Avatar: The Last Airbender was a huge part of people’s childhoods, but looking back, the show wasn’t entirely meant for kids. There was a lot of creepy, if not downright weird, facts about the different aspects of being an elemental bender and there was also a lot of death and serious topics. The original series featured something considered a bit of a rarity these days in children’s cartoons in each episode’s specific plot. That being said, if you’ve never watched the show, we highly encourage it! There’s something that all ages can enjoy and the story is really quite endearing.
Katara was one of the main characters as part of a trio including Aang and Sokka; her brother and the Avatar. Of course, if you’ve seen either of the Avatar series, you know that Aang was the only one in the world who had the ability to bend all of the elements to his will. This power is incredible and takes a lot of true care, time and effort in order to really master. But just because the Avatar holds this kind of weight doesn’t mean that there aren’t people out there with more ability then them. Katara was certainly one of these people.
Even though she couldn’t utilize earth, fire or air, she still had an incredibly mastery over waterbending that no one else really showed in the series. It’s hard to think that anyone could be more of an expert in their element than the Avatar, but Katara came very close. Here’s 20 things she could do that Avatar Aang couldn’t!
20 Better Water Bender
Aang may be able to use of all elements, but that doesn’t exactly mean he’s the best at each of them. As we’ve seen from past Avatars, there are some that hold a preference as to which kind of bending they use most. Aang’s passion for waterbending only grew stronger after Katara helped teach him.
Ultimately, she’s always been one step ahead of him when it comes to her waterbending.
Katara has a lot of incredible talents when it comes to her bending, some of which we’ll get into a little later. Her mastery of the water and willingness to learn have always served her well, and we can see that she’s clearly the superior bender when it comes to this element.
19 Her Attacks Are More Powerful
If you watched the show, you know that Katara is brutal in a fight. Aang grew up being a little bit more of a pacifist, but being the Avatar, sometimes fighting can’t be avoided. The two of them, generally speaking, are peaceful people with peaceful backgrounds. But in a fight, especially when it comes to waterbending, we’d place our bets on Katara.
Katara may try to hold out as long as she can in battle, at least to attempt at resolving conflict, but we also see her never really hesitate. She’s knows that it’s a quick decision between life and the end during some battles, and we really saw this attribute shine when she battled Azula.
18 Bloodbending
When bloodbending was introduced into the series, it added a really dark layer over the kind of abilities waterbenders in particular had access to. Seriously, they’re incredibly over powered, especially when it comes to the different boosts their particular element has; such as the full moon. Hama was the original person to use bloodbending, and this is also where Katara picked it up.
Seriously, we wouldn’t want to get in a fight with a waterbender because of this.
This isn’t an easy skill to pick up, and it clearly wasn’t something Katara enjoyed doing, but it does speak volumes to the kind of power she holds. We’re fairly certain Aang wouldn’t want to learn this trick.
17 She Can Also Break Free Of Bloodbending
Speaking of bloodbending, there’s more than just using it for yourself; there’s also recognizing when it’s being used on you. A bloodbending technique is perhaps one of the hardest abilities to master, but it’s equally as difficult to break free of. Once someone has you in that hold, it’s nearly impossible to get out.
And yet, according to the show, Katara was able to break free of it. When Hama was forcing her hand and trying to get her to use the bloodbending technique, Katara could only sit by and watch as Hama almost hurt Aang and Sokka. Pushing herself to the limit, Katara broke free of her bind and was able to stop Hama. That takes a lot!
16 She’s A Master Healer
Throughout the series, we see that Katara has an ability that’s not only relatively rare, but also incredibly useful; her healing. Healing is usually another part of being a waterbender, but there are only a few that actually have this kind of power. Katara just so happens to be one of them.
Seriously, if this were DnD, we’d want her to be our healer!
As the series went on, Katara would prove to be an excellent healer that would help her team and even save Aang’s life! Even the Avatar hasn’t shown that he can actually heal people with his waterbending.
15 Get You A Waterbender That Can Do Both
Katara is an incredible waterbender, not only because she has a very strict control over her bending, but also because she has abilities that most waterbenders don’t. If you’re a fan of the series, you know that there are subcategories that go along with waterbending, such as Katara’s healing. Bloodbending is another subcategory and arguably one of the hardest ones to learn.
If Katara’s healing and bloodbending abilities weren’t enough on their own, the fact that she can control both of them should be enough to scare you off. Aang doesn’t really have either of these, or at the very least we’ve never seen him use them, so it’s another thing that makes her very unique and powerful.
14 She Has Spirit Water To Aid Her
We’ve mentioned it before, but waterbending is incredibly powerful. There are many different subcategories of waterbending, and Katara has the ability to heal. As the series continued, she would slowly learn more and more about how to level up her abilities and eventually she got to a point where she really mastered spirit water.
Where do we get our own spirit water?
Spirit water is essentially when spiritual energy flows through the water itself. Waterbenders The water itself has incredible healing powers, which we saw Katara use in order to heal Aang. It’s pretty intense that Katara even own a vial of it, let alone could use it herself.
13 Plan Ahead
While the age difference between Katara and Aang isn’t extremely significant at two years, they do have very different experiences when they first meet and both of them are clearly at different stages in their lives. Katara has always been more of a forward thinker between both Aang and her older brother Sokka.
When you’re going on a long journey like this trio did, planning is really important. We often saw Katara herding the group and making sure everything was under control. But even in battle, Katara really thinks through her strategies and what she can use next; it’s always a fast decision too! Aang proved to not be quite as quick in this area and it was something he really had to work on as a character.
12 Be A Leader
Even though Aang is the Avatar, it doesn’t quite mean that he’s really in charge of everything. There are clearly still people who hold a little more influence all over the world and nations constantly struggling over power. Aang is basically just trying to keep peace. Katara, on the other hand, has always been more of a leader.
She was the mom friend for sure!
In addition to always taking care of the group, she often made some major decisions for them too. We saw this often in the beginning when Aang really didn’t have any direction yet. We’re pretty sure this kind of thing continued well into their older years too!
11 She’s Smarter
We love both Aand and Sokka, but we have to admit, Katara was clearly smarter. Throughout their entire journey, she always had a real hunger for knowledge, even though she didn’t really need to. Whereas Aang needed to learn because he was the Avatar, Katara felt it was important to take part in growing her knowledge on waterbending.
This led her to wanting better teachers and picking up things throughout their journey that would make her the kind of waterbender we saw towards the end of the original series and into the next. We bet Pakku and Hama are really regretting it now!
10 She Can Forgive
Aang was clearly distressed once he came back from being incased in ice; the world had changed and many of the people he loved were long gone. And while Aang was certainly distressed, he often let his emotions immediately get the best of him; many times he would get into the Avatar state and really mess things up.
Having mercy is important!
Katara also lost many people that she cared about and went through a lot of tragedy. And while she may not always be the best with her temper, we’ve never seen her really hurt someone because she couldn’t forgive. In a lot of ways, she’s certainly more merciful.
9 She’s A Better Fighter Bending-wise
Because Katara had more time to really learn her skills and doesn’t have to worry about learning three other types of bending, she’s technically a stronger fighter than Aang when it comes to her waterbending. This would make sense, especially since she grew up in an environment that really promoted her to use her skills.
Aang certainly could use his airbending skills by the time they met, but it was clear that he was nowhere near her level in a lot of ways. This just goes back to where both were at mentally and how that age difference effected them when they were younger.
8 She Can Steal Your Strength
Katara has proven that one of her biggest talents is slowly draining the energy out of her opponent. She probably wouldn’t even need bloodbending to really get you tuckered out so that you could no longer fight. Because of the nature of water and therefore waterbending, she can dodge pretty easily and slowly bring down an opponent.
She’s already capable so much, but she’d rather drain you!
The fight would be over before it even began because once you’re tired and can’t truly connect with your bending and chi, you’re done. Waterbending is incredibly strong and, in the hands of Katara, it’s definitely even stronger.
7 She’s Incredibly Stubborn And Gets What She Wants
Aang may act like a child, but he’s never really been incredibly stubborn, surprisingly. There has only been a few episodes where we really saw him whine or complain; for the most part he goes along with everything Katara and Sokka put up, even if he doesn’t really want to. Katara is a completely different story.
Unlike both of her companions, she has a pretty strong tenacity and always finds a way to get what she wants. It’s this stubbornness that got Master Pakku, who was originally a huge jerk, to teach her. And that’s not all; there have been plenty of times where this attribute served her well. She never gives up!
6 She’s More At Peace During A Battle
We’ve seen most of the characters in Avatar get extremely emotional during battle. Even someone as evil and seemingly-clam as Azula eventually went all out at one point. Don’t get us wrong, sometimes these feelings from the characters give the fight more significance or meaning, but it also can be their downfall in a battle.
Take Zuko for example; his anger and frustration never really served him well!
Katara has had her own emotional fight scenes, but she’s actually one of the most level-headed fighters in a battle. She tends to be really thoughtful in her moves and tries to keep her personal thoughts out of it so that she can survive and win.
5 Freezing Is More Her Type
In addition to a lot of the cool ways you can use waterbending, ice is one of the most seen subcategories we really get to see during the series. Part of this is because we’d be in a more polar region where there was more snow naturally, but bending ice is pretty dangerous. Of course, this isn’t as dangerous as bloodbending, but it is more common and waterbenders to often use it for a leg up during a fight.
Katara also seems to master this kind of bending. Aang could certainly use this, but it doesn’t ever seem to be his go-to, whereas Katara really tries to master this form.
4 Understanding Is Important To Her
Even when Katara has come face to face with enemies, we never really see her outright think people are monsters; or at least, we never see her hold onto that kind of thought. For the most part, Katara desperately tries to understand people, even when she’s not sure she can.
If you were sad about your Zuko and Katara ship, don’t worry, we were a little sad too…
We see this a lot when she meets Zuko. He’s caused a lot of pain in her life, but she knows that staying on opposite sides won’t do them any good in the long run. Her attempts to understand him help her out more because she can have some kind of closure.
3 She’s More Mature Overall
Katara has had a lot placed on her shoulders since the very beginning of the series. She and her brother went through a lot together, and yet Katara was still the one to push for change. In almost every respect, she will always be more mature than Aang or Sokka could ever be.
This might not seem like a big deal, but it’s a quality that bled into everything about her, including her ability to fight and bend. You could see that this was one of the reasons she strove to better herself and ultimately why she became the strong waterbender she was at the end of the series.
2 Aang Only Calms Down With Katara
Aang and Katara were a ship that everyone could see from miles away; Aang always had feelings for her and eventually we saw Katara feel the same way about him. Seeing how their lives played out in The Legend of Korra was pretty exciting, especially since they spent so many happy years together.
This is quality shipping material!
But even before that, Katara had one thing over Aang; whenever he would get too upset or, even worse, in his Avatar state, she was always the one to help calm him down. Aang is incredibly dangerous when he goes into overdrive and it’s astounding that anyone could even attempt at cooling him off.
1 After All, She Did Teach The Avatar… Twice!
When The Legend of Korra was first announced, people were incredibly excited and wondered if we’d get to see some old faces in a new storyline. Sure enough, Katara and her entire family was there to greet us. But what was very cool about seeing her was that she was, yet again, a very pivotal character for the Avatar.
Not many people can say they helped to train the Avatar twice, yet Katara has done it. This is clearly something Aang can’t do, for obvious reasons, but it’s still an incredible feat that just shows how powerful Katara truly is.
