It’s time for people in the fanbase to finally accept that Aang was in complete control of the avatar state in that battle with Ozai. He was furious and his rage is clear as day, and he had every right to be. It’s tired to see people crediting Aang’s anger to Kyoshi or whatever all the time. The jokes are funny, but not here, not in this battle.
Aang enters the avatar state right after Ozai says this to him: “You’re weak, just like the rest of your people. They did not deserve to exist in this world, in my world. Prepare to join them—prepare to die.”
Aang reaches out from under those rocks and grabs Ozai, and then when Ozai tries to burn his face in the face place he burned his own son, Aang smacks his hand away and then blasts him into a rock pillar with airbending, the first element he uses against him once in the avatar state is the same element Ozai just called weak. There’s a reason Aang surrounds himself with an air bubble, and there’s a reason Aang’s airbending is so violent and unrelenting in this fight. He literally airbends so violently that he erodes a rock pillar all the way through in like 2 seconds. It’s a blatant display of the power airbending actually possesses, a big fuck you to Ozai who starts running away like a coward.
Aang is coming face to face with a man whose family line is directly responsible for wiping out his entire race of people, his entire culture. They took everything from him. He had nothing but Appa and the clothes on his back and his glider. That was it. That was all that was left of their genocide, a genocide justified by the view that Air Nomads were undeserving of life, that they were the weakest of all the nations. Imagine how full of rage he must have been. And still, he does not kill him. Not because he can’t, but because he won’t let the Fire Nation complete their genocide against the Air Nomads, he won’t allow himself to be robbed of his own culture, a culture that exists through him only, now. I feel like people really just don’t understand Aang’s character, and they definitely never give him the credit or praise he deserves.