Princess Azula (Chinese: 阿祖拉; pinyin: Ā Zǔ Lā) is a fictional character and the secondary antagonist in Nickelodeon's animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender, created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and voiced by Grey DeLisle.

"[3] Throughout the original series and the sequel comics, she is shown to be capable of highly advanced firebending, producing hotter blue flames as well as lightning.

[citation needed] Since she is the shadowed firebender in the series' opening sequence (though she is depicted bending red fire instead of her signature blue), Azula appears at the beginning of every episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

In the first season, she makes her first appearance in a flashback during 13-year-old Zuko's Agni Kai (firebending duel) against their father, Fire Lord Ozai.

[4] Azula makes a second brief appearance at the end of the first season when Ozai tasks her with repatriating Zuko and Iroh, who accompanied his nephew into exile and briefly cooperated with the series' protagonists.

[5] After her first attempt to capture Zuko and Iroh is accidentally thwarted by her ship's captain, Azula enlists the help of her childhood friends, Mai and Ty Lee.

Following her initial failure to enter the Earth Kingdom capital Ba Sing Se using a giant drill to breach the city's strong outer wall, Azula comes in contact with the Kyoshi Warriors, esteemed fighters who, despite their lack of ability to bend any element, dress as and utilize the fighting style of Kyoshi, a past Avatar.

[8] Posing as Kyoshi Warriors, Azula and her friends infiltrate Ba Sing Se and befriend Earth King Kuei, who tells them about the planned invasion of the Fire Nation during an upcoming solar eclipse.

Having in fact intentionally exposed herself, Azula lulls him into a false sense of control and accepts his offer to help stage a coup d'état against the Earth King and the loyalist Council of Five.

Azula then orders the Dai Li to tear down the walls of Ba Sing Se, exposing the city to an invasion and occupation by the Fire Nation.

[10] In the early episodes of this season, Azula bonds with her brother and friends after their victorious return to the Fire Nation with Iroh as a prisoner.

During the two-part episode "The Day of Black Sun," Aang assembles an elite invasion force and attacks the capital, taking advantage of a solar eclipse that renders the firebenders powerless.

Azula and her Dai Li agents stall Aang and his friends Sokka and Toph from finding Ozai before the eclipse, which lasts only eight minutes, allowing the firebenders to retaliate with full force once they regain their bending, causing the invasion to fail.

After having Mai and Ty Lee imprisoned for betraying her,[12] Azula follows Zuko and Sokka's group to the Western Air Temple, where she attempts to kill them.

The fight ends in a draw, with Azula narrowly escaping death after falling from one of the airships while the protagonists manage to flee.

[17] When Azula visits Ozai in his prison, they are watched by Fire Lord Zuko before she asks him to leave when their father remains silent in her presence.

[19] The team eventually finds that Ursa lost her memory and assumed the identity of Noriko, starting a new family in her home village.

[21] Shortly after Azula and her friends defeated the Kyoshi Warriors and before they infiltrated Ba Sing Se, Azula decides to separate a captured Suki from her Kyoshi Warrior sisters by sending her to the Boiling Rock prison to break her spirit by her forced isolation, and after trying to taunt her about capturing her friends as well, she sends her off with a group of prisoners.

[24] Summer Bishil makes a cameo appearance as Azula at the end of the live-action adaptation The Last Airbender, when Fire Lord Ozai orders her to defeat the Avatar.

[30] Due to Nickelodeon's behest of authentic castings relating to the Avatar Universe in the wake the George Floyd protests, DeLisle later stepped down from voicing Azula in 2023 as Suzie Yeung later assumed the role starting with the Generations mobile game, and both Quest for Balance and Nickelodeon All Star Brawl 2 that same year.

Even when young, Azula suggests that her father would make a better Fire Lord than the heir apparent, her uncle Iroh, whom she dubbed "a quitter and a loser" for abandoning his siege of the Earth Kingdom's capital Ba Sing Se, which would have secured the Fire Nation's victory in the war, after the death of his son Lu Ten.

Although a skilled strategist and capable of predicting her enemies' moves, she is awkward in social situations, and later admits to jealousy of Ty Lee's ability to attract potential sweethearts during "The Beach" episode.

After she was betrayed by Mai and Ty Lee, her mental state gradually collapsed, as her attacks became far more vicious and she was seemingly obsessed with killing Zuko.

Her excellent firebending abilities, hand-to-hand combat skills, intelligence, speed, flexibility, agility and charisma make her a formidable opponent.

She is also able to generate powerful shields of swirling flames, which she uses to withstand the simultaneous combined attacks of Aang, Katara, Zuko and Toph.

In "The Avatar State," she beats Zuko in combat without resorting to firebending, and in "The Day of Black Sun," she avoids the combined forces of Aang, Toph, and Sokka for several minutes without her bending to aid her.

"[47] Moviepilot ranked Azula first in the "Grey Griffin's 6 Greatest Villain Roles" with writer Mara Mullikin describing her "a perfectionist", while also complimenting her "tactful mind, agility, ruthlessness, manipulative nature and fire bending prowess cemented her as probably being the series' best antagonist.