| “ | I love fighting. I love being an earthbender and I'm really, really good at it. I know I've kept my life secret from you, but you were keeping me secret from the whole world. You were doing it to protect me, but I'm twelve years old and I've never had a real friend. | „ |
| ~ Toph explains her personality to her parents, who think she is weak from being blind. |
| “ | Listen. When I was chief of police of Republic City I worked my butt off busting criminals, but did that make crime disappear? Nope. If there's one thing I learned on the beat, it's that the names change, but the streets stays the same. | „ |
| ~ Toph's comment on that no matter how hard you fight evil, it always comes back. |
Toph Beifong is one of the two tritagonists (alongside Sokka) in Avatar: The Last Airbender and a supporting character in the sequel The Legend of Korra. She is the blind daughter of one of the richest families in the world and one of the most powerful earthbenders in the world, using vibrations in the ground to “see” and joins Team Avatar to teach Aang earthbending and save the world from the Fire Nation.
She is voiced by Jesse Flower in the original series, by Kate Higgins as an adult, and by the late Philece Sampler as an elderly.
Her Good Ranking[]
What Makes Her Admirable?[]
Book Two: Earth[]
- She apologized to Aang for trying to silence him by using her earthbending to attack him so he wouldn't reveal her secret to her parents, calling a “truce” and explaining her backstory to Aang.
- She rescued Aang from Xin Fu and the Earth Rumble champions, single handedly defeating them all without breaking a sweat.
- Although she initially did not want to help Aang, Sokka, and Katara stop the Fire Nation as she thought she had to stay and pretend to be the helpless girl her parents thought she was, she realized she had to make her own path and be true to herself, revealing her secret skill at earthbending and life to her parents and was only sad yet not angry when her parents did not accept her independence. She ended up running away to join Team Avatar to teach Aang earthbending and save the world, lying to the others that her parents changed their mind and allowed her to come.
- She used her skill at detecting vibrations to warn the group that Azula via a train was tracking them and blocked them off to buy Team Avatar time to escape on Appa.
- Although she left Team Avatar after getting into an argument with Katara and Aang, she realized with the help of Iroh that she didn't have to carry her own weight anymore and that the rest of Team Avatar cared for her, not because she was blind but because they genuinely loved her and came back to help Team Avatar confront Azula.
- She successfully taught Aang how to Earthbend and freed Sokka from being stuck in a hole.
- She saved the rest of Team Avatar from Wan Shi Tong by holding up Tong's library to prevent it from sinking to buy enough time for Aang, Sokka, and Katara to get out. While she lost Appa to sandbenders in the process, she felt remorse and apologized when she couldn't as there was just no way she could hold up the library and save Appa at the same time.
- She found one of the sandbender gliders buried in the desert which Team Avatar could use to escape the Si Wong Tong.
- She used her family seal to get her and the rest of Team Avatar tickets to Ba Sing Se.
- She saved the refugee Than from falling to his death when Team Avatar was escorting his family through the Serpent's Pass.
- She saved Sokka from being crushed by rubble when he pushed Suki out of the way.
- She saved the rest of Team Avatar and the refugee family from the Serpent using her earthbending to get out from being underwater.
- She bent the mud slurry to defeat Ty Lee and help destroy Azula's drill, saving Ba Sing Se from the Fire Nation.
- She came up with a plan to have her and Katara dress up as elite members of society to infiltrate the Earth King's party and get Aang and Sokka inside so they could inform the Earth King about the Day of the Black Sun and convince him to help them stop the Fire Nation.
- She agreed to go with Katara for a Girls Day Out, using her powers to make the sauna enjoyable and after Katara told her how beautiful she was, she stated how she wished she could return the compliment but she could never see Katara and instead she gave a friendly punch to Katara in the arm.
- She discovered the location of Dai Li's secret brainwashing base under Lake Laogai.
- She defeated dozens of Dai Li agents and remorsefully revealed that Jet was lying when he said he would be okay after being mortally wounded by Long Feng.
- She defeated the Earth Kingdom soldiers with Aang and turned the entire staircase to the palace into a ramp to defeat all the Earth Kingdom royal guards and with the help of Aang took the entire team to the palace entrance to go to the Earth King.
- She invented metalbending to free herself from Xin Fu and Master Yu and defeated them, figuring out when no earthbender had been able to figure out in history, the way to bend processed earth in the metal which would have a massive impact in the franchise especially in The Legend of Korra as she is indirectly responsible for all the heroism future metalbenders she taught.
- She freed herself, Sokka, and the Earth King from prison after the Coup of Ba Sing Se.
- She defeated Ty Lee to reunite the Earth King with his pet Bosco.
Book Three: Fire[]
- She warned the others when their Fire Nation ship disguise was exposed and the Fire Nation captain ordered the sinking of their ship and defeated the Fire Nation captain and his guards.
- She helped Aang build a secret cave so Aang could teach the Fire Nation students dancing.
- Despite discovering that Katara disguised herself as a Painted Lady, she, along with Aang and Sokka, are helping Katara save the Jang Hui village from General Mung and his soldiers. By disguising herself as one of the villagers, she motivates them all into cleaning up the river together.
- Although she scammed scam artists and lashed out at Katara when Katara argued it was wrong and dangerous, she realized with the help of Sokka that Katara was right and just looking out for her and apologized to Katara for lashing out and decided to give up the scams and while she technically agrees to go with Katara when she proposes they pull off the final/ultimate scam, they both learn their lesson and Toph comforts Katara by telling Katara she is fun and she didn't need to pull off a scam with her to prove it and admitted that Katara was right and she still missed her parents and they reconciled and hugged each other.
- She defeated Combustion Man by bending a rock at him which when he blew it up a tiny pebble flew into his third bending eye and stunned him.
- Although her parents were extremely overprotective and (albeit unintentionally) mistreated her, she still cared for them and wrote a letter to send to her parents with Katara's help.
- She figured out that the missing Fire Nation villagers were imprisoned in a mountain and freed them all.
- Alongside the rest of Team Avatar, she inspired a sleep-deprived and paranoid Aang to be confident and that he was ready to face the Fire Lord and helped make a bed of wool for Aang to sleep in.
- Although she was initially skeptical once she saw the Hippo and the Boulder come, once they told her how they no longer fought for entertainment but were here to help Toph and all the other heroes/nations stop the Fire Nation, she became very friendly with them.
- She hugged Aang with the rest of Team Avatar and wished him luck on defeating the Fire Lord.
- She took out guard towers during the Invasion of the Fire Nation and later went with Aang and Sokka to face the Fire Lord, breaking open the entrance to the secret bunker and defeated Azula's Dai Li agents and comforted Sokka when Azula tricked him into wasting all their time by goading him about how she tortured Suki, telling Sokka it wasn't his fault but Azula's.
- She informed the group about Zuko's arrival and she was the most sympathetic to him out of the team, realizing he was telling the truth about freeing Appa and sympathizing with how he grew up in a horrible family and comparatively could've turned out worse to defend him from the rest of Team Avatar. She was only the person who realized Zuko had to be Aang's firebending teacher (as he was the only one available) while the rest of the group rejected that because of his past misdeeds. She left to talk to Zuko and even after he (accidentally) burned her feet, she knew it was just a mistake and still defended him when she came back to the rest of Team Avatar and when Zuko came to try and join the group again and apologized to her, she was the first one to forgive and accept him into Team Avatar.
- However, like Iroh, Toph is the only one in the Team Avatar who doesn't need to forgive Zuko since he already knew who he is and the fact he's simply misguided and lost rather than cruel and ruthless just like the rest of the Fire Nation.
- She informed Zuko and Aang that they needed to go find the original source of firebending after Zuko lost most of his firebending due to not relying on anger and hate anymore and redeeming himself.
- She bent an escape route for the group to escape when Azula attacked the Western Air Temple.
- She comforted Zuko when he was feeling ashamed for previously betraying Iroh at Ba Sing Se and believed he may never redeem himself to Iroh, telling Zuko that he had already redeemed himself to Iroh by telling him about her conversation with Iroh and how Iroh would only talk about him and how all he wanted was for Zuko to see the light and go on the right path and now that he had, Iroh would be proud. (She of course ended up being completely right about Iroh's reaction to a redeemed Zuko).
- She went with Suki and Sokka to destroy the Fire Nation airship fleet, blasting them all into the closest airship and single handedly defeating the crew and taking control of the ship.
- She saved Sokka when he briefly got distracted when talking to Suki (who didn't make it to the next ship but was fine) and on Sokka's orders metalbent the rudder of the ship to take out the remaining airships.
- She hugged Smellerbee and celebrated with Team Avatar and Iroh following the defeat of Ozai and the end of the Hundred Year War.
Sequel comics[]
- In the Promise trilogy, she founded the first metalbending academy to popularize metalbending and teach it to others, recruiting three people as her first students.
- Although she bragged to Sokka that she actually became a teacher because she loved telling people what to do and yelling at them, she realized her mistake after the training with her students for the duel against Kunyo's students for ownership of the academy failed miserably, remorsefully telling Sokka that she had lashed out at her students and was taking out her anger at them and trying to make them something they weren't, realizing it made her no better than her controlling parents and decided to go surrender ownership of the academy to Kunyo. Once her students demonstrated their metalbending skills and defeated Kunyo and his students to save the academy, she congratulated them and agreed to resume teaching them.
- She disabled all the tanks during the battle of Yun Dao to buy Aang enough time to reason with Kuei and Zuko.
- She saved herself, Katara, her father, and her students from being crushed from the debris of the collapsing iron mine they were in and held the debris up long enough for Aang and her students to come and rescue him.
- She reconciled with her father after he had apologized to her and told her how proud he was of her and thanked and hugged Aang for saving her father's refinery, herself, and her students from the General Old Iron.
- She saved Sun the lava bender from the collapsing warehouse where underground bending matches were held and successfully convinced him and all his earthbending friends to join her metalbending academy (even though she knew some of them weren't metalbenders but still offered to help perfect their earthbending) and regained her passion for teaching in the process.
- She led her students in aiding in the Southern Water Tribe Reconstruction Project and fought off Gilak's Southern Nationalists with Sokka when they attacked the Southern Water Tribe festival.
- She correctly figured out the Liling was behind the terrorist attacks in Cranefish town and tricked her daughter Yaling into giving her the password to Liling's secret hate rally against non-benders to infiltrate the rally with Team Avatar and arrest her, battling Liling and Yaling before using her bending to stop the cavern from collapsing on Team Avatar and in the final battle between them and Liling and Yaling, she thanks Sokka for saving her from Yaling.
Before The Legend of Korra[]
- As an adult and after the creation of Republic City, she founded the Republic City Police Force along with an elite metalbending unit of the force and became Chief of Police, maintaining order in Republic City for decades.
- She arrested Yakone for his crimes and use of bloodbending, bringing before the United Republic Council to stand trial for his crimes.
- After retiring from being Chief of Police and traveling to the swamp, she would eventually reconcile with her reformed daughter Suyin Beifong for her bad parenting and Suyin's former criminality.
The Legend of Korra[]
- She rescued a passed out Korra when Korra came to the swamp and helped Korra let go of her fears towards her past enemies along with encouraging her to sympathize and learn from them. This would enable Korra to bend out the remnants of Zaheer's poison in her body and get her back in fighting shape and she let Korra hug her before she left with Jinora, Meelo, and Ikki to stop Kuvira (although to be fair she only helped Korra so Korra would go away and she could have peace and quiet).
- She went to rescue Suyin after realizing she had been captured by Kuvira and searched the whole city of Zaofu, before meeting up with Lin, Opal, and Bolin and informing them that Suyin had been taken to a nearby prison camp/factory. She was also unusually kind and warm with her granddaughter Opal.
- She used her metalbending to infiltrate the factory and figured out Suyin was being held in a cavern a few stories below and helped Bolin and Lin free them.
- She saved Suyin and Lin from Kuvira by single handedly defeating her forces and mechs.
- She reconciled with Lin, admitting that while she may not have been the best mother, she still ended up with two amazing kids, asking for Lin not to hate her and hugged Lin when she agreed to.
What Makes Her Inconsistent?[]
- She is too much of a jerk to qualify for NPG.
- She is very harsh and condescending even towards her own allies like lashing out at Katara when Katara called her out for being selfish and not helping the group, mocking Sokka for not being a bender, or really when she acted incredibly harsh and a jerk to Aang for no reason when she was training him, ignoring Katara's advice to be gentle and sympathize with him even though she knew earthbending was Aang's natural opposite and therefore he would obviously have a hard time learning it.
- She also generally taunts and insults her enemies or even her allies usually through mocking nicknames.
- Even as an adult decades later in the Legend of Korra, she was a jerk to Korra when Korra came to train with her.
- She only reluctantly agreed to train her because, in her words, "I can't stand you being so pathetic and getting your butt kicked all the time," and earthbent Korra away when she tried to hug and thank her.
- After beating Korra, she proceeded to insult her as pathetic again and call her the worst Avatar out of all the ones she had ever worked with, even though she only knew one other Avatar which she herself admitted.
- She later called her the worst Avatar, even after telling Korra how there was still some of Zaheer's metal poison in Korra's body, which she didn't notice.
- Overall, she is a major jerk to her own allies even more so than her enemies, especially since she never apologizes for these above moments and rarely apologizes, period.
- She is very arrogant and stubborn.
- She rarely if ever apologizes or even admits she is in the wrong or when she is being a jerk like in the above moments mentioned even when others like Katara, Aang, and Korra feel remorse and apologetic for getting angry at Toph's jerkishness and selfishness.
- She pretty much never apologizes or concedes for being a jerk. The only exception is when she apologized to Katara for running the scams and getting angry with her then).
- She also scornfully told Xin Fu and Master Yu after inventing metalbending to beat them that she was the greatest earthbender in the world and they better not forget it. She also bragged when beating up Korra and defeating her, telling her how she was an old lady and yet she was still beating her and that she would've destroyed Korra in her prime.
- Her arrogance and pride is a prominent part of her personality and thus too corrupting for her to be an NPG.
- She has a bloodthirsty side.
- She smiled each time she beat up and humiliated her Earth Rumble competition opponents and even telling her parents she loved fighting.
- She also tended to seek out violent solutions as a first resort like when she wanted to face Azula, Ty Lee, and when she was chasing Team Avatar even though Sokka and the rest of the team pointed out they were in no shape to do so and had to retreat.
- In the Promise trilogy she vengefully attacked firebending master Kunyo without provocation when he “took over” her metalbending academy, even though Kunyo had a point that it was his academy first and he honored the law and left during the Harmony Restoration Movement, but now since Zuko withdrew his support, he wanted it back.
- She also confessed that she loved tormenting Aang to Korra after telling Korra how much fun it was beating her up and also revealing that she scared away the swamp benders by beating them up as well.
- She was a neglectful parent due to her very misguided belief that in order to avoid the parental issues she once had, she would be the complete opposite of her overprotective parents.
- She just lets Suyin and Lin do whatever they want and find their own paths without her help or discipline and refuses to tell them about their fathers, leading to Suyin and Lin fighting for her attention growing up and Suyin ending up becoming a getaway driver and accidentally scarring Lin who tried to stop as a vigilante.
- Instead of taking some responsibility and discipling or at least teaching Lin and especially Suyin a lesson, she decided to destroy the police report and exile Suyin in order to prevent her from going to prison (and out of a selfish desire to not be seen with a daughter in prison as Chief of Police) which estranged her from Lin, before she retired a year later.
- This would force Suyin to go on a journey of self discovery and redemption alone while Lin was consumed with hatred of her sister and cut all ties with her while still working through the ranks to become Chief of Police all to please Toph.
- While Toph would eventually reconcile with Suyin (when Suyin reached out not Toph), she still refused to take any responsibility or understand why Lin was upset with her for never talking to her about her father and for never sympathizing with her and while she did end up reconciling with Lin, this corrupting factor is still too impactful to ignore especially since it is responsible for messing up her family and Lin in particular.
- In The Legend of Korra, it is revealed that she had basically become nihilistic and given up.
- She tells Korra the world does not need the Avatar and her actions were pointless because like when she was Chief of Police, she busted criminals but the situation on the streets always stayed the same. This would impact Korra greatly even episodes later and almost made her give up being the Avatar if not for Asami and Tenzin inspiring Korra to never give up as Toph never apologized or admitted she was wrong.
- She refused to help her daughters, Bolin, and Opal stop Kuvira's superweapon or save Zhu Li, stating that she wasn't going to get herself captured like the rest of them, even though she demonstrated that she could take out Kuvira's army and definitely could have helped them stop Kuvira once and for all and even though she comes back, it is only to rescue Su and Lin and leave.
- In the sequel comic Ruins of the Empire trilogy, she refused to help Korra save her own city of Gaoling from Commander Guan by running for governor to beat him like Korra suggested, stating her skepticism of politics.
- She believed how anyone who came out of politics was filthy while also conceding that Aang, Sokka, and Katara were politically active even though none of them came out corrupted, which is hypocritical.
- Her other reason is, in her own words, "If you haven't noticed, I hate being around people. What makes you think I want to be of service to them?". This shows some misanthropy, and she only reluctantly changed her mind when she found out Wu had a vision of the Earth Queen trying to stop him from implementing democracy by saying how people (like Toph) don't change and want to stay in their comfort zone, and Korra used Toph's own words of always trusting the swamp against her.
- She remained pessimistic even when she did agree to run and didn't care when Guan stole the election and won by brainwashing King Wu and the voters.
- Ultimately, after Commander Guan's defeat and the people being freed from brainwashing, she rejects King Wu's attempt to get her to still run for governor of Gaoling, telling him she had enough of political shengains and going back to the swamp, marking her final scene.
Trivia[]
- Her Inconsistently Admirable status is ironic, since she is one of the most popular Avatar characters by far, with her corrupting factors being perceived as very enjoyable to watch towards most of her fans (unlike the franchise's other IAs). This is referenced in “The Ember Island Players”, where Zuko compares their depictions in the play.
- She is one of three Avatar characters to be Inconsistently Admirable, alongside Zuko and Kuvira.
External Links[]
- Toph Beifong on the Avatar Wiki
- Toph Beifong on the Heroes Wiki
[]
 Inconsistently Admirable
| ||
|
Avatar: The Last Airbender The Legend of Korra See Also | ||