Avatar: The Last Airbender is a show filled with heartfelt moments and important lessons, but one of the most touching relationships on the show is actually one of the shortest. The show’s first season sees Aang, Katara, and Sokka traveling north towards the home of the Northern Water Tribe, where they come to meet Princess Yue. The bond that forms between Sokka and Yue, and the relationship’s heartbreaking end, perfectly exemplifies the core tenets of the Water people and contains an important lesson for us all about dealing with the ebbs and flows of life. So let’s take a closer look at Sokka and Yue and why their relationship was so important to the story.
“My first girlfriend turned into the moon.”
Their paths to each other
Sokka is one of the first characters we meet in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Left to lead the Southern Water Tribe after all of the men (including his father) left the village to fight in the war, he’s been left with the responsibility of protecting his sister Katara and teaching the young tribe members how to fight. While Katara has waterbending abilities, Sokka doesn’t – but, he says, he actually prefers being able to fight over more spiritual skills like bending.
“I’m just a guy with a boomerang, I didn’t ask for all this flying and magic.”
He’s much more interested in becoming a great warrior and strategist like his father. Unfortunately for Sokka, while he comes up with many grand plans, they often don’t go the way he had hoped. But that doesn’t stop him from continuing to try. Sokka is witty, tenacious and, at first, rather immature. Because he thinks that he should be in charge of everything, he can have a hard time recognizing other’s skills – especially girls’. He has a lot of growing up to do over the course of the series, but thankfully he’s always up for the challenge. And this is because he understands that, like water, he must shift and change in life as you learn new information and meet new people. If you freeze like ice, you’ll be stuck and stagnant forever. But if you’re willing to go with the flow and take on challenges head on, even when they’re scary or mean that you need to make a change, you’ll be headed down the right path to the future you want for yourself. Over the course of his travels with Aang, he learned what it really means to be a leader, and how to build up both yourself and those around you.
Princess Yue is the daughter of and an advisor to Chief Arnook of the Northern Water Tribe. Kind and intelligent, she is a very important element of her tribe, working to keep everyone and everything in harmony. She feels a great sense of responsibility to her community; so much so that she has agreed to wed Hahn, a handsome (and incredibly egotistical) young warrior whose only interest was in her status.
“I’ve courted a lot of girls, but Yue is the finest. And she comes with the most perks.” “Perks?! What does that mean?!”
She didn’t love him, but felt that marrying him was what was expected of her and thus the right thing to do for the greater good. Yue’s deep connection to her tribe and its spiritual connection to the water stems from her earliest days. She was a very sickly baby – to the point that her parents feared that she wouldn’t survive. As a last resort, her father put her into the Spirit Oasis, hoping that it would be able to heal her. The Moon Spirit itself gave her part of its own life force to save her.
“My dark hair turned white. I opened my eyes and began to cry, and they knew I would live.”
As thanks, her parents named her Yue, which means moon.
Though Sokka and Yue at first might seem quite different – Sokka being boisterous and hot headed, while Yue is more calm and collected – they actually perfectly showcase the complexity inherent in water: it can have immense depth, moments of turbulence and blissful peace, and, no matter what, always continues flowing on.
“Our strength comes from the Spirit of the Moon. Our life comes from the Spirit of the Ocean. They work together to keep balance.”
Both strong, compelling people in their own right, when their paths cross they open each other up to new possibilities and teach an important lesson.
Sokka & Yue’s short but significant time together
Sokka and Yue meet near the end of The Book of Water. Aang, Katara and Sokka have finally reached the Northern Water Tribe, where they meet Chief Ar nook, who introduces them to his daughter. (In the new live action show, they actually meet a bit sooner when Yue appears in the guise of a fox to guide Sokka through the Fog of Lost Souls.) Sokka is captivated by Yue immediately.
“You’re a princess, huh? You know, back in my tribe, I’m kind of like a prince, myself.”
And while it might at first appear like Sokka just developing a crush on the new pretty girl, it quickly becomes clear that their connection is much deeper. They spend time getting to know one another as friends – but Yue quickly realizes that what they feel for each other goes beyond just friendship. She is conflicted because her deep tie to her responsibility to her tribe tells her that she shouldn’t be with Sokka but deep inside she knows that what they feel for one another is real. While they can’t be together, they still spend time together riding Appa and taking walks, talking about their lives and their dreams, and falling in love.
“Is it always this cold in the sky?” “Not when you’re with someone.”
Their split feelings about if they should be together exemplify their different feelings around responsibility: at this point in the story, Sokka is still mainly focused inwards – while he is certainly protective of Katara and Aang, he still mainly feels like his most important obligation is to himself and what he wants. Yue, on the other hand, knows that she doesn’t want the life laid out for her – especially not her forthcoming marriage to Hahn – but she’s looking at the bigger picture of what would be best for everyone in her community. She’s willing to put aside her own wants and desires if it means everyone in her tribe will have a better life.
“I wish we could just be friends, but I like you too much, and it’s too confusing to be around you. ”
But soon, the question of responsibility becomes much larger than just their relationship…
When the Fire Nation attacked the Northern Water Tribe, Sokka was able to use his strategic skills to help defend the city by explaining to a group of Water Tribe warriors how to infiltrate the Fire Nation’s ships. Though the Water Tribe was eventually able to fend off the attack, it unfortunately didn’t stop Fire Nationl admiral Zhao from being able to critically injure the Moon Spirit. Because the moon’s influence plays such a huge part in the water bender’s abilities, the moon being incapacitated meant that they all lost their ability to water bend. This could have marked the end of water benders, but then Yue remembered her own deep connection to the Moon Spirit itself.
“It gave me life. Maybe I can give it back.”
To restore balance to the spirit, and the world, Yue sacrifices herself by returning her life force back from whence it came. The Yue of the mortal world disappears as she is reincarnated as The Moon Spirit, and balance is restored.
“The spirits gave me a vision when Yue was born. I saw a beautiful, brave young girl become the moon spirit.”
Life after Yue
Sokka was understandably heartbroken upon realizing that she was really gone for good and they would never be able to be together again but Yue becoming the Moon Spirit wasn’t the end of their deep connection, or of her impact on his life.
“Goodbye Sokka, I’ll always be with you.”
Even in his heartbreak, he realizes how important and brave her choice was, and it ignites a spark in him that begins to truly understand how crucial it is to be able to step up to the plate and make hard decisions to save your community – even when it means that you don’t get what you want. Yue showed Sokka what it really means to be a leader, and what he learned from her sacrifice would go on to help shape him into the strong, capable leader himself.
And though Yue has left the mortal world, that doesn’t mean she’s gone for good. In the following season, the team heads to the Earth Kingdom in search of a teacher for Aang to learn earthbending from. Along the way, they become stuck in the Foggy Swamp, the magical properties of which cause the group to have hallucinations. Sokka’s visions were of Yue berating him for not being able to protect her, a clear manifestation of his deep guilt over not being able to do more to save her. He continued to have a hard time moving on and forming new relationships because he still felt burdened by that guilt, and was afraid of opening himself up to love only to feel such great loss again.
“It’s so hard to lose someone you care about. Something happened at the North Pole and I couldn’t protect someone. I don’t want anything like that to ever happen again.”
His connection to and love for Yue never totally disappeared, and he was always ready to defend her. And Yue watched over Sokka and the group as the Moon Spirit, even showing up in the Spirit World to encourage Aang in a time of need. Her great power as the Moon Spirit also came in handy when she helped create a great wave to help Aang get to the island where Roku’s temple was located. She might not have been able to be with the group, but she was always watching over them from her place in the sky.
CONCLUSION
Though their time together was tragically short, Yue’s impact rippled through Sokka’s life and the larger world of Avatar in a major way. Their relationship is a wonderful example of how love, or a special person, can alter your life forever, even if you only have a brief time together. Sokka gave Yue the chance to feel the warmth and joy of true love before she moved on to the next phase of her existence, and she in turn opened his heart and influenced his understanding of life and responsibility to one’s larger community greatly. Their love story has continued to impact fans over the years, including Ian Arden who wrote “Moon Spirit”, the lovely song you’ve heard throughout the video, about their story. So a big thanks to Ian for making this video possible! Click here to check out the full song!