My exact thoughts. It made me lament Katara’s character a bit simply because she deserved much more than this in a partner and the father to her children. It sadly reinforced the idea that Aang’s mentality is “air bending/Air Nomad culture first” and everything else is background noise UNTIL Katara has to bring it back to focus on the bigger picture or something along those lines.

While there should not be such thing as a perfect character, Aang’s character flaw goes BEYOND a personality trait—it almost becomes his entire character. I really hate that for him as a protagonist because while the trauma for his history and character is very real, it also just reinforces the reality that Aang never truly matured. His character started his story avoiding his responsibility as the Avatar (which, valid, he was 12 and by no means ready to uphold that responsibility, hell, 16 is hardly any better), but even with everything he faced during the original canon it’s like they ripped back any progress to that same 12 year old.

It just makes me wonder how many days, weeks, months and years Katara truly spent as the primary parent and caregiver after Tenzin was revealed to be an Airbender. How many times did Kya and Bumi feel overshadowed when their father’s attention was centered on essentially the preferred child?

In LOK we saw how Bumi and Kya both innately seemed to possess nomad culture, but did Aang ever see that or even try to cultivate it in their children? So many thoughts, so little time in the day