It’s bad enough that everyone in the world of Avatar: Seven Havens is living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but Ellora is now officially on the brink of collapse. After the first three episodes of Book One: Survival introduced the new Avatar and her long-lost twin, episodes 4, 5, and 6 — released Friday — turn the Haven into a pressure cooker of civil unrest, bandit attacks, government secrecy, and the strange fear-based infection people begin calling “The Anomaly.”
We still don’t know how Korra caused the Cataclysm, why the Avatar appears to have been reincarnated as both Pavi (Saheli Khan) and Nisha (Aishu Devan), or what happened to the girls’ parents. But this second batch of episodes reveals considerably more about the twins’ forgotten history and deepens the mystery. Here's a closer look at some of the most important things to happen in this latest batch of episodes and what that cliffhanger ending means going forward.
Major spoilers for Avatar: Seven Havens episodes 4, 5, and 6 follow.
The major storm that hit Ellora earlier this season — and the strange diamond-shaped spirit monster that appeared with it — left behind bright red cubes growing out of the ground. They continue to expand, like the spirit vines from Korra’s era, but they’re more than just an eyesore.
Ellora has an entire sick ward dedicated to treating the Afflicted, citizens who have come under the influence of these cubes and the fear they instill. The number of those infected also seems to be rising. A doctor explains to Karthik (Akshay Khanna) early in the episode that the Afflicted experience overwhelming fear and violent hallucinations. Among them is Bountan, the firebender and former commander of the Bending Brigade who had a direct encounter with the Anomaly spirit in episode 2 that drove him mad.
While Karthik is touring the sick ward, Pavi and Nisha catch up to him after a visit to the doctor to look at Pavi’s leg. Their presence sends all the Afflicted into a frenzy. We see that, through their eyes, the Avatars look like red-eyed, grinning demons. Since many of the Afflicted are benders, that makes things even more dangerous. Led by Bountan, the Afflicted charge through the hospital like a rampaging horde of magic-powered zombies. It's unclear what they’re trying to accomplish, but one thing’s clear: they do not like the Avatars.
An important distinction between Nisha and Pavi emerges while they move through the dark hallways trying to avoid the Afflicted: Nisha quickly subdues one by encasing it in stone. Pavi tries talking to another Afflicted, realizes that he’s afraid, and uses earthbending to hide him in a sort of cocoon. Pavi consistently demonstrates a greater degree of restraint and compassion compared to her sister, who jumps to act at every chance. That makes Pavi seem a lot like Aang and Nisha more like Korra, for whatever that’s worth. Because of this, Karthik realizes that fear isn’t just a symptom of the Afflicted; fear itself is the root cause.
That distinction also explains why the outbreak spreads so rapidly through Ellora. Benders — like Jae’s squadmate Yuki — are being abducted by masked bandits known as the Faceless. Rumors of the Avatar’s return are spreading, especially after a soldier saw the twins wield multiple elements in episode 4. More and more people are convinced that Chancellor Kayoko (Jennifer Sun Bell) and the Bending Brigade are hiding the truth. (Remember, these people believe that the last Avatar destroyed the world!) Across these three episodes, we see a lot of civil unrest that’s only getting worse.
Episode 6 culminates in the return of the diamond-shaped spirit monster. As a fight between an Afflicted Bountan and Karthik spills into another hospital ward full of injured patients, the twins subdue Bountan using earthbending as that familiar red lightning crackles on the ground. “The Spirit World has unleashed its wrath,” Bountan tells Karthik. “The fate of Ellora is in your hands.”
It quickly overpowers Karthik, so the twin sisters step forward to confront it. As its energy strikes their palms, the entity shifts upward until it’s parallel to the ground. They’re once again transported into a memory, and then the diamond sort of passes through them and disappears. Karthik later identifies this as Energy Bending.
What does the new memory reveal about Pavi and Nisha’s parents?
While encountering the Anomaly directly turns everyone else into Afflicted, it instead restores fragments of the twins’ missing memories as they Energy Bend the entity. This time, they're sleeping together while their parents speak nearby. Their mother asks how many days some journey will take.
“Two weeks,” their father replies. “If we can survive the Harshlands.”
Their mother worries that they might not be doing the right thing, but he insists that they have no other choice.
Everything seems to point to one specific event that happened three years ago. This likely connects to their first vision from episode 2 and what we learned from Karthik in episode 5. Three years earlier, he received a message from someone instructing him to meet them at a pickup location. He was told that the girl he needed to find would be wearing a bracelet with a green gem. A sudden storm delayed him, and by the time he reached the location, Nisha was there alone.
When the girls encountered the Anomaly spirit in episode 2, it showed them a more fragmented vision of four figures traveling through the Harshlands, an Anomaly storm, and one of the girls — presumably Pavi — falling.
Another important development happens during episode 6: Pavi believes that she was born missing the lower part of her left leg, but when she sees a doctor about the pain she’s having, the doctor says that Pavi is experiencing phantom-limb pain and concludes that Pavi lost her leg within the last few years.
It hasn't been confirmed yet, but the easy conclusion here seems to be that the cause of the twins’ missing memories, Pavi’s injury, their parents’ disappearance, and Karthik finding Nisha alone are all connected to the same incident in the Harshlands three years ago. Was that their first encounter with the Anomaly? Or something else entirely?
Another peculiar wrinkle in all this is a lullaby that the twins remember in episode 4. Jae’s squadmate, a firebender named Uki, had been tracking the Faceless but was then abducted by them. Early in the episode, Daemin (Darren Barnet) recognizes the tune and says that Uki sings it all the time. Because Uki remains missing, however, the twins haven’t been able to explore what that means or whether or not Uki is connected to their family in some way.
After the dust settles on the latest encounter with the Anomaly spirit, episode 6 ends with Chancellor Kayoko using some kind of radio tower to message the other Havens: “This is Ellora calling any and all Havens,” she says. “We need you.”
We know from episode 5 that Karthik had previously — and illegally — been in touch with at least one other Haven called “Akasha” (spelling TBD). He reaches out, presumably to warn his fellow White Lotus contacts that word of the Avatar is spreading. He had even tried convincing Kayoko to reach out to the other Havens for help. With the Faceless abducting benders and others becoming Afflicted, Ellora is in dire need of more benders to protect the city. It’s Jae that ultimately convinces the Chancellor in episode 6 to call for aid after a small riot of scared benders air their grievances.
Despite the show’s title and intro sequence emphasizing the existence of seven havens in this shattered world, Seven Havens has focused exclusively on Ellora thus far. We’ve barely even seen anything of the Harshlands. For Kayoko to contact the other Havens seems like a major step forward.
Kayoko’s distress call may finally break the isolation that has defined Seven Havens so far — or nobody will hear it at all. Either way, the questions remain: What really happened three years ago? And why does the Anomaly want Nisha and Pavi to remember?
Avatar Seven Havens is streaming on Paramount Plus.