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I am back with more Season 1 Zuko meta, to follow up on my Zuko meta from The Storm!

So in The Storm, Iroh and Zuko's crew argue that he should be prioritizing the crew's lives/safety over his mission to capture the Avatar - priorities that are in direct contradiction of those the Fire Lord made clear when he challenged Zuko to an Agni Kai and then burned him in front of a crowd after Zuko essentially argued for the same thing at 13, against a General who had suggested sacrificing a bunch of young and barely trained soldiers for the sake of winning more ground in the Earth Kingdom. After sailing into the storm nearly gets one crew member killed, gets Zuko injured while saving that crew member's life, and causes damage to the ship, Zuko finally agrees to turn back. He even sees Aang flying away on Appa during a brief break in the clouds, but he makes the choice to let Aang - a major target in the war effort and also the mission he's been desperately seeking to complete for the past three years - escape so that he can prioritize the crew's safety.

This is also the last time we see Zuko bring his crew along to help him complete his mission to capture Aang.

The next episode is the Blue Spirit episode, where it could be argued that Zuko has to act alone because he's technically committing treason in saving Aang from Zhao. Even the next attempt he makes after that, though, in the Bato episode, is just him and Iroh working together without the crew. In the Deserter, Zuko doesn't even show up - only Zhao tracks the Gaang to Jeong Jeong's camp, and Zuko isn't even in the episode.

The next time we see Zuko with his crew is in the second to last episode of Season 1, when Zhao interrupts Music Night to commandeer Zuko's crew, and Zuko refers to them as "traitors" for going with Zhao.

And now I'm just thinking about how betrayed Zuko must have felt in that episode. He listened to his crew and his Uncle. He stopped putting his crew in danger for the sake of his mission and started taking on more risky missions on his own or with only Iroh while the crew got to chill around in port having Music Nights... and when Zhao comes to take the crew away - the crew that Zuko has been trying to treat better and keep safer - they up and leave without a fight.

And then the pirates that Zhao hired to kill him even blow up his ship and almost succeed at blowing him up too.

After getting his crew stolen and almost getting blown up, Zuko sneaks onto Zhao's ship to follow Zhao to the North Pole and keep trying to complete his mission, even though he's still injured from Zhao's assassination attempt. Zhao, whom his father, the Fire Lord, promoted multiple times while failing to grant Zuko any additional resources or even recognition that he cared if his kid was still alive or not, in favor of promoting a slimy asshole who kept trying to steal the mission that he'd given to Zuko in the first place.

Finally they get to the North Pole, and Zhao's mission winds up getting just about all the Fire Nation soldiers that he brought with him - almost certainly including Zuko's old crew - killed, while Zhao manages to not even succeed at the mission he'd brought them all to the North Pole for in the first place.

And the Fire Lord's response? Is to blame Zuko and Iroh for the North Pole and send Azula to arrest them both as traitors.

Is it any wonder that Zuko starts off Season 2 incredibly depressed and struggling to see the value in doing the right thing?