a continuation of this post
Throughout the show Sokka has 5 weapons (important ones, anyway) His spear, club, machete, boomerang and space sword.
He loses the spear in "The Avatar Returns” when Zuko snaps it in half, and he learns that you can’t rely only on bravery and determination, you have to hone some skills. He isn’t quite sure what his skills are, but he’s going to figure it out. He tries to be the person who collects food ("collect" bc Aang is a vegetarian, so hunting won’t help everybody) but this fails again and again. In fact, it's a running joke that Sokka is always hungry yet bad at getting food. But then, in "Avatar Day", he loses his boomerang. At first, he’s ~distraught.~ (“I feel like I’ve lost my identity”) Then, Aang gets thrown in prison, and BAM he has purpose again! And what is that purpose? Using his brainy skills! Investigating! Cooking up plots to get Aang out of jail bc the pacifist monk doesn’t want to use violence (again). And as he’s getting used to this niche in the group, he becomes very possessive of it, basically telling Katara to stay in her lane (she has her waterbending! She has something!) He gets his boomerang back at the end of the episode, and boy is he happy to see it, but he has a healthier view of it now. It’s a tool that he’s very good at using, but he’ll be okay without it.
He loses the club in the desert when Appa is stolen. As we know, he immediately gets high on cactus juice, which doesn’t give us much to draw on. There’s something to be said about him falling back on his need to provide for his friends and get them water, but the important part comes when the gaang meets up with Suki. She helps him see that he doesn’t need to be The Protector, and he’s valuable to his friends, his tribe, his family, and to her even when he’s not doing anything. In the next episode (The Drill) he very excitedly and verbally takes on his role as the “plan guy,” and comes up with the idea for how to take down the drill. Bam! Purpose re-acquired. He’s starting to see that he doesn’t need the title of warrior, to justify his place in this group (or, like. in life in general). He has strengths outside of them.
Now, Hakoda briefly replaces the club in "The Guru”: when Sokka is planning to join his father’s crew for a mission, and be a warrior like he always wanted. But, Aang interrupts him; he needs him to help save Katara from uncertain peril. Aang doesn’t need him to be a warrior in that moment, he needs emotional support, grounding, and a plan (a plan!! from the plan guy!) So, Sokka returns the club to his dad, and he doesn’t fulfill what he thought his destiny was, but he does rescue the Earth King from Azula.
The machete is interesting, because he uses it often, but almost exclusively not for fighting. He chops the vines in the swamp, he cuts that valve in the drill, he uses it to hunt, and he holds it up a few times like he *might* use it to fight you, but usually doesn’t, or just uses his boomerang. Even when he uses it in a fight, it’s in a clever way, like when he uses it to cut ropes off of his wrists, or when he cuts the saddle off of that rhino in “Avatar Day.” But, even the machete is holding him to the ideal of who he thinks he needs to be. & that's why it has to be taken from him when he, Toph, & Momo try to warn the Earth King about the coup, and they are thrown in jail. In this episode, he does almost no fighting. He has that moment with Ty Lee, but he’s just dodging her, never even reaching for the 2 weapons on him. Toph does most if not all of the heavy lifting, while Sokka leads the way and does the talking.
It isn’t until “Sokka’s Master” that he confronts these losses. He doesn't *mention* the lost weapons, but he feels their absence. Although he's gotten closer to accepting himself, it’s hard. He’s in the Fire Nation, and he’s been waiting his whole life to fight these people, but now that he’s here, he’s doing a lot of standing to the side and waiting. He can’t even use his boomerang since they’re undercover. The planning stage is pretty much done for now; they’re just moving into position. Aang can bend 3 out of 4 elements, Toph has invented metalbending, Katara continues to fight and heal as a master waterbender... and he’s just kinda here. He’s lost all his weapons, and what does he have to replace them? Not much, as far as he can see. Even his friends can’t put what makes him useful and important into words.
But then he goes to Piandao, and even though the guy is supposed to teach him how to use a sword, Sokka learns about his other strengths, and not just because Piandao is nudging him in that direction. Sokka purposefully changes the tasks to better suit him, just like he's been doing for the past 6 months. He has always wanted to be a warrior, but when he gets the chance, he still does his own thing!! So, this episode isn’t about Sokka finally becoming a warrior, like he thought, but coming to realize that his destiny is just as real as everyone else's, it just lies where he hasn't yet thought to look.
Then, of course, he loses his boomerang and space sword when he and Toph are hanging on the edge of the war balloon. It's the end of the war, so his time when he has to be a warrior for his sister, his family, his tribe, and the world is coming to an end. In the past, he heavily tied his identity and self worth to his ability to use his weapons to fight, but now he knows himself free of the duty he has to others. He’s good enough as he is. And since he knows that, losing his boomerang doesn't even matter to him (unless he could’ve found a way to save himself & Toph with it). The space sword hurts a little more, bc making it was when his hard work as an inventor, a tactician, and an artist was finally noticed and validated by someone he looked up to, but he doesn't need the sword to prove it anymore either.
At the very end, he’s sitting and painting, something he learned with Piandao. And yes, he learned to paint in pursuit of wielding a sword, but by the finale, he paints for the sake of it. The sword is gone, the war is over, his leg is broken, and here he is: painting a picture of his friends, who are all gravitating towards him.
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