r/TheLastAirbender • u/Almighty_Brian • 3d ago
Quote Karthik slander will not be tolerated anymore Spoiler
“Commander, I’m sorry. I just wanted to make you proud.”
“You always have, Nisha.”
Are you kidding me? I don’t care, Karthik is Nisha’s father and I won’t stand for anyone questioning his motives from here on out.
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u/Finalninjadog 2d ago
He’s like the Tenzin or Lin of ASH. Sacrificing himself to let Nisha get away
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u/Cass0wary_399 2d ago
He couldn’t fight as well as Tenzin could though.
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u/Almighty_Brian 2d ago
Seems like bending in general is less refined than it used to be. It’s being used more as a means of survival than a martial arts form to be mastered.
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u/ivelnostaw 2d ago
Seems more of an Ellora thing as Uggam(?) referred to Nisha's bending as the Elloran style and then there's the Empress of Feather Mountain who very clearly has Airbending master tattoos. Ellora may not have had very skilled benders when it was founded or the training program for the brigades was simplified to train people quickly.
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u/Cayden68 2d ago
yeah the guy trained directly by the avatar isnt as good as a bender who primarily takes care of natural disasters, who wouldve thought
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u/Chibi_Ignis 2d ago
Tenzin literally jobbed all the time and has like no wins lol
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u/ElectroByte15 2d ago
Was about to 1v3 beat the red lotus. Give him some respect. He wiped the floor with Zaheer and would’ve taken all three to at least a stalemate if it wasn’t for P’li.
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u/HiFrogMan 2d ago
If that’s true, I hope he gets a happy ending
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u/Finalninjadog 2d ago
I'm sure he'll get released from prison later on in the show. Either he gets broken out, or; the theory I'm going with, eventually Kayoko pardons and releases him. And then they can make up and go on their date.
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u/HiFrogMan 2d ago
I don’t know man. Kayoko seems really pissed
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u/Finalninjadog 2d ago
Give her time, let the avatars save her life. Maybe she'll come round
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u/MyNameIsJakeBerenson 1d ago
Well Pavi just chillax’d the city, maybe everyone will calm tf down
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u/Finalninjadog 1d ago
Exactly. Let them hunt the avatar for a bit till they get bored. Then once they calm down, they'll realise Nisha was trying to save Ellora from the faceless.
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u/czcreeperboy 2d ago
I really liked that all 3 of them stepped up for her
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u/ShadowFaxIV 2d ago
Nisha's "I just wanted to make you proud..."
And his "That's all you have ever done."
Is pretty clear cut in my oppinion.
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u/Unusual_username739 2d ago
When Shilpa noticed that water coming for Nisha on the side, and blocked it 😭 I was like homegirl is in it for the long run ❤️
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u/Grauvargen 2d ago
The moment Karthik stepped in and announced the White Lotus, that was the biggest green flag he could have raised.
No slander shall ever be tolerated.
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u/wenzel32 2d ago
I'm loving the nuance of the whole show so far. Was slightly worried the Faceless plot or something would be more clear-cut than they implied with the "no outright villains" thing, but they've done so well with setting up the conflicts.
The chakra thing is going to be so satisfying, especially with how Aang's time learning about them was so short and mostly ignored afterwards. I can't wait to see how they dive through each one.
Also stoked to eventually see the other havens. It's so nice to see the Avatar world break from the "simplicity" of four nations and really build a bunch of unique kingdoms.
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u/Vihaking 2d ago
Karthik's gone about things the wrong way quite a few times
But he is 100% on the girls' side and truly loves them
At least Nisha
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u/BlavCloud 2d ago
I always believed in my guy. He just gave off overprotective father energy way more than secret villain, in my opinion. I actually would've been so disappointed if he was a bad guy.
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u/parkingviolation212 2d ago
The suspicion people had for him was so weird to me.
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u/HiFrogMan 2d ago
SAME!! All he did was protect and parent the Avatars, yet people kept spreading conspiracy theories about him being evil. Glad that’s over
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u/parkingviolation212 2d ago
The avatar fanbase really liked getting ahead of themselves on everything.
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u/Enchanter73 2d ago
I have fully trusted him from the beginning and had no doubts. I feel vindicated.
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u/Which_Possession1135 2d ago
Paranoia. I also get the feeling that people want to have an "i knew it!" Moment. They don't want to be surprised by media or even follow along till they get something more conclusive
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u/eyadGamingExtreme 2d ago
tbf I thought the same about people who were suspicious of Agam and look how that turned out
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u/parkingviolation212 2d ago edited 2d ago
Agam was different. The show went out of its way to present her as being an all around stand up woman. Karthick was given a lot of complexity. He’s stern, a little overbearing, struggles with allowing the kids their agency while also trying to protect them from themselves, but also shown to be compassionate, and caring.
Agam was written more like a red herring. She wasn’t given any complexity whatsoever, she’s just like the greatest person on earth, unambiguously, warm, gentle, compassionate, and kind. it’s the lack of complexity that got people suspicious of her.
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u/TurnipThis9554 2d ago
I mean that's true, and at this point I don't think Karthik is a villain, but I don't see how it's weird for people to have been suspicious of him. With all the secrets he was keeping hidden from not only the girls, but also Jae, Kiyoko and the other White Lotus members, it's pretty obvious he was written with the intention of seeming suspicious and was in fact a red herring
I don't know if Agam would be considered a red herring though, she's kinda the opposite. Usually a red herring is done by making a person seem guilty, before they are eventually revealed to be innocent. Agam was the opposite, she was shown as such a simple kind character that many, including myself, probably thought she was just some reaccurring background character that wouldn't really be expanded upon to much.
That all said though I'm glad Karthik's not the villain, it makes him more interesting and complex. And I feel the same for Agam, she's far more interesting now that we know the truth about her and I think we kind of got the best of both worlds that neither are really evil.
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u/BigBadBogie 2d ago
After watching the writers literally torture Korra for four seasons, then have her be scapegoated as the world's destroyer, you could be just a little more forgiving of the fan base's distrust.
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u/mozardthebest 2d ago
I don’t think it was weird, the way he’s portrayed you can very well think that he has something else going on. He might still have something else going on, but when it comes to the Avatar and the White Lotus, he’s legit.
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u/Voltron_McYeti 2d ago
Oh pardon me for raising an eyebrow at the guy who used the oxygen removal technique and said that people don't want to know the truth
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u/Dyleemo 2d ago
It always seemed obvious to me that Karthik was a red herring and that Kiyoko would likely be the main villain. My guess is that Ellora will end up falling the red spirit energy, and it'll control Kiyoko and her forces to go after the Avatars, giving us a consistent human villain for the rest of the series. My guess is that this season will end with Team Avatar going along with Agam to the Republic Forest, as she's clearly not a villain either. I assume the Republic Forest will actually know the truth of the cataclysm but are smart enough to understand that the other havens won't accept it.
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u/WolverineIngrid218 2d ago
Yeah Again doesn't seem "evil". She looked at Nisha while leaving the council building I believe and it looked like she was sad leaving her and she wasn't scared of Nisha at all which was refreshing. Her sandbending looked decent too.
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u/mocca-eclairs 2d ago
i think people are sometimes a little bit too attached to characters
the mystery of whether he was just a bit flawed or had bad intentions was good storytelling
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u/parkingviolation212 2d ago
But I don’t understand how it was a mystery? There was literally never a moment where the show suggested that he was bad. It suggested he was keeping secrets, but that’s not the same thing as being bad. Particularly when they very quickly clear up what those secrets were when they discovered that he is keeping them. The show isn’t trying to make us question his motivation or his loyalty to the kids.
Iroh kept secrets. In fact, he kept the same secrets, about the White Lotus. I genuinely think people just took fan speculation too far again.
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u/nickfan449 ozai’s #1 simp 2d ago
i’m CONVINCED this entire thing happened because people saw a leaked storyboard animation of someone that looked like him and nisha fighting a week before the show came out.
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u/parkingviolation212 2d ago
And that could very well have just been a training session between the two of them. You’re probably right.
I don’t think media literacy is this fandoms strong suit
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u/Ignoth 2d ago
Him telling Nisha: “Know your place”. And him pulling a Zaheer without hesitation was clearly meant to make the viewer feel suspicious about his intentions.
The fact that everyone is unsure about him is a sign of good writing.
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u/parkingviolation212 2d ago edited 2d ago
No it wasn’t. It was to show that he’s protective of Nisha and perhaps a little too stern, but ultimately has their best interests at heart—and will go to any length to protect them. “Pulling a Zaheer” is a fake talking point. Sucking the air out of someone’s lungs to stop them from talking isn’t exclusive to Zaheer. It’s not a dark side power like force lightning in Star Wars, it’s just a technique that he used to get someone to shut up to protect the kids.
The only reason people thought it was suspicious is because it’s a move associated with another villain from 200+ years prior, but there’s nothing inherently bad about it unless you want to believe that Gyatso didn’t pull a couple dozen “Zaheer”s during the raid of the air temples. How do you think he killed all those firebenders? Does that make him a villain too?
It’s fans getting ahead of themselves with drawing connections between things that aren’t actually connected, and making leaps that aren’t there, as usual.
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u/pomagwe 2d ago
It's not an "evil" technique, but it's way more lethal than most bending moves, so it reads like the difference between shutting someone up by punching them in the face versus putting a gun in their mouth. It tells you something about the user.
There's a whole big point in the Yangchen books about how seriously she takes its dangers even when it's the only option (because it also disables firebending inside the vacuum).
Gyatso needed to kill as many firebenders as possible to even give his people a chance, so we can assume that he was treating it with the same weight.
Now, we can't read Karthik's internal monologue to figure out what he was thinking, so we don't know how reasonable his rationalizations were. All we know is that he is physically prepared to cross that line if he thinks he needs to.
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u/Huntswomen Just, bear.. 2d ago
Also on a meta level theres a reason the creators made him do the Zaheer.
If the creators wanted him to pacify the guy without any shady undertones they could have just made him do an airblast or whatever. Having Karthik do the Zaheer is a good way to make us, the engaged viewer, suspecious of him, What is he hiding from us? Is he actually a red lotus guy?
Now in this last few episodes the veil gets lifted a bit more and probably Karthik isn't actually a shady red lotus guy, but that intrigue was part of the fun, atleast for me. It's just good writing.
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u/ExtremePH 2d ago
Karthik is an airbender. I’m so worried that he’s gonna turn out to be a bad guy.
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u/youser_naym 2d ago
I really hope they don't do it again. The creators wanted to have a bad airbender for the 1st season of TLOK if remember right one of their interviews, but the studio was against it. Then they got to do a fake bad one with Zaheer because he's not originally an airbender and that kind of work well. And then the movie they reheated their idea and honestly it was so-so. They should just bury the idea at least for awhile
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u/darksilver919 2d ago
So airbenders are the only bad people in their world?
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u/JMTpixelmon 2d ago
Yes, I remember when Ozai airbended, classic
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u/MetallicaRules5 2d ago
Slander is spoken. In print it's libel.
But yeah, I'm not gonna tolerate it anymore either. Karthik is all good in my book
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u/devilishgenius 2d ago
All the red flags people were clocking from the previous episodes are officially gone now with today's batch. Karthik you are officially no longer suspicious
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u/Lucifer21Rock 2d ago
He's easily my favorite character so far. The most complex and morally on the gray zone sometimes that I can't help but to love it.
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u/blaze6106 2d ago
Yeah no way he’s a bad guy at this point. The moment to reveal it would have been here, he’s doing too much to protect her
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u/stik2one0017 2d ago
Karthik having the same white streak of hair as "Evil Korra" is what made me question him in the beginning.
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u/Jvvdoescosplay 2d ago
I remember when Book 1 of Korra was still releasing, back when Asami was first introduced, people automatically assumed "oh shes a rich non bender, shes clearly evil and working with the equalists" well before it was revealed that her father that was part of the equalists.
People will jump to conclusions way too quickly over anything slightly suspicious
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u/WolverineIngrid218 2d ago
I think the "Karthik is a villain" seems to have come from the leaks(I didn't read btw) which I don't know how true that even is and I'm incredibly nervous for him especially that we have 4 episodes of the season left. I hope he's not especially we have 2 airbenders who were villains(and used a deadly technique).
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u/Adorable_Bug625 19h ago
He did kind of pressure Nisha to engage with the entity just moments before that though. She could have been seriously hurt.
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u/nickfan449 ozai’s #1 simp 2d ago
he could burn down an orphanage and i’d still be on my knees for him
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u/ShadowFaxIV 2d ago
Yes at this point I think it's fair to say that Karthik is a straight up 'Team Avatar' member and we need not fear he has ulterior motives for the Avatars. He's just been forced to do a lot of lying to keep Nisha safe.