Warning: This review contains full spoilers for Avatar: Seven Havens Season 1, Episodes 7-9!
Whoa, doggy (and we can say that because non-hybrid dogs exist in the world of Avatar)1 After last week’s episodes of Seven Havens seemed to settle into a nice, comfortable rhythm, this week’s trio literally and figuratively tossed the table with some huge story moves and big additions to the mythology while somehow also managing to be the most effortlessly funny episodes thus far. At least a portion of that is due to the show’s first two-part episode, which you know has to be big — and it is — but thanks to the continued impressive balance of ongoing mysteries and emotional storytelling, Episodes 7-9 are a thrilling roller-coaster ride from start to finish.
Oh, and also we get to see Korra and Asami again, so commence freaking out, everyone!
The Long View
To talk broad strokes before we get into the specifics of the episodes: As we’ve stated in previous recaps, the metaphor Seven Havens seems to be going for is how in our own world, countries are closing borders and refusing to work with each other to fix larger problems — i.e. the environment — while also amping up fear of the other. In this case, that “other” are the Havens other than Ellora, which is the main one we’re spending time in this season. But it also extends to the ostensible villains — raiders known as the Faceless, and more specifically the Avatar, as for hundreds of years people have believed Korra caused the Cataclysm that wrecked the world.
This week, with Envoys visiting from other Havens (more on that below), we get to see this distrust in action. It’s enormously simplified for the child’s cartoon we’re watching (no shade there) to the other Havens needing food and Ellora wanting benders to protect them from the red diamond Anomaly that has been growing and attacking Ellora at a regular rate. We’re not talking complicated, multi-faceted trade deals here, and that’s fine. But the thrust is clear for the viewer: These Havens, of course, would be stronger together, but it’s easier to give in to fear, the real theme of this season, than join up. Alone, the Havens are in survival mode; together, they might have something greater, but through pride, tradition, or whatever excuse they want to give, it doesn’t happen.
And for any viewers frustrated about these moves, there’s a key moment late in Episode 9, “The Envoys: Part Two,” when Commander Karthik (Akshay Khanna) talks about how they were raised to hate the Avatar. While it’s been a decade or so in our time since we’ve last seen the Avatar, and we know that Pavi (Saheli Khan) and Nisha (Aishu Devan), our twin Avatars, are good, It’s been 225 years since Avatar: The Legend of Korra. That’s over two centuries, and every character we’re watching on TV was born and raised in a world that doesn’t just hate and fear the Avatar, but has also been taught to distrust each other. Heck, their parents, grandparents, and probably even great-grandparents were born and raised the same. They don’t know any other life, and society has developed solely based around these precepts. It’s less about breaking programming than completely reconceptualizing history and learning. That’s hard, folks!
And speaking of Karthik, let’s take a small but related side-trip to talk about what happens towards the end of Episode 9. Pretty much since he first popped up, fans have pointed at Karthik as likely turning evil, getting corrupted, or perhaps being the head of the evil (or at least morally grey) Red Lotus instead of the Order of the White Lotus, which turns out to be 100% totally not true. In fact, in a shocker, it’s Jae (Major Curda) who betrays Karthik and the Avatars. We’ve watched Jae struggle with what we mentioned above, being raised in a society where the Avatar is seen as the ultimate evil. In Episode 9, he does turn against them, tells everyone about the White Lotus, gets Karthik arrested, and becomes Commander of the Bending Brigade himself. While it’s possible this might be revealed as a long range plan to do the right thing, at least at the end of this week, it’s a punch in the gut, and a real emotional surprise to see a character we’ve been following and believed in stick to the status quo instead of growing, changing, and learning.
It’s also, to be clear, very smartly done and more realistic: In real life, people rarely break out of their programming; they may be challenged, and they could even flirt with changing their minds, but sadly, more often than not they stay with what’s comfortable rather than truly evolve. So, boo to Jae! Hooray to the writers of Seven Havens. Also, boo to the writers — how dare you do this to Jae?! Life is complicated.
The Episodes Close Up
Anyway, there’s lots more to get into, so let’s do some brief recap. First up is Episode 7, “What Lies Beneath,” which does not include appearances by either Harrison Ford* or Michelle Pfeiffer. Instead, when Pavi decides to try and connect with the Anomaly to try and chase down more memories of her missing parents, she blasts a hole in the massive red crystal, revealing tunnels under Ellora. It turns out there’s a lot under the city, including a factory that was built by none other than Asami Sato. Thanks to a “mover,” we get to see both Korra and Asami, older, happier, and not in the Spirit World (where we last left them at the end of Legend of Korra).
(*What kind of bender do you think Ford would be? Is there cranky old man bending? Is that a thing?)
Also lying beneath? The Faceless, who we discover are aiming to live free rather than have life prescribed for them by the dictates of Ellora. Specifically, if you have bending ability, you join the Bending Brigade. That’s what Jae wants and what he believes in, but not Uki (Kimberly Woods), who was seemingly kidnapped last week but has actually been part of the Faceless the whole time. She leads Jae to the Faceless Queen, Zi (Dianne Doan), who later turns out not to be the Faceless Queen, though we’ll get there in a second.
That’s because so many other things happen in this episode! Pavi, first of all, discovers a bubbling pit of red energy, which grabs her and transports her back to Republic City, where we see the beginning of the Cataclysm. It sure looks like Korra in the Avatar state is tearing Republic City to the ground while releasing Spirit Energy tentacles. She’s definitely not, of course, and we’ll likely get a lot more info on this in subsequent episodes and seasons. But it confirms the suspicion that a lot of theories have rested on, and without getting too in the weeds on this: Back at the end of Legend of Korra, the doors between the Spirit and Human world were still open, and there was a lot of controversy about the use of Spirit Energy as batteries (think nuclear energy and you have the general idea). Given the Avatar is always about finding balance in the world, it’s probably fair to posit based on this one scene that things became very out of balance because of Republic City using Spirit Vine energy. Korra tried to stop it, and possibly the Spirit World crashed into the Human world.
We discover that the song Pavi and Nisha remember being sung by their parents is sung by people from the Eastern Outskirts in a lovely little moment where Uki pauses their tense showdown to offer up info on the ditty. Pavi and Nisha have a rift growing between them, and we end with two groups of Envoys — one from New Ba Sing Se and the other from Akasha — travelling towards Ellora like an Avatar version of Mad Max: Fury Road. We just needed Chong wailing on his dramyin while flames pump in the background to complete the picture. So shiny. So chrome!
Then it’s time for the two-parter, “The Envoys.” In the first part, the focus is on the summit between New Ba Sing Se, Akasha, and Ellora, which gets broken up by an attack by the Faceless, revealing the Faceless Queen is none other than… Agam (Sakina Jaffrey), the friendly cook/baker who has now not-so-curiously shown up in nearly every episode. Meanwhile, Nisha gets tested by the White Lotus representatives from New Ba Sing Se, Akasha, and what sounds like Nutha (NOTE: there are no closed captions on the screeners provided by Paramount+, so we might have the spelling wrong)... and fails.
That leads us into the game-changing second part, which doesn’t have a cold open before the title sequence, so you know it’s a big one. We almost immediately discover Agam’s motivation: Her father was taken against his will as a bender in the Brigade. In response, Agam created the Faceless as a way of being free and following their own destiny. Her destiny? To lead them to Republic Forest, which functions not just as a complete recontextualization of the main location in Legend of Korra, but also the mythical safe haven all post-apocalypse stories must have.
Nisha, frustrated by her failed Avatar test, steps up to take down Agam, who reveals herself to be some sort of combo sandbender/mudbender, and an advanced one at that. So naturally, Nisha reveals herself as the Avatar; and just as she does, the red diamond Anomaly busts through. The Faceless escape in the resulting panic, Pavi manages to lure the red diamond away, and in the aftermath, Jae betrays the White Lotus, resulting in their arrest. New Ba Sing Se and Akasha withdraw their aid, while the Chancellor of Ellora essentially puts the town under martial law.
In the midst of all this, we get two eye-opening visions via the red diamond: Nisha sees a rock with an anomaly crystal sticking out of it; and Pavi is taken to a starfield, where something that is not Rainbow Road forms, leading her to the red symbol of Ellora with six additional circles stretching out into space. As we discussed last week, it’s seeming more and more likely that the goal here is for Pavi and Nisha to unlock the Chakras of the planet, starting with defeating “fear” in Ellora via the Root Chakra — likely specifically tied to the crystal seen in Nisha’s vision. Each “Haven” is actually a place where the Chakra is locked, which will send Pavi and Nisha out into the world once they realize what their “Avatar bringing balance” mission is actually all about.
Those are the broad strokes of the plot, but we skipped over something we mentioned earlier: how funny these episodes are at the same time — Jae calling hay his “nose nemesis,” the “who’s that?” as Pavi tells the citizens of Ellora that everything is going to be okay, and we’ll get into this more in the next section, but everything with the Pudding Guy (Eric Bauza) is laugh out loud funny. And isn’t that one of the big draws of the Avatar franchise, that goofball moments can sit right alongside “heck yeah” moments like Nisha saying “I’m the Avatar?”
It’s thrilling to have this feeling back, and this group of episodes definitely feels like Seven Havens firing on all cylinders. It’s also wild to think there are four more episodes to go next week, when “The Envoys: Part Two” in particular has big penultimate-episode-of-the-season energy. We’ll see you back here then (though there’s more article after this, so hang out one second, will you?)!
Avatar Easter Eggs, References, And Connections
We didn’t mention this last week, but while we’re throwing theories out there, there’s been a lot of hay (my nose nemesis!) made out of the fact that Pavi and Nisha are animated with diamond pupils instead of the oval-esque pupils the rest of the characters have. How does this connect to the Red Diamond? And does it connect to Raava and Vaatu (the spirits of order and chaos, respectively) who both have diamond-ish patterns in them? The show has been slow playing the big mythology moves, but with the introduction of the Spirit energy tentacles this episode, it seems likely this does tie to the two spirits in some way. How? We’ll just have to wait and see.
After Pavi opens up the hole in the crystal in “What Lies Beneath,” we get a mention of a rare sect of earthbenders who can feel things under the ground. While it didn’t start with Toph in The Last Airbender, this is a seismic sense (sort of like sonar) that she taught to Aang and passed down to her daughter, Lin Beifong, who appeared in The Legend of Korra. Does this mean that Pavi and Nisha are tied in some way to the Beifong family tree? Maybe!
Businessman Varrick invented “movers,” aka movies, back in Legend of Korra, and it looks like they developed from black-and-white/sepia-toned to color movers at some point, as we get to see Korra and Asami in all their older glory underneath Ellora.
On the lockers next to the main chamber under Ellora, we get to see a Korra action figure, as well as posters for Aang, Kyoshi, and Kuruk. Notably, Kuruk is getting his own spin-off (as announced at New York Comic Con), albeit from his younger days as a 14-year-old wild child in Avatar Kuruk: Waves of Chaos.
After Pavi connects with the Anomaly under Ellora, we see the older Korra using her glider — which was introduced in Legend of Korra Book 3 — to head from Air Temple Island to Republic City. There, while the Spirit energy tentacles are causing the Cataclysm and Korra is clearly in the Avatar state (check out her white eyeballs), it’s notable that Republic City is otherwise empty. Perhaps this cataclysm wasn’t as cataclysmic as everyone thinks?
At the end of Episode 7, as mentioned, we get that Mad Max scene. Some additional details are that the former Earthbending city of Ba Sing Se has somehow been inverted; they now live on Feather Mountain (a new location), and are airbenders – and historians – riding on Flying Bison? Meanwhile, Akasha (another new location) is the one place that has figured out how to keep using technology from Korra’s time, which means they have a riff on Link’s Master Cycle Zero from Breath of the Wild. Adding in the teases of spirit energy, if the whole world was relying on it and that caused the Cataclysm, it’s likely Akasha has figured out an alternative energy source that nobody else has access to. They’re also, per the dismissive Flying Bison rider, clearly younger.
Let’s talk about the biggest, most important addition to the lore: Pudding Guy. In The Last Airbender, there was a Cabbage Merchant who constantly had his cabbages destroyed either directly by Team Avatar or as a side-effect of their adventures, followed by him holding his cabbages to the heavens and screaming “My cabbages!” Then in Legend of Korra, the son of the Cabbage Merchant, Lau Gan-Lan, formed a company called Cabbage Corp, which was constantly destroyed. In the absence of cabbage, we’ve got our new “guy” for Seven Havens, and that’s Pudding Guy. He keeps making pudding, singing little songs about his pudding, and then having it wrecked by the Avatars. Is it cabbage pudding? Perhaps. But get ready for plenty more “My pudding!” to come.
In “The Envoys: Part One,” as noted above, we get an additional Haven showing up as part of the Order of the White Lotus: Nutha. While the spelling may or may not be off, Nutha is the name of a Southern Water Tribe citizen who plays a big part in “The Rift” trilogy of Avatar graphic novels. The rep from Nutha is a waterbender too, so it fits.
We also mentioned Republic Forest earlier. Republic City was the height of technology and innovation, so as New Ba Sing Se seems to be an inversion (going from earthbending to airbending), the city is now Republic Forest. As a side note, in the chamber under Ellora where Pavi, Nisha, and Jae see the mover, there are banners for all four bending nations. It seems likely that the cooperative ethos of Republic City spread through the whole world… at least before the Cataclysm.
Oh, and turtle ducks show up! They’ve been in every iteration of Avatar. They’re cute! That’s all we’ve got on this one.