Avatar's One Earthbender Stronger Than Toph Is Ridiculously Overpowered
The most powerful Earthbender in the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe is more skilled than Toph, and possibly even more than Aang himself. Each of the four elements in Avatar: The Last Airbender offers a wide range of applications, with their versatility shaped as much by philosophy as by their physical properties. Waterbending can be used for healing, ice manipulation, bloodbending, and even plantbending. Firebending offers direct destructive power, but its advanced techniques extend into lightning generation and heat manipulation. Airbending excels at mobility and evasive combat, with masters able to create enormous gusts and glide through the air.
Earthbending has the strongest claim to being the most versatile bending discipline in Avatar. It combines tremendous physical force with defensive construction, as well as seismic perception, metalbending, sandbending, lavabending, crystal manipulation, and other specialized applications. Earthbenders can also reshape battlefields and use enormous masses of earth as weapons or shields. Water, fire, and air each possess advanced techniques, but Earthbending has an exceptionally high ceiling of power and skill, and its practitioners can specialize in entirely different branches while still returning to an extraordinarily powerful core discipline.
Every incarnation of the Avatar is naturally blessed with access to all elements, but certain characters in the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe are also inclined to possess innate abilities that help them stand out over all other benders.
The Earthbender Yun Is So Powerful He's Mistaken For An Avatar
Yun Would Have Been The Best Avatar
One of the most skilled non-Avatar benders in the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe is Yun, whose Earthbending is so extraordinary that it blurs the distinction between Earthbending and the Avatar's mastery over all elements. Yun possesses such refined control over earth and its derivatives that they imitate the other elements' properties. For instance, he can manipulate earth so it moves like fluid, or handle it with enough precision to imitate air and watter cutting and piercing techniques, or make it explosive enough to evoke Firebending.
Naturally, Earthbending already has an enormous range, from the raw power of Bumi and Kyoshi's skills to Toph's precision. Metalbending lets masters manipulate refined earth hidden inside metal, and lavabending gives benders llike Ghazan and Bolin access to a far more fluid and destructive state of the element. Sandbending, seismic sense, and other specialized techniques expand Earthbender's access to their elements. And yet, Yun manages to push beyond this already extensive toolkit, even without tapping into any of those advanced disciplines. Yun's technical mastery makes his skill a miniature version of the Avatar's elemental versatility.
Yun's Story Is Worthy Of A Series Of Its Own
Yun Is The False Avatar Of The Last Airbender Universe
Avatar: The Last Airbender has built a world with thousands of years of detailed history and countless individual stories intertwined with multiple nations and legacies beyond the Avatars themselves. Such an extensive mythos creates room for stories about people who are never at the center of the main story yet live rocky, movie-worthy lives. Yun's story shows how the Avatar's existence looks from the perspective of someone who has spent his entire life believing that his exceptional talent is a sign of his destiny. While Aang and Korra fulfill their fate as heroes, Yun offers the opposite perspective, as he illustrates what happens when a naturally gifted bender realizes he isn't the legendary Avatar.
Yun's tragedy is even more thrilling due to his dynamics with Kyoshi. After years of genuine belief in the idea that he's the Avatar, Yun discovers that it's his servant and closest friend, Kyoshi, who's naturally able to control all elements. Yun trains for years, understands his element on an extraordinary level, and develops techniques that make him appear almost superhuman, yet Kyoshi surpasses him even though she still struggles to manipulate the elements as Avatar. The fact that such a rich character arc exists largely on the sidelines shows just how much untapped potential the franchise still has.
Which of Avatar: The Last Airbender's minor characters would you like to see more of?