When Avatar: The Last Airbender premiered 20 years ago, no one could have expected what it would become in pop culture. A generation defining series that’s discussed, analyzed, and inspiring to this day. A huge part of that is the key moments where years of carefully laid storylines, perfect direction, inspired acting, and so much more came together to elevate the series to true “epic” status. The culminating scenes that made the journey Aang and friends took become so much more than just another animated series.Avatar: The Last Airbender has no shortage of these moments and as part of our celebration of the show’s 20th anniversary, we sat down with the cast and crew to discover what went into making them. The influences, the meaning behind the words, and how they feel about them all these years later.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});Zuko and Azula DuelTrauma is one of the worst things in life to try and work through. It can be isolating even knowing where to begin. That’s where stories can come in. A story in your favorite movie, TV show, book, or whatever else can function as a kind of mirror for your trauma; a safe mirror where the reflection helps you begin to understand what you went through because your favorite characters are struggling with similar battles. Relating to them helps you understand yourself.Dante Basco felt just that while playing Zuko. “A lot of the trauma I was going through in my life made its way into the DNA of what Zuko became. It’s all intertwined in who I was talking to in my mind and my soul at the moment.” Fans have shared with Basco that watching Zuko’s fight with his abusive sister, Azula, was cathartic to them.“In life, we don’t all get to confront our abusers and battle out with the people that have hurt us the most,” says Basco. “It meant a lot to a lot of people to see themselves in Zuko. Someone that’s gone through trauma and abuse and to be able to overcome it and really confront the ones that are abusing him.”That’s the power of the mirror of media. Zuko confronting his sister in an epic duel of fire and lightning may help you feel seen and validated in your own real-world struggles.Aang vs. OzaiOzai, the Fire Lord, thinks he’s got Aang finished. The young Avatar, buried under a pile of rocks, is no threat to this titanic force… right? BAM! Aang, body glowing from entering the Avatar state, grabs Ozai by the beard. It’s a massive power move, one that speaks to how Zach Tyler Eisen views the climactic fight all these years later.“The pulling of the beard was a way for Aang to assert dominance and say, ‘Listen, guy, I may be a 12-year-old kid. I’m not going to kill you, I’m going to take your bending anyway. I’m the boss.’” And he is. Aang, staying true to his ways and not killing Ozai, still manages to defeat him. What’s more brutal than a kid grabbing your beard?! “It’s disrespectful,” Eisen laughs. “If someone did that in hockey? It would be a headline. You’d never see the end of that clip on the internet, on television. It would be an infamous moment.”Toph Discovers MetalbendingWhen Toph invents metalbending, a never-before-seen sub-style of bending, to escape a metal prison, she doesn’t hesitate to celebrate her accomplishment. Putting her own captors in that very same prison, she declares, “I am the greatest Earthbender in the world!”Some might disparagingly call Toph cocky or egotistical for that statement. Michaela Jill Murphy believes that Toph deserves that cockiness, but also that it’s more complicated. She compares Toph to being a professional in her field, “like a businessman.” If the character had a huge ego but couldn’t live up to her own hype, that’d be pompous. “When can you stand on business and actually follow through with being legit? How much of that is ‘ego’ versus being proud of yourself for getting yourself out of peril and inventing an entire new sub-bending style?” asks Murphy.Toph’s attitude, according to Murphy, comes from knowing how good she is. She knows she can help people and knows what she’s talking about. Yet when women know their abilities and speak them out loud they can get disparaging labels, seen as too cocky or sure of themselves. It happens, “every day, all the time,” Murphy knowingly says. However, “Toph is more than just cocky. She’s a problem solver and wants to be really great at what she does.”ATLA Cast and Crew Favorite MomentsIn addition to these fan-favorite moments, we also asked the people behind Avatar: The Last Airbender to share their favorite moments in making the show. Whether that be underappreciated scenes, behind-the-scenes memories, or times where the whole show clicked into place.Jack De Sena (Sokka)“Episode three where we get the Monk Gyatso context [about what happened while Aang was in the iceberg]. If it wasn’t clear in the pilot, this is about genocide. If you didn’t know, that’s absolutely what we’re talking about here. That was an early moment for me where I was like, ‘this show is not shying away from incredibly difficult subjects and it’s going to tackle them with grace and complexity.'”Jennie Kwan (Suki)“[At the end of the series] I’m looking around the room and I keep hearing this voice and I’m like, ‘where is that voice coming from? I don’t see him in the room. He’s really good! I don’t know who it is.’ Then we’re in the courtyard at Nickelodeon, I’m chit-chatting with Dante [Basco] and this man. He walks away and Dante says, ‘Jennie, do you know who that was?’ I’m like no. He’s says, ‘That’s Mark Hamill.’ I was like, ‘Ohhhhhh, okay! There ya go! That’s who the Fire Lord was!’ That was just the biggest ditsy moment ever. [Hamill’s] a very sweet guy.”Andrea Romano (Voice Director)“The initial kid who was cast to play Aang was such a good young actor, absolutely delightful, but he sounded like a baby. They had to recast and they found a kid out of New York. We did many episodes with him but he wasn’t really an actor yet. He was working on becoming an actor. It just didn’t work out, he wasn’t strong enough. He is the title character. He is the Avatar. It’s got to be the strongest actor in the whole series. Then they found Zach Tyler Eisen, who was such a remarkable child. Aside from being an instinctually good actor, he was taking violin lessons, archery lessons, regular school, and a ton of other classes.“What he had to do was not just come up with the voice for Aang and act it, but for the first several episodes, which were already animated, he had to ADR re-recorded and replace the kid before him. He had to make it his own with somebody else’s timing and mouth flaps. It really speaks to just how talented this young man was. An absolute pleasure to work with. An absolute joy to direct.”The post Inside Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Greatest Fan Favorite Moments appeared first on Den of Geek.