What Avatar’s Most Powerful Bending Power Really Is

Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra have featured several bending techniques beyond the core four bending powers – which begs the question: what is the strongest bending technique? There’s a number of especially impressive powers, each with a case to made, but ultimately, one in particular rises above the rest. Of course, every one of Avatar’s bending powers is distinct, so a few honorable mentions are in order.

Aang’s rarely-used energybending ability is obviously an immense power, but since he is the only person to ever use it, and also since it requires an extended moment of uninterrupted focus, its applications outside of bad-guy-punishment are largely unknown. The healing ability of some waterbenders is an often overlooked skill, but nonetheless one worth mentioning. Canonically, only a select few waterbenders possess this ability, and when combined with water from the North Pole’s Spirit Oasis, Katara is even able to bring Aang back from the dead. And of course, the power of flight – possessed by only two known airbenders throughout all of history – is incredibly rare, but in practice it isn’t much stronger than the abilities of ordinary airbenders with proper gliders. It would also be foolish to count off strong bending techniques without also mentioning Toph’s seismic sense.

None of these, however, can quite compete with the true most powerful bending ability: bloodbending. The terrifying talent introduced in Avatar: The Last Airbender season 3 is one of the rarest abilities among any of the four elements, and it’s the strongest of all for a few reasons. First, the technique is incredibly rare; only five characters in all seven seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra are able to bloodbend – Hama, Katara, Yakone, Tarrlok, and Amon. That’s less than any ability aside from lavabending (two), energybending (one), and flight (one). While healing, lightning, and metalbending are all incredibly powerful skills, they’re widely known and used by the time Korra starts, and even earlier in the case of healing.

Bloodbending is also more difficult to fight than these techniques. While Azula, Iroh, Ozai and Mako all show impressive displays of strength with lightning, it never appears all that much more powerful than their natural firebending. It’s certainly more lethal, but the redirection technique weakens it further. Metalbending and lavabending likewise are powerful combat techniques, but their advantage is more situational, and even the masters of each bending discipline seem just as strong when resorting to regular earthbending techniques. Bloodbending, however, is nearly impossible to fight. Katara resists Hama only by knowing the move herself. Aang only breaks Yakone’s grip by entering the Avatar State, and for all of Korra’s strength, she’s only able to break free from Amon’s bloodbending long enough to land a single punch.

It’s also worth noting that Amon beats Korra in that fight. Sure, she knocks him out a window, but only after he successfully blocks her bending (another way in which bloodbending is demonstrably stronger than other techniques). In fact, she never truly beats either Tarrlok or Amon head-to-head. Tarrlok beats her handily, and Amon only runs because she reveals him to be a fraud. The only two bloodbenders who are ever actually defeated in either show are Hama – an old woman who is only beaten by another, stronger bloodbender – and Yakone, who is brought down by an Avatar at the absolute peak of his powers. That’s Sozin’s Comet-level strength.

There are other tidbits worth noting, like how bloodbending is the only ability to be made a global crime, and how with the exception of Yakone and his sons (whose particular ability is treated more like an anomaly than a heightened skill), the technique is so strong that even masters like Katara can only do it during the full moon. With every known bloodbender except for Katara dead by the end of The Legend of Korra, and use of the ability banned worldwide, it’s likely bloodbending will fade into obscurity, only to be rediscovered by a Zaheer-like figure millennia later.

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Rick Stevenson
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Rick Stevenson is a writer, editor and performer based in Brooklyn, NY. He’s written on TV, film and games for over six years, in addition to assorted stints in bookselling, carpentry, and TV production. Rick studied writing at the College of William & Mary and Oxford University, and can report with some authority that they are both old. He lives and dies for Avatar: The Last Airbender.

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