Seven Havens: The Faceless, The One Left Behind, Night of the Afflicted

There’s no way I’m going to be able to keep up with reviewing these episodes in a timely manner, so these posts will simply arrive when they’re ready. Hopefully I’ll be able to watch episodes seven-to-nine in the coming week, and we’ll go from there.

The ominous figures we saw in the final scene of the previous episode are known as the Faceless, and are busy stealing grain from Ellora when Jae’s team interrupts them. Interestingly, all of them seem to be benders, and when one of the firebenders knocks out Uki, she says: “the Brigade just sees you as muscle, sister.”

Her use of the word “sister” is interesting – is it just a turn of phrase, is she using it to address a fellow firebender, or does she mean it quite literally? Is Uki her sister? I only ask because there’s a big emphasis on Uki’s family throughout this episode, and by the end of it, she’s been kidnapped.

It turns out Jae has been put in charge of the Avatars, two extremely restless little girls, who are wasting no time in trying to find out what happened to their parents. So far there are no records, but Daemin finds their lullaby familiar – apparently he’s heard it from Uki, who hasn’t turned up for her duties that morning.

So that’s the plot of this particular episode: to find Uki, who is currently nowhere to be found.

They go to her dormitory (which is a pigsty) and discover a map of the city with certain places marked out, and crumbs which lead them straight to Agam’s place. In case you’d forgotten, or simply didn’t know, this is the bakery that featured in the first episode, owned by the woman who sneakily provided a hungry Pavi with some food. (And yes, looking up her name yielded a spoiler, which is a bit of a bummer).

She tells Jae and the girls that Uki was there that morning to pick up a food order for her family, but when they reach her home (which is chock-full of a big blended family) she’s not there either. So it would appear that she went missing while she was on her way home. Our trio check out her room, which is also pretty messy, and Jae wonders if she had been packing to leave.

Nisha finds another map of the city (virtually identical to the one they found in the dormitory) and they recognize the marked spots as places where the Faceless have struck. So the words on the corner of the parchment weren’t “portable sports” at all, but “possible spots.” They conclude that the Faceless are about to strike one of the gates, but as Jae goes to head them off, the girls realize the real target are the camodillos, which can easily transport everything they need. Uki had it all figured out.

We get a pretty nifty bending fight on the walls of Ellora, but the Faceless manage to escape – not only with the camodillos, but Uki in one of their carts, bound and gagged. To make matters worse, one of the Elloran guards saw Pavi air and earthbend in order to save her sister’s life. There’s a red glow in his eyes as he hysterically tells Datu what he saw. Uh-oh.

Jae and the twins are inevitably in trouble with Karthik for exposing themselves, and he decides that Jae is going to need more help in looking after them – cue Daemin, the waterbender of Jae’s squad, who is also a member of the White Lotus. Huh. Okay, that’s a little out of left field.

In the next episode, Jae catches up with Datu, who is openly nervous about rumours of the Avatar’s return and conspicuously trying to hide blue ink on his fingers. It would appear these rumours are spreading, as graffiti over a public image of the council reads: “the Avatar hides amongst us.”

Not helping with any of this are the twins, who are continually trying to sneak out to discover more about what happened to their parents. Not without reason, Karthik orders them to stay hidden, just until the current panic in the city blows over.

They’re narrowly missed by Chancellor Kayoko, who arrives to tell Karthik she’s going to address the people in an attempt to get ahead of the rumours and quell unrest. Little does she know, but all those rumours about how the Brigade are hiding the Avatar are pretty close to the truth.

During training, Nisha is particularly aggressive in her attacks while Pavi takes evasive action (and it’s so adorable how they’re both wrapped up in padding so they don’t get hurt). Recalling what Karthik told them, Pavi floats the idea that they might raid his office in a bid to find records on all the previous Avatars, which may also reveal some information about where Nisha came from. She’s been told that Karthik found her on the streets of Ellora, but is that necessarily true?

Nisha tells her sister: “I trust my Commander,” but “trust” is a word that comes up a lot when it comes to Karthik, and so narrative law pretty much guarantees that he’s not trustworthy. They escape their firebending teacher with earthbending, which is a nice touch since it’s their strongest element, and start a food fight in the cafeteria in order to divert everyone else’s attention.

Yeah, I had to wince at this given the emphasis on the scarcity of food in the havens. One of their commanders even yells: “think of the rations!”

Meanwhile, Jae is noticing that the streets are turning against the Brigade, and there are a lot of fliers posted everywhere… in blue ink. The Brigade isn’t happy either and morale is understandably low given that more benders have been kidnapped by the Faceless and everyone seems to hate them.

Jae goes to see Datu, only to discover his diary entries don’t have anything particularly kind to say about the Brigade, and Kayoko’s address is interrupted by violence when the agitated guard from the previous episode holds her hostage in front of the crowd. Jae and Daemin try to talk him down, but Karthik simply uses airbending to suffocate the guy in another rather eye-opening, villain-coded act (the last time we saw something like this happen, it was at the hands of a Korra villain). Not to mention that violence directed towards a female politician has plenty of uncomfortable real-world parallels right now.

The twins have found a secret room which naturally provides plenty of Easter eggs: I spotted Kyoshi’s fan (though I suppose it could have been Suki’s), Sokka’s club, and Zuko’s Blue Spirit mask. And of course, two figurines of Korra and Asami that Pavi immediately starts playing with and makes kiss. Aww.

More pertinent to this story, there’s a radio that can be used to contact the other cities, a bracelet that matches Pavi’s brooch, and a letter that reveals Nisha was not found in the city after all, but that Karthik was called to a meeting place somewhere in the harshlands. In their haste to hide, the girls accidentally kick the radio out into the other room, where Karthik is talking with Kayoko, and the jig is up – with Karthik, not Kayoko.

He tells them what we can only assume (at this stage) is the truth: that Nisha’s parents identified her as the Avatar and sent a message to Karthik to meet them in a specific place. A sand storm blew him off course, and he found Nisha all alone in the harshlands. I’m not entirely sure why this warranted a lie about finding her on the streets of Ellora, but he didn’t know about Pavi at all – and the tone he strikes sounds genuine enough.

Does this mean their parents planned to give up Nisha but keep Pavi? Perhaps Pavi’s abilities hadn’t manifested at that time, so they didn’t realize she was also an Avatar. And what happened to them afterwards?

This episode concludes on two quotes from Karthik that definitely feel like foreshadowing for future reveals and developments: he tells Jae that: “to protect these girls, you’ll have to make difficult decisions,” and then gets on the radio to communicate to someone: “tell the others, word of the Avatar’s return is spreading.”

Our third episode begins with various benders of the Brigade attempting to provide cover for the ever-growing red geometric crystals that the Anomaly (I’ve been calling it the Entity, but the show is going with Anomaly) left behind after its rampage. A firebender called Tala has been brought in to replace Uki, and everyone is overtired and anxious about the Faceless – so much so, that it’s only a matter of time before there’s an accident and Tala is injured.

Speaking of injuries, Pavi’s leg is starting to hurt her badly, though she refuses help and rejects pity. Her sister and Karthik manage to convince her to go to a doctor, who states that her missing limb isn’t something she was born with, but rather that she lost it a few years ago. Pavi has no recollection of any such trauma, and the doctor suggests that her mind is protecting itself.

Elsewhere in the hospital, we’re shown a ward filled with those that have been afflicted with the Anomaly, all highly agitated and with flashing red eyes. When Karthik and the twins pass through, Commander Bountan spots the Avatars and immediately freaks out. That’s understandable, as when we’re shown what they look like through his eyes, they appear to be demonic little monsters, with evil grins and crackling red energy coursing through them.

Immediately all the patients go nuts, and start screaming about how “the demon beast” has found them. It’s a pretty fraught scene, though it begs the question: is this how Vaatu (assuming it’s him) sees the Avatar? And therefore how those he’s infected sees them too? Because when the afflicted come across the Anomaly again, they’re just as frightened of it as they are of the twins.

Whatever connection the Anomaly has forged with these people via the crystals, they’re not siding with it against the girls, but rather are afraid of whatever link there is between it and the Avatars. Karthik gives the girls permission to bend in public to defend themselves, and an attempt is made to seal off the ward in order to protect other patients.

When Pavi is approached by one of the red-eyed patients, she recognizes the symptoms earlier seen in the camodillo and helps calm the man down a little by earthbending him into a little box (it’s nicer than it sounds). Karthik theorizes that fear isn’t just a symptom of the hysteria but also the cause before confronting Bountan. It turns out the old commander can lightning-bend, though Karthik manages to talk him down long enough for him to say: “the spirit world has unleashed its wrath.”

This is said in a moment of lucidity, which suggests it’s accurate intel, and in turn becomes another clue as to the identity of the Anomaly: it’s a spirit, and it’s angry for some reason. When it approaches the twins, it once again shows them a vision: this time of a couple who can only be their parents, talking about a journey they’re about to take – presumably the one that ended with Nisha in Karthik’s custody.

It’s only when they let go of each other’s hands that they lose the image, and Karthik runs up in the aftermath to ask how they learned how to energy-bend. Er, they were energy-bending? That wasn’t made particularly clear; it just looked like the Anomaly passed through them. Perhaps we were meant to think they were controlling it somehow, which raises the question – does it want them to see these visions, or are the girls forcibly extracting them?

In the episode’s subplot, the Brigade goes for dinner at Agam’s bakery, and she encourages them to take their grievances to Kayoko. When we next see her, she’s being confronted by an angry mob of benders that wants her to prioritize her safety, and it’s only Jae’s intervention that keeps things from getting out of control. Who would ever want to be a politician?

She and Jae have a discussion on a balcony that very pointedly has the red crystals growing in the background behind them, but she still refuses to reach out to the other havens for help… at least until the very last scene, where she relents and puts out a distress call.

Our last scene of the twins is them lying in bed together (aww) and discussing what the Anomaly showed them, and how they can find out more. It’s rather sweet, though the most important part of the scene is when the doctor returns and gives Pavi her new prosthetic leg – that is, the very one she has in the opening introduction.

And that’s the origin of that!

Miscellaneous Observations:

I’m slowly but surely learning the names of Jae’s squad, but why call one of them Daemin? Was someone a fan of Daemon Targaryen in House of the Dragon? It’s pronounced a little differently, but still!

Why do the Faceless need supplies so much, and why are they so against the Brigade? I’m going to hazard a guess that they can’t produce resources on their own so they have to steal it from Ellora, and that they object to the stringent recruitment policy that rules the city. Still, if it wasn’t for the sight of Uki tied up on the back of that cart, I would have said she was in cahoots with them, and the map was actually a plan to show them where to go.

Speaking of Uki, I noted last week that she was a firebender with the hairstyle of a waterbender. This week, we visit her home and discover that she’s from a water-and-fire blended family. Beautifully done, especially since they called no attention to it – they just let the detail stand and then visually explained it later.

Also, this baby who was perpetually glaring over his mother’s shoulder was hilarious.

Food was a BIG theme in these episodes, whether someone is stealing it, offering it, sharing it, purchasing it, or throwing it around in a food fight. It makes sense that people living in a quasi-dystopian environment would put such an emphasis on such an essential resource, and I’ll be interested in seeing if it extends throughout the entire show.

I loved this shot of Geet and Ruhi. They look like sphinxes.

When Pavi earthbends around the infected man, she creates a little peephole for him so she can look at him while she’s talking to him. Interestingly, she chooses the shape of a diamond. Maybe it’s just subconscious – after all, she’s just seen that shape. Or maybe it’s subconscious in a different way, and she’s tapping into a deeper part of herself. Or else, it’s just a neat visual. We’ll see…

The interplay between the twins in the third (that is, the sixth) episode was nicely done, with Pavi getting defensive about her leg and rejecting help (“stop feeling sad for me”) while gung-ho Nisha eventually gets scared and Pavi deliberately asks for help (“I need your help.”) By the end, they’ve reached a new give-and-take understanding with each other.

Also, Pavi made that wooden peg all by herself? Damn, no wonder she talks to rocks and animals. She’s been profoundly alone and self-sufficient for a long time.