but neither show is perfect, especially as it comes to exploring colonialism through fantasy worlds. But I think it’s definitely wrong that Avatar which has a lottttt of well-documented criticism against it is held up on a pedestal as the only way for characters like Zuko or Catra to make amends. Also, because no other story is hopefully ever going to be telling the exact same story for its world or characters. She-Ra certainly wasn’t. And that’s a good thing!!

So Zuko had to learn he was wrong about everything and give up the life he’d been dreaming of for so long. The thing Catra needed to be proved wrong about to allow her to change wasn’t morals. It was her belief that -

#prince zuko #catra #zuko redemption #catra redemption #azula #adora #she-ra #spop spoilers #atla #a rant that got too long #i have so many screencaps #redemption arcs #i still haven't seen ros and i'm ok with that but that bitch kylo wants what they have #this is the closest thing i've come to writing a comparative essay since my undergrad dissertation lol #if anyone made it through all of this forgive me for the amount that i just straight up repeat myself here #please forgive the messy screencaps #spop meta #atla meta

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