Why Toph is the Strongest Bender in the ATLA Universe
Many fans of the hit television show Avatar: The Last Airbender, which first aired on Nickelodeon in 2005, have long debated the power dynamics between the characters, especially between Aang and his reincarnation, Korra, in The Legend of Korra. While I believe they are both great contenders for the title of strongest bender, Toph Beifong will always take the cake in my mind. To prove this, I’d like to look at some of the other benders in the ATLA universe, and analyze why they are not in the number one spot.
The first honorable mentions are obviously Aang and Korra. As Avatars, they are both masters of all the elements. The Avatar State does offer a bit of an unfair advantage, as they have access to the knowledge of all previous Avatars when they enter it, but Korra continuously outperforms other benders even when she doesn’t have access to it. The reason why Toph is stronger than Aang is because she taught him everything he knows about earthbending, but he never learned to metalbend, which leads me to believe that he was not capable of doing so. As for Korra, Toph removed the remainder of Korra’s poison when she herself could not, and it took one blow from Toph to take out an entire flank of Kuvira’s army, while Korra struggled to beat Kuvira even with access to all the elements.
Azula is another top contender; As the main villain (besides Ozai) for seasons 2 and 3 of ATLA, the gang falls victim to many of her attacks, often barely escaping them through luck, or in Aang’s case, through Katara’s magical Spirit Oasis water. She is an expert firebender and particularly talented with lighting, something that her younger brother, Zuko, originally struggles to pick up. The reason she is not number 1, however, has to do with her familial problems. Azula never had her mother’s support, and after her father declined her request to battle with him on the front lines of the war surrounding Sozin’s Comet, she hit a mental break. While she was still a very strong bender, even during the midst of a breakdown, it was ultimately this emotional weakness that took her down. Toph similarly faced disapproval from her parents. They never saw her for who she was and treated her as “fragile”, even going so far as to send thugs to kidnap her so that she could remain under their rule. She also had a difficult relationship with her daughters, Suyin and Lin, but those relationships never affected her bending capabilities.
Kuvira, the earthbending villain from season 4 of Korra, nearly kills everybody in Republic City in her mission to unite the Earth Kingdom. While this effort was aided by the likes of Bataar Jr. and Varrick’s spirit weapons, her earthbending talent stands on its own. She defeats Korra in a one-on-one battle and has metalbending talents in both combat and art, being a member of Suyin’s dancing troupe. Besides that, I don’t think that her talents alone would have been enough to best Toph, as she learned her metalbending skills directly from Toph’s family line, and at the end of season 4, she had to concede to Korra’s superior bending skills.
Katara easily earns second place on this list. Unlike Azula’s skills, taught to her by expert firebenders, Katara taught herself to waterbend. Just on her self-taught skills alone, she stood her ground against the waterbending master, Pakku. She destroyed all the other students in her class, including Aang, and Pakku suggested that Katara become his teacher. This quality is also why I put both Katara and Toph above Uncle Iroh, despite his obvious power. He was taught by the fire nation how to firebend, but both Toph and Katara taught themselves how to bend at such a young age. Katara has held her own against Zuko, Azula, and various other attackers, and her emotional state doesn’t weaken her bending- it even perhaps enhances it. She nearly kills the man who murdered her mother through the power of her bending. She is an expert healer, a sub-genre of waterbending that only some benders possess, and also capable of blood-bending. This differs from Toph however, who literally invented her own subgenre of earthbending. While Katara was self-taught in terms of a skill that already existed, Toph was both self-taught and an inventor of an entirely new skill- all of this while blind.
There are some other honorable mentions for strongest bender, such as the members of the Red Lotus group and Aang’s son Tenzin, but Toph reigns as the strongest bender of all time in my book. She grew up to be the Chief of Police in Republic City, and taught her daughters Lin and Suyin, the latter literally going on to found a metalbending city through the skills she learned from Toph. A hilarious addition to the gang, and a tough and talented fighter, Toph would be my first pick in an Avatar universe dream team.
