The Ember Island Players

This is the 17th episode of Book Three, and the final episode to be aired before the four-part finale. During the New York Comic Con, it was revealed that this episode will feature a play, featuring the groups adventures. A clip of this episode was shown at comic con. It involves the gang and Suki attending a play about their adventures. The episode pokes fun at a lot of the inside jokes in the fandom including the dissatisfaction with episode 1x11 The Great Divide. It has been referenced as one of the funniest episodes in the series by the shows creators. Character designs can be seen in this video clip

Trivia

 * The image for the poster shows a rendition of the Season 1 Boxed Set cover art.
 * On the poster and in the play, Zuko's scar is on the wrong side of his face.
 * The title of the play, "The Boy in the Iceberg", is a reference to the series' premier episode.
 * In the play (in the preview), while the events are true to the first Season, the character portrayals and minor plot details are comically incorrect to make the Gaang look bad. For example:
 * Katara is played by a much older (and more developed) actress, and portrayed as very melodramatic and exaggeratedly preoccupied with "hope", often bursting into tears and/or melodramatic speeches for the occasion.
 * Sokka's actor is incredibly thin and has buckteeth; he thinks only about food (mostly meat). He wears Sokka's season two outfit.
 * While the character is a boy, the actress portraying Aang is a woman who does not attempt to hide her gender (much to the real Aang's annoyance) and is more of a trickster and is much more perky.
 * Jet is in the play and he´s "a bad boy " according to the actress playing Katara (with a sexy tone); he appears to have anime hair. He is portrayed as summoning a flood to save the village rather than trying to flood the village to kill the inhabiting Fire Nation soldiers, villagers included. He chews on a red rose instead of a twig or piece of wheat.
 * Zuko has the scar on the wrong eye, but other than that, his portrayal is pretty accurate though he too is older (though the real Zuko thinks that they make him look "stiff and humorless," which Katara thinks is spot on).
 * Appa resembles more of a Chinese Dragon in festivals.
 * Iroh is more of a glutton, eating a whole cake, and his love of tea isn't mentioned and seems to instead be replaced with cakes.
 * Momo is a "flying rabbit monkey" and talks!" and is portrayed as a hand puppet with a fake arm attached to the end to fool the audience (though only Aang's actress can wear it).
 * The Blue Spirit is a separate entity from Zuko and also saves "Aang" from Zuko, though in reality, it was Zhao who captured Aang. The Blue Spirit is given a gargantuan head and a silly expression on his face.
 * Also, it looks like their would be some 'romance' between the Blue Spirit and 'Aang', according to Zuko and Aang's face.
 * Suki is quite accurate, though some physical details are slightly exaggerated, but to a lesser extent.
 * The Gang skip over "The Great Divide", referencing the fanbase distaste of the episode.
 * At first the only one who likes the play is Toph.
 * Toph will be played by a man. The actor also looks nothing like Toph (be being muscular and at least 6-feet tall) except that he has her Earth Kingdom clothing and her hairdo (this portrayal of Toph is most likely a reference to the Earthbender prototype that Mike and Bryan created before they decided that the Toph's character should be a girl).
 * While he has Zuko's original topknot at first, Zuko's Actor will have a spiky haircut, and a long haircut at some point. This parodies the fact that Zuko's hairstyle chaged numerous times in Book 2.
 * The following episodes are referenced in the play (in order of appearance):
 * The Boy in the Iceberg
 * The Southern Air Temple
 * The Warriors of Kyoshi
 * The King of Omashu
 * The Waterbending Scroll
 * The Blue Spirit
 * Jet
 * The Great Divide
 * The Siege of the North, Part 2
 * Aang is wearing the same hat that Dock wears in The Painted Lady.

Fan Theories

 * It could be that Aang tries to kiss Katara again after the play, because they wear the same clothing in the trailer where they kiss as in the preview of 'The Ember Island players' . However, since how the kids returned to the Fire Nation and got back to wearing Fire Nation disguises is not explained in this episode, they could have done these things in "The Southern Raiders" and this scene could be from that episode. It is shown that Katara backs away from Aang before he could kiss her for unknown reasons.
 * Sokka might have a romantic evening with Suki, as he is seen in a well lit room with his hair down and with a rose in his mouth, but it seems as if the wrong person came in as Sokka swallowed the rose whole (maybe Toph). Of course since this clip was shown at the end of the trailer it could have just been a way from the creators of the show to inject some humor into the trailer.

Translations

 * The top of the plays poster reads its title in Chinese: 冰山上的男孩, meaning "The Boy in the Iceberg".
 * The sign over the stage reads 餘燼島劇院, meaning "Ember Island Theater".

Series Continuity

 * A poster for "Love Among the Dragons" (which Zuko says his mother took him to see every year) can be seen at the post office in The Runaway.
 * The episode makes a reference to the Cabbage Merchant, a reoccuring joke in the show, as a surprisingly knowledgeable merchant of cabbage.

Real World Connection

 * The idea of a young, male hero being acted by a woman may derive from the traditional English theater productions of "Peter Pan", where the title character is played by an actress.
 * The portrayal of the Fake Aang is much like the character Peter Pan, who is also known for being very immature and a trickster (being forever young and all).
 * The idea of the Fake Sokka thinking of only food is referenced to Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, who also has a large fondness with food. The Fake Sokka's voice also sounds like Shaggy, but as if he hadn't hit puberty, yet.
 * The idea of Momo talking (and the closeness Sokka and Momo shared in the desert when they both got high on cactus juice) could be a representation of Scooby from Scooby Doo.