The Fortuneteller


 * This article is about the episode. For the character the title refers to, see Aunt Wu.

"The Fortuneteller" is the 14th episode of season one of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the 14th of the overall series. It debuted on September 23, 2005.

Overview
''Aang, Katara, and Sokka travel to a village that relies solely on the predictions of a cloud-reading fortuneteller. Sokka is skeptical, and tries to disprove all the predictions. Upon discovering a nearby volcano is about to erupt, Aang and Katara manipulate the clouds as a warning to the oblivious villagers. The group manages to evacuate the village before the volcano erupts.''

Synopsis
While Sokka tries to catch a fish, Aang crafts a replacement necklace for Katara out of Sokka's fishing line and small flowers, much to the warrior's annoyance. When Katara puts it on, Aang sees her in a completely new light. Aang has always liked Katara, but now it has become a full-blown crush. Sokka sees this as an opportunity to tease Aang and says, "Smoochy! Smoochy! Someone's in love!" He makes kissing faces at the fish he finally caught, but the fish slaps him with its tail and lands back in the water. However, Katara remains ignorant of Aang's crush, commenting that Aang is only a good friend. She even compares him to Momo, much to Aang's dismay.

Upon hearing loud noises nearby, the trio witnesses an old man being attacked by a huge platypus bear. To their surprise, the man doesn't seem concerned at all, the reason being that Aunt Wu, the village fortuneteller, predicted he would make a safe journey which he did, as Appa scared the bear away. The man hands them a wrapped umbrella, saying that the fortuneteller told him to give it to any travelers he met, and walks away.

The moment Aang opens it, it begins to rain, thus proving the fortuneteller was correct in predicting that some travelers would need the umbrella. Sokka, however, is skeptical, and, in an attempt to debunk the fortune, he remarks that the sky had been cloudy all day, essentially saying that anyone could have predicted it would rain. To emphasize how easy it is to make such a prediction, he makes one of his own: "It's going to keep drizzling." Ironically, the rain immediately stops and the sun comes out.

At Aunt Wu's place, Aang meets Meng, the fortuneteller's assistant. She instantly falls for him, as demonstrated by a romanticized shot of Aang seen from her point-of-view. This is similar to the romanticized shot of Katara seen from Aang's point-of-view which came earlier in the episode when she put on her new necklace. These similar images establish a love triangle that continues for the rest of the episode.

Meng develops a crush on Aang, solely based on Aunt Wu's prediction that she would marry a man with large ears, and Aang's ears seem large to her. The fact that her name also rhymed with Aang's seemed to be another important factor.

At that moment, a woman emerges from the other room and tells Meng that she just received a fortune, predicting she would receive a rare panda lily from her true love. Afterwards, Aunt Wu comes out and asks the trio who would like to go next. Sokka looks away and Aang looks to Katara, who answers, "I guess that's me."

Aang is obviously worried about what Aunt Wu and Katara will talk about, so he consults Sokka for his opinion on what he thinks they will discuss. Sokka says, "Boring stuff, I'm sure: love, who she's going to marry, how many babies she's going to have." This confirms Aang's suspicions. Curious about his role in Katara's future, he makes an excuse that he has to go to the bathroom, but really sneaks off to eavesdrop.



After a brief talk about cosmetics, Katara asks Aunt Wu whom she will marry. Aunt Wu says that she can see "a great romance" for her and that the man is "a very powerful bender". Aang is delighted to hear this, and he begins to jump and dance around.

Come Sokka's turn, Aunt Wu predicts that his future will be full of "struggle and anguish, most of it self-inflicted". Aunt Wu then beckons Aang into a private room. She chooses a fortunetelling method which involves throwing a bone into a small fire, and observing the cracks. When Aang picks one and throws it in the fire, it explodes.

Aunt Wu explains hysterically that he will be involved in a great battle between the forces of good and evil which will determine the fate of the whole world. Aang, already aware of that, dismisses her prediction. He's more interested in his future with Katara, and whether they will get married. When he asks about love, Aunt Wu says that she didn't see anything. Upon noticing Aang's disappointment, she grabs a piece of shattered bone and tells him, "Trust your heart and you will be with the one you love."

Later that day, Sokka complains about fortunetelling being a hoax. While ranting that his life will be joyful instead of full of self-inflicted pain as Aunt Wu predicted, he kicks a pebble; ironically, it ricochets off of a sign and hits him in the head. Even more ironically, the Chinese character on the sign reads, "Fu", which roughly means "a Good Blessing".



The group notices a crowd of people gathering in the town. They learned that it was time again for the annual cloud reading, a ritual in which Aunt Wu would predict the fate of the villagers by studying cloud formations. One of her predictions is that Mt. Makapu would not destroy the village that year. The whole town believes in Aunt Wu's predictions, so they all have no doubts about her prediction.

Meanwhile, Katara is drinking in every word of Aunt Wu's predictions repeatedly, while Sokka remains very skeptical of fortunetelling. Aang, discouraged that Katara seems to have no special feelings for him, asks Sokka for some advice. He tells him that the best way to get a girl is by acting aloof, thinking that the girl in question is Meng. When Katara comes by, Aang acts like he doesn't notice her, but Katara remains oblivious to his feelings. Aang decides to get her a panda lily on the rim of the volcano with Sokka, but when they reach the top of the mountain, they discover that the volcano is in fact going to erupt.

They rush back down to the town to inform everyone of what they saw, but no one believes them because they still have complete confidence in Aunt Wu's predictions.

Knowing that the only person the villagers will listen to is Aunt Wu, Aang decides to steal her cloud reading book. Meng comes up from behind him and admits that she has been stalking him the whole time, but knows that he doesn't like her; Aang did, however, respond to her clearly let-down feeling by saying that she would easily find a great man. Using the book, Katara and Aang manipulate the clouds with a combination of waterbending and airbending, then convince Aunt Wu to make a second reading, which of course, now tells her that the volcano is going to erupt. Aang and Sokka quickly organize the village's earthbenders, as well as anyone capable of digging, to make a giant trench around the village to redirect the lava. Just as the lava surges over the trench, Aang unleashes a massive gust of wind to cool the lava, solidifying it into a giant wall. Sokka mentions offhand that he sometimes forgets how powerful a bender Aang really is, and Katara is struck with realization about the love fortune Aunt Wu gave her.



Aang sheepishly hands back the guide for cloud-reading and instead of being reprimanded by the woman, she praises him. Aang tells her of his suspicions that Aunt Wu had never foretold love in his future. To this, Aunt Wu tells him that like how he reshaped the clouds, he could shape his own destiny.

Sokka happily tells the villagers that Aunt Wu was wrong, but the man they encountered at the start of the episode says that the village wasn't destroyed, as Aunt Wu predicted; she never claimed the volcano wouldn't erupt, only that it wouldn't destroy the village. Sokka retorts with an aggravated "I hate you", and Katara drags him away. With that, the trio leave the village to continue their northern journey. Meng and Katara wish each other goodbye, and as Appa flies away, Meng's final comment is that Katara is a floozie.

Credits

 * Written by:
 * Aaron Ehasz
 * John O'Bryan


 * Directed by:
 * Dave Filoni


 * Starring:
 * Zach Tyler Eisen - Aang
 * Mae Whitman - Katara
 * Jack DeSena - Sokka
 * Dee Bradley Baker:
 * Appa
 * Momo


 * Also starring:
 * Tsai Chin - Aunt Wu
 * Jessie Flower - Meng
 * Clyde Kusatsu - Calm man


 * Additional voices:
 * Dee Bradley Bake
 * Tsai Chin
 * Jack DeSena
 * Jessie Flower
 * Clyde Kusatsu
 * Cameron Monaghan (the twins)
 * Lauren Tom
 * Mae Whitman
 * Dave Wittenberg

Series continuity

 * Though Aang fights a volcano for the first time in his life, it is the second known time for an Avatar, the other time being in his former life as Avatar Roku in "The Avatar and the Fire Lord". Roku fought to protect his home, an unnamed island in the Fire Nation simply called Roku's island.
 * The parasol given to Aang by the traveler is seen again in "Appa's Lost Days" when the sandbenders raid Appa's saddle for loot.
 * Aang and Katara use the knowledge that clouds are made of water and air in this episode to bend them for the first time in the series. They first learned that clouds are water in "Winter Solstice Part 1: The Spirit World", when Aang jumped through a cloud and was soaked. They used this knowledge of clouds again in "The Desert" to bend the water for the group to drink as they were stranded in the Si Wong Desert. Later in the series, as the travel around the Fire Nation in Book Three, they frequently employ cloudbending to disguise Appa and travel the skies without the risk of being spotted.
 * Meng is the second girl who had a crush on Aang; the first was Koko, a Kyoshi Island resident, seen in "The Warriors of Kyoshi".
 * Aunt Wu's prediction that Katara would marry a powerful bender foreshadows the development of Aang and Katara's relationship over the series, and specifically the last scene of the series.
 * Notably, all of Aunt Wu's proven predictions are in fact proven correct and shaped by the actions of the gang, except for one. Aang did, in fact, fall in love and get married, when Aunt Wu instead stated that she didn't see love in his fortune.

Goofs

 * The necklace Aang made for Katara, which she wears at the beginning of the episode, disappears once they arrive at Aunt Wu's village.
 * When Team Avatar first meets Aunt Wu and she asks, "Who's next?" Katara's braid disappears.
 * When the gang gathers the villagers to warn them about the eruption, the woman who speaks first is originally wearing a purple and pink robe; when she speaks again, it turns green. Her robe continues to change colors back and forth several more times.
 * During the volcano eruption, the trees should be on fire, but they're not.
 * After Sokka is slapped by the fish and gets out of the river, he is soaking wet. However, when he is yelling at the calm man in the next scene with the platypus bear, he is dry. He is never shown drying off.
 * The first man seen with the panda lily must have climbed the volcano and should have noticed that it was about to erupt, but he did not. This can be explained by him having such faith in Aunt Wu that he didn't pay it any mind.
 * When Aang went to obtain a panda lily, he could have simply glided up the mountain. Instead, he climbed with Sokka.
 * Aunt Wu said that Katara would have her third grandchild and then peacefully pass away in her sleep, but in The Legend of Korra, Tenzin has 3 children and is expecting another and yet Katara is still alive.

Trivia

 * Aang and Katara are seen sharing an umbrella in this episode. Sharing an umbrella is an old romantic motif ("Ai-Ai-Gasa") in Japanese history and is commonly used in manga and anime.
 * The volcano is called Mt. Makapu. Meaning 'bulging eye' in Hawaiian, Makapu'u is a name given to the extreme eastern end of the Island of Oʻahu in the Hawaiian Islands.
 * In ancient China, osteomancy, a type of pyromancy, was practiced in the Neolithic period and Shāng and Zhōu dynasties in the form of burning or heating oracle bones—usually the scapulae (shoulder blades) of oxen or turtle shells—to produce cracks which were then read as portents. This was the form used by Aunt Wu to see the future.
 * Katara reveals in this episode that she hates papayas.
 * The statues seen being burned by the lava flow look similar to real-life statues called daruma, which are commonly seen in Japanese shinto shrines.
 * When Aang realizes Mt. Makapu will erupt and drops the Panda lily into the volcano, the flower is replaced by CGI flames when it hits the surface of the magma.
 * It is definitively shown that even with identical twins, one can be born a bender while the other isn't. Of course, this wouldn't apply to Air Nomad twins, who would always be born as airbenders.
 * When the title of this episode appeared, it lasted less than any other episodes' titles did throughout the series.
 * Jessie Flower, the voice of Meng, would later join the main cast as Toph.

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