Aside from being one of the greatest examples of storytelling and worldbuilding, Avatar: The Last Airbender has also mesmerised us with the number of creatures that populate its world. In a humorous yet creative twist, the show’s writers fused animals we see in our daily lives with some particularly hilarious or majestic combinations.
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However, the creature we’ll be focusing on in this article is the personification of ancient wisdom, a race of sentient beings that predates the four elemental kingdoms: the lion turtles. Although Avatar: The Last Airbender introduced the lion turtle near the end of its final season, we get more insight into them in the Legend of Korra. So if you’re curious about the origins and history of the lion turtles and what happened to them, stick around for more.
What Is A Lion Turtle?
The lion turtles are an ancient race of creatures, standing apart due to their sentience and ability to speak. As suggested by its name, this creature has the head of a lion and the body of a turtle, though its four legs have the claws and tail of a lion. Also referred as the Ancient One, a lion turtle has an extensive lifespan, and as seen in Legend of Korra during Avatar Wan’s backstory, is able to live for centuries – even for more than a millennium.
Full-grown lion turtles are able to grow as large as an island, with an entire forest upon its back with its own ecosystem. According to lore, a lion turtle’s heart is so enormous that it could rival 12 flying bisons in weight.
Unlike other animals, the lion turtle is a solitary being, even isolating itself from other lion turtles. Every lion turtle is associated with one of the four elements, with a symbol of the element they have an affinity with with inscribed on their foreheads:
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Air |
Two long swirls curling outward, with a larger swirl pattern in the centre. |
|---|---|
|
Earth |
Earth lion turtles have a lone spiral symbol, one with a larger spiral pattern at the top, and a smaller one at the bottom. Additionally, they have two swirls closer to their ears and another on each cheekbone. |
|
Fire |
Two swirls that curl inward. |
|
Water |
The symbol has three wavy lines, with a single spiral pattern at the bottom. |
The History Of The Lion Turtles
The Age Before The Avatar
Before the first Avatar came to be, mankind lived apart from one another on the backs of lion turtles, building cities on them. These lion turtles served as protectors, for at the time, the Spirit World and the mortal plane were not separate, and humans were particularly vulnerable to the energies and antics of spirits.
However, humans are allowed to venture beyond the safety of the lion turtles and in order to shield them in the wilds, the lion turtles would grant them the ability to bend the element they’re associated with before they leave.
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Things begin to change when Avatar Wan was first exiled, and given the element of fire by the lion turtle to protect him in the Spirit Wilds. After befriending a group of spirits, Wan bands together with the primordial spirit of light, Raava, in a bid to stop Vaatu. Wan travels to find four lion turtles with affinities for varying elements, until each of them gave him the power to bend all four elements.
Seeing Wan as an example, the citizens on the fire lion turtle begin to leave, and are granted the element of fire just as Wan was to help them survive, becoming the progenitors of the Fire Nation. It wasn’t until Wan merges permanently with Raava and kickstarted the Avatar Cycle that humanity begins to leave in droves, setting out to forge their own cities.
The lion turtles stop serving as protectors, with the Avatar taking their place.
The Age Of The Avatar
As the years pass and the era of the Avatar begins, the lion turtles gradually fade into obscurity, which isn’t helped by their isolationist nature. At some point, the lion turtles begin to be hunted down, though the reason for this remains unknown. But by the time we get to Avatar Aang, there is only one living lion turtle left in existence, which is a fire lion turtle.
In order to save its own life, the last lion turtle largely stays away from the human population, masquerading as an island to escape scrutiny. It’s unknown if the lion turtle’s meeting with Aang was planned or predestined, as the young Avatar had sleepwalked towards it. Without realising where exactly he was, Aang begins to consult a string of past Avatars, asking for advice on how to neutralise Fire Lord Ozai without killing him.
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He doesn’t get the answers he wants to hear, and it isn’t until he notices that the island he’s on is moving that Aang begins to investigate. Shocked at discovering he was on the back of a lion turtle, Aang asks for advice from it instead and is granted the ability and knowledge to energybend in time before his battle with Ozai, which will be further explored below.
However, when we move on to Avatar Korra, there is no mention of what happened to the last remaining lion turtle. And since we don’t have any knowledge of how lion turtles procreate, we dont’ have any firm answers as to whether these amazing creatures are truly extinct or not.
Energybending
In both the era before and after the Avatar, the lion turtle serves as a neutral advisor due to the long life and ancient wisdom it possesses. And as demonstrated in the Legend of Korra, the lion turtles are the cause of humans being able to bend the four elements. But in Avatar: The Last Airbender, the lion turtle is shown to be capable of granting humans the ability to bend the energy within oneself and others.
Simply called energybending, the lion turtle Aang encounters before his final battle, who asks it if there is another way to resolve the issue of Ozai without killing him. We later find out that energybending basically involves manipulating the life energy in your body, and this was what the lion turtles did during the era of the Avatar to help grant humans the ability to bend the elements.
It comes as no surprise that energybending is the progenitor of all bending arts, though the knowledge of it had gradually disappeared by the time we got to Aang’s time, maybe even before. Energybending can be used to take away or restore someone’s bending ability, which we saw when Aang removed Ozai’s ability to firebend, and when Aang restored Korra’s ability to bend all elements.
But as seen in Legend of Korra, there are many more uses to energybending. One use is through cleansing dark spirits using the energy from the Spirit World, which we see Korra do in Season 2. Korra has also demonstrated the ability to astral project through energybending, which we discover that she can still bend while in that state.
However, not everybody can perform energybending, much less master it. According to the lion turtle’s dialogue to Aang, it warned that only those who are pure of spirit could even attempt to bend another’s life force. If not, then they run the risk of being overwhelmed and tainted by the energy of the person they’re trying to bend the energy of.
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