Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender,’ a war rages over the world as Firebenders of the Fire Nation try to bring everything under their control. They witness pushback from others, especially after the genocide of the Airbenders. All kinds of weapons and artillery, apart from the powers of controlling the elements of nature, are used to fight this war. In the midst of this comes a weapon quite unlike any other, and one that could be a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of the wrong man. It is Avatar Kuruk’s knife. What does it do, and how powerful is it? SPOILERS AHEAD
Kuruk’s Knife Puts Immense Power in the Hands of Its Wielder
Every Avatar is born with a purpose, which changes based on the time and situation in which they are born. For Avatar Aang, the purpose is to defeat Fire Nation and bring back peace, which was stolen from the world about a hundred years ago. For Avatar Kuruk, the purpose was to save the world from a different kind of threat. For most people, Kuruk was the Avatar who didn’t live up to his name. He was supposed to bring peace to the world, but instead, he resigned to himself and spent most of his time in the Spirit World.
What these people didn’t know was that Kuruk was protecting the world from the menacing entities in the Spirit world who were trying to cross over into the mortal world. If that happened, then the world would have faced a threat unlike any other. Kuruk was the only one who could fight these spirit monsters because, as the Avatar, he was the only one with the power to enter the Spirit World.
Fighting monsters in the Spirit world required a different kind of weapon. These monsters couldn’t be killed with just any mortal weapon. Moreover, in the Spirit world, the powers of bending the elements are also rendered useless (as we see when Aang, Katara, and Sokka are in the Spirit world and cannot use their powers.) This meant that Kuruk needed to forge a weapon that could be used on the things in the Spirit World.
During his time on the other side, Kuruk forged a knife for himself. This knife was made of materials from the Spirit World, which made it effective against the monsters there. It was through this knife that he could kill the monsters and prevent them from coming into his world and destroying everything. His purpose pretty much remained a secret to the whole world because no one knew what Kuruk was doing, as he didn’t exactly share anything with anyone.
When Kuruk died, his knife was passed on to the next Avatar until it eventually landed in the hands of Avatar Roku of Fire Nation. It is there that Zhao finds out about the knife and discovers its significance, leading him to do something drastic, something that Kuruk never intended for his knife.
Because his knife is made of material from the spirit world, it means that it can be used to kill anything in the spirit world. While Kuruk made it to be used on the monsters, it was never limited to that. A weapon is a weapon whose purpose changes in the hands of its wielder. For an Avatar, it is the means to kill the powers that threaten the peace and safety of the world. In the hands of someone like Zhao, it is a weapon that gives him the power to kill gods. He intends to use it on the Moon spirit to take away the power of the Waterbenders. Kuruk warns Aang about it and suggests he stop Zhao before something drastic happens and the balance of the world is upended.
Read More: Is Admiral Zhao Dead or Alive in Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 1? Theories
