You ever think about how in The Headband, we’re introduced to a side of the Fire Nation that’s had its culture whittled away by a hundred years of imperial wartime propaganda. And how perhaps the most damning expression of this is that students are forbidden from dancing. And so Aang, maybe the only person on the planet who still truly remembers the Fire Nation of old, from before the war, brings it back to them.
And then we get to The Firebending Masters. Zuko’s entire young adulthood has been spent using his anger towards the Fire Nation’s enemies, his drive to capture the Avatar, as a crutch. And now he doesn’t have that crutch anymore. So he and Aang set out on a pilgrimage, going to the birthplace of firebending itself, in search of answers. In search of a way to express the power of fire that isn’t fueled by rage or smothered by fear. And they find a dance.