Ty Lee

"fire"

- At least I'm different now. 'Circus freak' is a compliment!

Ty Lee was a cheerful and energetic teenage girl from the Fire Nation. As the daughter of a nobleman, she attended the Royal Fire Academy for Girls with her friends, Princess Azula and Mai. As a child, Ty Lee dealt with six sisters that shared identical appearances with her. This caused her to feel a loss of individuality, and have a longing to be a distinct, recognizable person, and a desire for attention from other people. Because of this, after she matured, she ran away from her home and joined a Fire Nation circus, becoming a skilled acrobatic performer and gaining more personal attention.

Ty Lee was a formidable opponent at hand-to-hand combat, often utilizing chi blocking, a unique form of martial arts that attacks the pressure points in the human body. By striking these, she was able to disrupt that individual's chi flow and temporarily paralyze them, removing their ability to use bending. Mai and Ty Lee were recruited by Princess Azula to hunt down and capture Prince Zuko and Iroh, and later, Avatar Aang and his friends.

Mai later betrayed Azula to save Zuko's life. When the infuriated princess retaliated, Ty Lee defended Mai by paralyzing Azula, which led to her imprisonment, along with Mai. While in prison, she met the Kyoshi Warriors for a second time, and befriended them. In return for teaching them how to block chi, they allowed her to join their group and were released from prison when the Hundred Year War ended. Later, Ty Lee adopted their makeup and clothes, effectively becoming part of a matched set once again.

Early life


As a child, Ty Lee demonstrated superior skills in acrobatics, able to gracefully perform a series of cartwheels and somersaults, which Azula was not as adept in. Azula roughly pushed Ty Lee to the ground in retaliation for upstaging her, then laughed at her. Ty Lee's clear annoyance with this behavior, however, did not stop her from happily going along with Azula's plan to humiliate Mai and Zuko, on whom Mai had a crush. After Azula orchestrated a situation in which Mai and Zuko fell into a fountain, Ty Lee teased the pair about being "cute" together. She seems to have been a happy and lighthearted child, although she followed Azula rather blindly, as she continued to do before her captivity. Given that her parents (while still nobles) are of a much lower social rank than Mai's, it's likely that she became friends with Azula through Mai.

A new task


After Ty Lee ran away to join the circus, Azula tracked her down and attempted to recruit her to assist with the capture of the now-fugitive Zuko and Iroh. However, Ty Lee was at peace and happy with her lifestyle, claiming that her "aura [had] never been pinker!" Azula, in an ostensibly friendly gesture, informed Ty Lee that she would attend that night's performance before leaving, while Ty Lee seemed rather uneasy and nervous about this. During the performance, Azula ordered the ringmaster to set the net beneath the tightrope, on which Ty Lee was performing, ablaze and to release an assortment of dangerous animals, heightening the danger that Ty Lee would be in if she were to fall.

Afterwards, when Azula told her she was looking forward to the next day's show, Ty Lee informed Azula that she would not be performing then, due to the fact that "the universe [was] giving [her] strong hints that it [was] time for a career change." When Mai later asked her about the circus being her calling, Ty Lee noted that "Azula called a little louder." She accompanied Mai and Azula when they made a hostage trade, exchanging King Bumi for Tom-Tom, Mai's younger brother. After Mai called off the trade at Azula's suggestion, she handled herself well in the ensuing battle, using her chi blocking to disable Katara's waterbending. She and Mai were eventually defeated when Appa knocked them off the platform on which they had been battling. When they were leaving the city, Ty Lee gently teased Mai once again about her affections for Zuko, noting that it would be "interesting" for Mai to see him again.

Pursuing Team Avatar


Ty Lee, Mai, and Azula pursued Aang and his companions shortly after their confrontation at Omashu. When Sokka and Katara split from the Avatar, Ty Lee and Mai were charged with tracking down the siblings. The two overwhelmed them easily, but they were then sent flying into a river by an air blast from Appa. Once out of the water, Ty Lee commented, "Was it just me, or was that guy kind of cute?" in reference to Sokka. Mai simply gave her a look of irritation.

Ty Lee, Mai, and Azula oversaw the attempt to breach the walls of the Earth Kingdom capital, Ba Sing Se. When the Terra Team was sent out to slow the drill, Azula ordered Mai and Ty Lee to deal with them. With the help of her companion, Ty Lee made quick work of the team, blocking their chi and rendering them disabled. Later, when Aang, Katara, and Sokka were found sabotaging the drill, Ty Lee once again acknowledged Sokka particularly, this time sending him a flirtatious look, to which Sokka responded with some light flirting of his own. When Azula sent Mai and Ty Lee after the fleeing siblings, Ty Lee followed them into the slurry waste pipeline, although Mai refused to follow her. However, Katara and Toph bent the water and rock mixture, using it to plug up the waste tunnel while Ty Lee was trapped in it, thus thwarting her attempt to catch them. During this, Katara was presumably embittered toward Ty Lee because of her ability to impair bending and aggressively insulted Ty Lee, calling her a "circus freak". After the drill was destroyed, Ty Lee was launched out of the pipeline by the build-up of pressure and slammed into a rock platform, but was more or less unharmed.

Fall of Ba Sing Se


After the defeat of the drill, Ty Lee played a minor role and only reappeared when helping Azula attack Suki and the other Kyoshi Warriors. During the battle, she showed concern over her physical appearance when she remarked that she and her friends were more attractive than the warriors they were fighting.

After Team Avatar departed from Ba Sing Se, Earth King Kuei gave an audience to three impostor Kyoshi Warriors, who were later revealed to be Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee in disguise. The girls used their false identities to aid their infiltration into the Earth Kingdom city, fooling both the Earth King and Team Avatar. Eventually, however, Katara rushed in with important news. She stated that Zuko and Iroh had entered the city, to which Azula responded that she would be sure to let the Earth King know. Katara then saw her gold eyes, recognizing them as Azula's, and prepared to attack the group. However, Ty Lee suddenly attacked Katara with a chi block, therefore allowing the trio to easily capture her.

After a successful coup against the government of the Earth Kingdom orchestrated by Azula, Ty Lee remarked playfully how cute Sokka was. Then while fighting Sokka, she claimed it was as if they were dancing. Ty Lee was last seen trying to teach the Earth King's bear, Bosco, how to do a handstand. While in the process of doing this, Toph earthbent her hands and feet to the floor, rendering her immobile.

Ember Island


Ty Lee and her friends vacationed for a short time at Lo and Li's beach house on Ember Island. At the beach, Ty Lee soon found herself being approached by a boy who helped her unpack and stood over her to provide her with shade. Not long after, another boy came with a seashell to present to Ty Lee as a gift. In no time at all, Ty Lee was surrounded by many admirers. During a kuai ball match, she attracted the attention of two boys, Chan and Ruon-Jian, who invited Ty Lee and Mai, and more reluctantly, Azula and Zuko, to a party that night.

During the party, Ty Lee was surrounded by the boys from the beach and many others and was forced to paralyze them with chi blocking to escape the crowd. Seeing this, Azula called Ty Lee a "tease" and said that none of the boys really cared about her. Ty Lee immediately started crying, clearly upset, and Azula hurriedly apologized and confided that she said those things because she was actually a little jealous of Ty Lee's popularity. Azula asked Ty Lee how to make boys like her and Ty Lee admitted that boys might be intimidated by Azula. Ty Lee advised her friend to act as if she was interested in whatever the boy was saying and to laugh frequently. Zuko was later kicked out of the party and Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee came down to the beach to find Zuko. After starting a campfire, Zuko mocked Ty Lee as a "circus freak". She then revealed tearfully that she had six sisters who looked identical to her and that she had gone to the circus to have individuality. Because of her experiences, "circus freak" was a term she regarded as a compliment. Mai replied that the reason Ty Lee craved so much attention was because she received so little as a child.

The group then began to open up to one another. With all their secrets revealed, the heaviness between the four seemed to vanish. Ty Lee commented that she would remember that night forever and that Lo and Li were correct about the beach's ability to reveal people's true selves. To celebrate their revelations, Azula decided on a fitting end to their night - the four then headed back to Chan's party, trashing the house and leaving it a ransacked mess. Together, the four of them forged their own memory of the place, uniting as friends for the first time in years.

Captured at the Boiling Rock


Ty Lee made another appearance when she assisted Azula at the Boiling Rock maximum-security prison. She and Azula confronted Sokka, Suki, Zuko, Hakoda, and Chit Sang, a firebending prisoner. Suki, by then well aware of Ty Lee's chi blocking techniques, took great care to evade her attacks. When the guards were about to cut the line on the gondola Ty Lee and Azula were standing on, the pair jumped onto a passing gondola. Immediately after this, Ty Lee wore an unsure and anxious look on her face - either for Sokka, hinting that she may still have had some feelings for him, or for Zuko, her old childhood friend.

Back at the Boiling Rock, she saw Mai double-cross the Fire Nation guards. After some tension and an argument between Azula and Mai, the two prepared to attack each other. Azula was getting ready to attack Mai when Ty Lee turned against her as well, attacking her by blocking her chi and paralyzing her to protect Mai. Ty Lee then urged her dumbfounded friend to leave the scene, but they were arrested before they were able to flee. Azula ordered the guards to lock the two away and "leave them there to rot", not wanting to be in their presence ever again as a punishment for their unfaithfulness. These events severely weakened Azula's mental state and played a part in her eventual defeat and nervous breakdown at the hands of Zuko and Katara.

Release from prison


While in prison, Ty Lee met and befriended her old enemies, the Kyoshi Warriors. Ty Lee gave them some lessons in chi blocking, which led to their bonding. After they were let out of prison, the Kyoshi Warriors allowed Ty Lee to join them. She last appeared on Fire Lord Zuko's coronation day in a Kyoshi Warrior uniform, elated to be a part of the warrior team. Sokka became hysterical, initially believing that Ty Lee was impersonating a Kyoshi Warrior again, but they explained their bonding while in prison, which proved to be enough to calm him.

After the Hundred Year War


A year after the end of the Hundred Year War, Mai asked Ty Lee and the rest of the Kyoshi Warriors to protect the Fire Nation Royal Palace after an attempt to murder Fire Lord Zuko conducted by Kori. The first night they were standing guard, Zuko woke up in the middle of the night and went outside. Suki and Ty Lee told him that it had been quiet all night. Zuko apologized, saying that he did trust the Kyoshi Warriors as the best guardsmen in the world, to which Ty Lee cheerfully answered "guardswomen, you mean!"

Personality


Ty Lee was bubbly and outgoing, yet slightly airheaded. She was a direct contrast to Azula's innate cruelty and Mai's constant torpor. She took delight in her acrobatic abilities, never missing an opportunity to show them off. Because of her upbringing as part of an identical set of seven sisters, Ty Lee craved attention and recognition. This is what may have led her to develop her acrobatics in the first place, as well as her running away to join the circus. These attention issues also caused her to be a bit of a flirt, which is also why, according to Mai, she needed the affection of multiple boyfriends.

Ty Lee showed a strong sense of loyalty to her friends, Mai and Azula. Despite her obvious differences from Mai, she had a deep respect for her and they often made an effective fighting duo, teaming up numerous times in the series. Ever since childhood, Ty Lee also considered Azula as a friend, but as she got older, that loyalty seemed to have been out of fear of the princess. When she first refused Azula's request that she join her search for the traitorous Zuko, Azula persuaded Ty Lee by endangering her life during a circus performance. For some time, she never disobeyed Azula's orders. However, her breaking point came at last at the Boiling Rock, during Azula's attempted murder of her own brother and Ty Lee's childhood friend, Zuko. When the rope holding Zuko's gondola was about to be cut, potentially sending Zuko along with several prisoners and friends plummeting to their deaths, Ty Lee showed concern while Azula smirked next to her. After Mai helped Zuko and his friends escape the prison, Azula threatened her life. Seeing Mai in the face of Azula's terrible rage and fearing for Mai's safety, Ty Lee attacked Azula, ending up in jail but finally conquering her own fears and taking a stand against her "friend" after months of obedience.

Ty Lee was known not to hold grudges against her enemies despite their encounters on the battlefield. This was evidenced by her eventual bond with the Kyoshi Warriors, whose confinement she was partially responsible for. She was able to establish a fairly strong friendship with the group while they were imprisoned together. She also showed affection for Sokka, despite having fought him under the orders of Azula.

She was known to be close to animals. In Ba Sing Se, she was seen teaching Bosco acrobatic moves before Toph earthbent her to the ground.

Ty Lee often came off as superficial, which was demonstrated for the first time when she affirmed her beauty to a Kyoshi Warrior and a second time when she warned her friends about the negative energy of their serious conversation, which she said would give them acne. This attribute may have originated with her profession as a circus performer, her appearance perhaps making her a more popular attraction among the audience - especially since this experience followed an upbringing that had left her attention-starved.

Agility


Ty Lee was extraordinarily agile. Even at a young age, she was able to execute cartwheels and somersaults in mid-air with a skill that surpassed even the agile Azula's. As she grew up, her agility continued to improve, commonly seen walking around in a headstance on just her fingers. She later developed remarkable acrobatic abilities, which allowed her to join the Fire Nation circus and perform high-wire acts with balance and grace. People traveled for miles to see her perform. Because of this, she was very fast and agile in battle, able to outmaneuver almost any opponent she came across and jump exceptionally high and far even from a stationary position. Her abilities allowed her to dodge the attacks of dozens of powerful earthbenders, who were unable to land a hit on her. She was also very flexible, able to contort herself into positions nearly impossible for an ordinary person to achieve and walk on her hands without any difficulty. These abilities allowed her to scale almost any surface very quickly and squeeze through most barriers and small spaces.

Chi blocking


Ty Lee's most defining ability was her mastery of pressure-point martial arts, or chi blocking. She could strike sequences of pressure points, immobilizing her enemies to various degrees. She had the ability to paralyze a single body part or an opponent's entire body. This technique allowed her to block certain chi paths in benders to compromise their abilities. This made her especially dangerous to benders like Katara, who relied solely on their bending and possessed no secondary fighting skills. She was so powerful that outside the walls of Ba Sing Se, she was able to defeat dozens of powerful earthbenders within seconds. However, if her target had faced her before or was expecting her attacks, the effectiveness of her chi blocking decreased as her opponent took measures to prevent her from using the technique. After fighting her before, Suki was able to avoid her attacks at the Boiling Rock and Katara and Sokka were also able to effectively counter her when facing her again. She took Azula by surprise when she was about to strike Mai because, although the princess was familiar with Ty Lee's fighting style, she had never faced her as an opponent. While Ty Lee was imprisoned with the Kyoshi Warriors she had mentioned that she gave them "a few chi blocking lessons" and in return she was allowed to join the group.

Appearances
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Avatar Comics

 * "Going Home Again"

The Promise trilogy

 * The Promise Part 1

The Search trilogy
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 * The Search Part 1

Trivia

 * In the Taiwanese translation, Ty Lee's name is written as, meaning "calm and beautiful".
 * As shown in "The Chase" and stated by "Avatar Extras", when Ty Lee uses her chi blocking on a non-bender, it causes their body parts to go limp and makes them unable to move them.
 * Ty Lee appeared to have a crush on Sokka, as she mentioned that Sokka was cute. When she, Mai and Azula found Aang, Sokka and Katara, she said, "Azula, you were right — it was the Avatar... and friends", directing the comment toward Sokka as her look grew more flirtatious. Later, when confronting Sokka in the Earth King's throne room, she cheerfully described their fight as dancing.
 * Though arrested at the Boiling Rock, Ty Lee was not held there, as she bonded with the Kyoshi Warriors in prison and only Suki was held at the Boiling Rock.
 * Ty Lee was the second known outsider to join the Kyoshi Warriors, Sokka being the first. She was also the first known Fire Nation native to join them.
 * Ty Lee was one of the few natives of the Fire Nation that did not have black hair or golden eyes.
 * According to "Avatar Extras", Ty Lee was described as the Avatar version of a Valley Girl.
 * In the non-canonical "School Time Shipping" episode, Ty Lee was shown to have some attraction to Haru.
 * Ty Lee went to the circus because she did not feel different among her six sisters. Ironically, by the end of the series she joined the Kyoshi Warriors, who all dressed and looked alike.
 * Ty Lee's chi blocking fighting style was strikingly similar to Gentle Fist, the fighting style of the Hyūga clan from the popular manga/anime series Naruto and its sequel Naruto: Shippuden; both use martial arts to block a person's chi, although the Hyūga clan's style involves blocking the chakra flow in the person.
 * Ty Lee claimed to be able to see people's auras. For example, she told Mai that she had an aura that was dingy, pasty, and gray.
 * Ty Lee was the only person in the series that Azula ever apologized to.
 * Ty Lee's pink, acrobatic outfit symbolized her bubbly demeanor and optimistic outlook on life.
 * Ty Lee was the first person shown in the series to use chi-blocking.
 * In the Greek dub of Avatar: The Last Airbender the voice actor who plays Ty Lee also plays Katara.