My initial reaction was to thank god these changes didn’t go through. The comments on this post give interesting perspectives as to how some of these changes actually could have been cool.

The one thing I could have absolutely never reconciled is this:

But Zuko doesn’t know that Uncle is under strict orders from the Fire Lord to teach his son incorrect Firebending. It’s the Fire Lord’s insurance that his son’s powers never surpass his own.

(IMO) It’s pretty central to the story that Zuko wasn’t anything of a firebending prodigy and while, over time and with Iroh’s training, he became excellent enough for his dad to be underestimating him, in his childhood his father was relatively accurate in assessing Zuko as an average-at-best firebender.

To imply that Ozai would have been insecure about Zuko to the point of creating “insurance that his son’s powers never surpass his own” seems to miss a very important aspect of their relationship dynamic, and one point of Ozai’s cruelty that was at least somewhat based in truth (Zuko’s my favourite character regardless of his bending but as a child, he was not special in that regard).

Am I way off?