About
Ty Lee is a cheerful and energetic teenaged girl from the Fire Nation. The daughter of a Fire Nation nobleman, she attended the Royal Fire Academy for Girls with her friends, Princess Azula and Mai. Having six sisters that look identical to her, she eventually ran away from home and joined the Fire Nation Circus, becoming an acrobatic performer.Ty Lee is a formidable hand-to-hand combatant, utilizing a unique form of martial arts that attacks pressure points on the human body. By striking a person's pressure points, she is able to disrupt that individual's chi flow and temporarily remove their ability to move and use bending. She and Mai were recruited by Princess Azula to hunt down and capture the Avatar and his friends.
When Mai betrays Azula to save Zuko's life, Ty Lee attacks Azula to stop her from hurting Mai, and is therefore imprisoned. While there, she meets the Kyoshi Warriors and befriends them. In return for teaching them how to block chi, she joins their group and is released from prison when the war is over.
During one of Zuko's flashback, she is shown to be superior in acrobatics even as a child, able to gracefully perform a series of cartwheels and somersaults at which Azula fails. Azula roughly pushes Ty Lee down in retaliation for upstaging her, then laughs. Ty Lee's clear annoyance with this behavior, however, does not stop her from happily going along with Azula's plan to humiliate Mai and Zuko, on whom Mai has a crush. After Azula orchestrates a situation in which Mai and Zuko fall into a fountain, Ty Lee teases the pair about being "cute" together.
After Ty Lee ran away to join the circus, Azula tracks her down and tries to recruit her to assist with the capture of the now-fugitive Zuko and Iroh. However, Ty Lee is happy at the circus and wants to stay, claiming that her "aura has never been pinker!" Azula, in an ostensibly friendly gesture, informs Ty Lee that she will attend that night's performance before leaving. Ty Lee seems rather uneasy about this. During the performance, Azula orders the Ringmaster to set ablaze the net beneath the tightrope on which Ty Lee is performing and to release all of the dangerous animals making sure that if she fell she would either be scorched by the fire, or devoured or trampled upon by the animals. Afterwards, Ty Lee informs Azula that there won't be a show tomorrow, due to the fact that, "the universe is giving me strong hints that it's time for a career change." When Mai later asks her about the circus being her calling, Ty Lee notes that "Azula called a little louder." Ty Lee accompanies Mai and Azula when they go to make a hostage trade (King Bumi for Tom Tom) and, after Mai calls off the trade at Azula's suggestion, she acquits herself well in the ensuing battle using her Chi blocking to disable Katara's waterbending. Later, when they're leaving the city, Ty Lee, much like in childhood, teases Mai about her affections for Zuko, noting that it will be "interesting" for Mai to see him again.
Ty Lee, Mai, and Azula pursue Aang and his companions, and when Sokka and Katara split from the Avatar, Ty Lee and Mai are charged with tracking down the siblings. Ty Lee and Mai overwhelm the two sleep-deprived siblings easily (this time, Ty Lee strikes Sokka's pressure points, disabling three of his limbs, although recoiling when accidentally striking Sokka's skull), but are then sent flying into a river by an air blast from Appa. Once out of the water, she states that Sokka is cute. [3]
Ty Lee (along with Mai) is with Azula as she oversees the gargantuan drill that the Fire Nation is using to breach the walls of Ba Sing Se. When a small group of elite earthbenders is sent out to slow the drill, Azula sends Mai and Ty Lee to deal with them. With the help of Mai, Ty Lee makes quick work of the team nearly, easily blocking their Chi and disabling them. Later when Aang, Katara, and Sokka are found sabotaging the drill, Ty Lee once again acknowledges Sokka particularly, this time sending him a flirtatious look (to which Sokka responds with a smile, a wave, and a drawled "Hi,"). Once Azula sends Mai and Ty Lee after the fleeing siblings, Ty Lee follows them into the slurry pipeline where Mai refuses to go. However, Katara and Toph bend the water and rock mixture using it to plug up the pipeline while Ty Lee is still in it, thus thwarting her attempt to catch them. During this, Katara (presumably particularly embittered towards Ty Lee because of her ability to impair bending) aggressively insults Ty Lee, calling her a "circus freak." After the drill is destroyed Ty Lee is launched out of the pipeline by the build-up of pressure and slams into a rock platform, but is more or less unharmed.
After the defeat at the drill Ty Lee has a minor role and only appears when helping Azula attack Suki and the other Kyoshi Warriors. In the episode, she shows concern over her looks when she remarks that she was prettier than a Kyoshi warrior she was facing. [5]
After Team Avatar departs Ba Sing Se, the Earth King gives audience to three Kyoshi Island Warriors that are revealed to be Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee in disguise. [6]
After a successful coup against the government of the Earth Kingdom orchestrated by Azula, Ty Lee is last seen trying to teach the Earth King's bear, Bosco, how to do a handstand, but Toph Earthbends her hands and feet to the floor. [7]
In the canonical comic, Going Home Again, Ty Lee is used by Azula to help set Mai and Zuko up for a date to convince Zuko to come home. When caught, Azula attempts to the blame on Ty Lee, much to her dismay. The next day, after Mai and Zuko are back together, Ty Lee remarks on how they look "totally adorable".Ty Lee and her friends go on vacation to Ember Island at Lo and Li's beach house. At the beach, Ty Lee soon finds herself being approached by a boy who helps her unpack, and then stand to give her shade. Not long after, another boy comes with a seashell to give to Ty Lee. In no time at all Ty Lee is surrounded by many admirers. During a Kuai Ball match, Ty Lee attracts the attention of two boys, Chan and Ruon-Jian, who invite Ty Lee and Mai, as well as Azula and Zuko (though reluctantly) to a party that night.
During the party, Ty Lee is surrounded by boys and is forced to paralyze them with chi blocking to escape the crowd. Seeing this, Azula calls Ty Lee a tease and says that none of the boys really care about her. When Ty Lee starts crying, Azula hurriedly apologizes and confides that she said those things only because she was a little jealous of Ty Lee's popularity. Azula asks Ty Lee how to make boys like her. Ty Lee feels boys are intimidated by Azula, and tells her to just laugh and smile at anything a boy tells her. The group is later kicked out of the party and go down to the beach together.
As the campfire goes on, Zuko calls Ty Lee a circus freak. Ty Lee reveals tearfully that she has six sisters who look exactly like her and that she went to the circus to be different, so being a freak is something she regards as a compliment. Mai says that the reason Ty Lee wants so much attention is because she received so little as a child. The group then begins to tell their own feelings and secrets. With all their secrets out in the open, the heaviness between the four seems to vanish. Ty Lee says she will remember this night forever and that Lo and Li were right about the beach's ability to reveal people's true selves. To celebrate their revelations, Azula decides on a fitting end to their night - the four then head back to Chan's party, trashing the house and leaving it a ransacked mess. Together, the four of them forge their own memory of the place, uniting as friends for the first time in years.
personality
Ty Lee is bubbly and outgoing, yet slightly air-headed. She is a direct contrast of Azula's mean-spirit and Mai's torpor. Ty Lee appears to delight in her own acrobatic abilities, and never misses an opportunity to show them off. As a result of her upbringing, having six sisters who are exactly like her, Ty Lee craves attention and recognition. This is what may have lead her to develop her acrobatics in the first place, as well as her running away to join the circus. These attention issues also cause her to be a bit of a flirt, which is also why, according to Mai, she needs ten boyfriends.
Ty Lee also has a strong sense of loyalty to her friends, Mai and Azula. Despite her obvious differences from Mai, she has a strong respect for her and they often make an effective fighting force together. Ever since childhood, Ty Lee has also considered Azula as a friend, but as she got older, that loyalty seems to have been based out of fear of the Princess. When she first refused Azula's request that she join her search for the traitorous Zuko, Azula persuaded Ty Lee again by endangering her life during a circus performance. Since then, she never disobeyed Azula's orders. However, Ty Lee finally took a stand against her "friend" at the Boiling Rock. After Mai helped Zuko escape the Boiling Rock, Azula threatened her life. Out of fear for Mai's safety, Ty Lee attacked Azula, ending up in jail but finally facing her fears.
Ty Lee apparently is not known to hold grudges against her enemies despite their encounters on the battlefield. This is evidenced by her recent bond with the Kyoshi Warriors, whose imprisonment she is partially responsible for. She was able to establish a fairly strong friendship with the group while they were imprisoned together.
Ty Lee has also been known to be close to animals. In The Crossroads of Destiny, she was seen teaching Bosco some tricks. This may be related to her being in the circus, where she may have bonded or done acrobatic acts with them.
Ty Lee is also a believer in auras, describing that her aura has never been pinker in the circus and Mai as having a gray aura
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