- “I am the greatest earthbender in the world! Don't you two dunderheads ever forget it!”
- ―Toph to Xin Fu and Yu.
Toph Beifong is a fictional character in Nickelodeon's animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, voiced by Jessie Flower in the original series and Kate Higgins and Philece Sampler in the sequel series. She is also one of the two tritagonists (alongside Sokka) of the Avatar: The Last Airbender franchise.
Toph is an extremely talented and masterful earthbender—i.e., she has the ability to telekinetically manipulate, reshape and control stone, sand, dirt, and, later, metal. Because she was blind, her parents had a tutor who taught her only basic earthbending but she learned more advanced earthbending secretly from the badgermoles. She eventually becomes the first person to develop the ability to "bend" metal as well. Toph has been blind since birth, but due to her extensive earthbending skills, she can locate objects and their movements by sensing their vibrations in the earth around her. She is introduced in the second season of Avatar, and travels with the protagonist Aang as his earthbending teacher. Toph is shown to have an abrasive, conceited and sometimes stubborn personality which leads to clashes with her peers. Toph proves herself a steadfast ally to Avatar Aang and eventually Avatar Korra.
Personality and characteristics[]
Toph is fiercely independent, direct, belligerent, and practiced in taunting and insulting her opponents[1] and on occasion her friends, particularly Sokka.[2] On several occasions Toph appears picking her nose, spitting, and belching loudly. As she explained to Aang and his companions, she does this intentionally as a rebellion against the principles of refined culture that her aristocratic parents attempted to make her conform to. If the situation absolutely requires it, she actually knows how to behave in upper-class Earth Kingdom culture much better than Aang's companions do. She is usually covered in dirt, or as she calls it, "a healthy coating of earth".[3]
Despite retaining much of her strength as an earthbender even in her advanced age, Toph refuses to take part in prolonged conflicts, admitting that she is too old and lacks the energy for such endeavors.
Appearence[]
Book Two: Earth[]
Toph's parents view her blindness as a disability and therefore keep her concealed.[1] Despite her handicap, Toph has developed special skills by keeping company with the blind 'Badgermoles' that inhabited nearby caves.[4] By imitating their movements, Toph became a master of the martial art known as 'earthbending', but she kept her ability secret from her family. Toph fought frequently in Earth Rumble, an earthbending lei tai tournament resembling professional wrestling, under the alias "Blind Bandit". By the time Aang and his friends discover Toph at the tournament, she had become champion, holding a 42–0 win–loss record.[1] When her parents learn about this and confine her further, Toph runs away to accompany Aang and his friends as Aang's earthbending instructor. Toph nearly leaves the group after feuding with Katara over not contributing to the group's teamwork, though rejoins them following a meeting with Iroh and encountering Princess Azula for the first time.[5] Toph successfully begins Aang's training of earthbending and slows the descent of Wan Shi Tong's Library, where the group learns the date of the next Day of Black Sun and inadvertently gains an advantage over the Fire Nation, as it sinks, though fails to prevent Appa from being kidnapped by sandbenders.[6] Due to Appa being the group's transportation, they are forced to travel on foot, journeying through Serpent's Pass and preventing a drill from entering Ba Sing Se. Now in the city, she infiltrates the Earth Kingdom Royal Palace, meeting Dai Li,[7] bonds with Katara,[8] encounters Jet and reunites with Appa.[9] Toph also learns to metalbend after she is captured in a metal cage. She realizes that metal contains small amounts of earth, which she can manipulate. She quickly escapes and traps her captors in the same small cage.
Book Three: Fire[]
After the events of the Book 2 finale, Toph, alongside Sokka, Katara and the Southern Water Tribe, captured a Fire Nation ship. Once in the Fire Nation, she assumed the identity of a regular Fire Nation girl. In “The Runaway”, Toph uses her earthbending senses to foil a vendor's trick, and by bargaining and continuing to use her senses, she extracts more and more money from him. Katara is distressed by this, and scolds Toph for her immoral behavior, but later enlists her to pull a huge scam. Katara fakes turning Toph over to the police in order to collect the reward money, with the assumption that Toph will metalbend her way out of prison and rejoin her. However, it is revealed that there is no reward money and the cells are made of wood, and Katara is shoved in jail alongside Toph. Aang and Sokka attempt to overtake their adversary Combustion Man, but Katara ends up busting herself and Toph out by being resourceful in her attempt to draw water for her bending. Toph then is part of the invasion team, and she helps Aang get to Firelord Ozai's underground bunker. She later is seen riding on Appa after the invasion team's defeat.
In “The Western Air Temple”, she arrives at the Western Air Temple with the Gaang and meets Zuko. She is accepting of him at first, urging Katara and Sokka to accept his help, but after she is accidently burned by him she too grows angry with him. When he reattempts to join their team, she happily accepts him on the grounds of Aang's acceptance. In the finale, Toph helps Sokka and Suki attack a Fire Nation airship. Suki hops off the ship in order to help Toph and Sokka get to safety. Toph is nearly knocked off the burning ship and killed, but Sokka rescues her and they are promptly retrieved by Suki. She later celebrates the Firelord's defeat with her friends in Iroh's tea shop.
Avatar: The Last Airbender comic series[]
The Promise[]
In The Promise trilogy, Toph is revealed to have established the Beifong Metalbending Academy, an instructional institution to help earthbenders learn metalbending, shortly after the end of the television series. She chooses her three students (Penga, The Dark One, and Ho Tun) on the basis of her meteorite bracelet shivering in their presence.[10] Though claiming her motives behind founding the school were due to her love of metalbending, in actuality she enjoys bossing people around. Initially worried her students are not capable of being metalbenders, they surprise her with their victory over Kunyo and his firebending students, renewing her confidence in them[11] and she participates in the battle for Yu Dao.[12]
The Rift[]
In The Rift trilogy, Toph encounters her father for the first time since the series,[13] though he refuses to acknowledge her as his daughter. Toph prevents others from being killed by debris falling from the mine collapsing,[14] including her father, who reconciles with her as she saves everyone. Following this, she passes out and has her students assist Aang in his battle against the spirit of Old Iron.[15]
Smoke and Shadow[]
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North and South[]
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Imbalance[]
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Toph Beifong's Metalbending Academy[]
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Behind the scenes[]
- Toph's name is usually written as 北方拓芙. Her given name means "expanding lotus", while her surname means "northern". On one other occasion, her given name was written as 托夫, which is the phonetic transcription based on the official guide for foreign names. Toph can also be seen as a sort of pun on the words "tough" and "toff", a British slang word meaning "upper-class".
- Toph was the only blind person shown in either series.
- Toph was the first known person to be born with a disability, the second being Ming-Hua.
- In The Promise trilogy, Toph represents the vice of rage, over which she is able to prevail due to her time at her metalbending academy.
- Due to her blindness, Toph had no reading or writing skills. That being said, she apparently had some math skills, as seen when she was counting money.
- A recurring joke was that other characters tended to forget Toph was blind, only for her to sarcastically remind them that she was.
- Though Toph could "see" where everyone was by using vibrations from the ground, she tended to not face them while talking, instead staring off into space or in a different direction.
- Coincidentally, Toph's earthbending style is rumored to have been created by a blind woman.
- Toph can extend her seismic sense to sand, albeit with reduced accuracy, metal, and even the meteorite that Sokka fashioned his "space sword" from, which she used as a bracelet and described as "space earth"; it does not, however, transfer to non-earthen solids such as ice.
- Toph could tell if people were lying as there are physical reactions in the body that she could sense through vibrations. Azula and Old Sweepy were the only known characters that were able to foil this.
- Toph apparently used her hands as sense organs to supplement the vibrations she was able to feel through her feet, as she was often seen doing this to further investigate vibrations she had already felt by other means. This was probably a product of her learning earthbending by crawling on all fours like badgermoles. She was also seen using this ability before entering Old Ba Sing Se. Furthermore, when Zuko accidentally burned her feet, she crawled on her hands and knees when trying to get away from his camp, probably in an effort to retain some sort of sense of her surroundings.
- After making her escape and inventing metalbending, Toph made the claim that she was the greatest earthbender in the world.
- Toph discovered metalbending and was the only person shown to utilize it, until she taught others how to metalbend at her school. In The Legend of Korra, it is taught to the Republic City's police, appropriately named the Metalbending Police Force.
- Despite Toph's hatred for rules, she likes being in a position to enforce them, having founded and led Republic City's police force.
- Toph was the third known person shown to be taught earthbending by the badgermoles, the first two being Oma and Shu. Toph was also one of the few known to be taught by the animal from which a bending art originated, others include Iroh, Aang, Zuko, and Wan.
- Toph had a crush on Sokka since at least the time when they traveled across the Serpent's Pass, which she tended to express by aiming more insults his way than toward anyone else. However, partially because Toph did not like admitting this even to herself, nothing ever came of this.
- Toph was the only person in Team Avatar that did not have a romantic relationship by the end of the events of Avatar: The Last Airbender. However, she at least had some sorts of romantic relationship, in 119 AG and 126 AG, as she had two daughters, Lin and Suyin, with two different men.
- Toph was the only member of the original four members of Team Avatar not to go on an adventure with Zuko after he joined the team, later wanting to go with him when splitting up to search for Aang. As she plainly put it, "Everyone else went on a life-changing field trip with Zuko, now it's my turn." However, it did not go how she planned, as he was more focused on finding Aang. Toph later stated, "This is the worst field trip ever."
- Although Toph's hair appeared to be short, it was shown to be very long and bushy when she let it down.
- Toph was the only member of Team Avatar with a known last name.
- Toph was the only member of Team Avatar whose life was not uprooted or dramatically changed by the Hundred Year War or the Fire Nation.
- Toph has not been with her parents since she ran away from home. However, she did send them a letter and unexpectedly reunited with her father at a refinery.
- Toph was the only member of Team Avatar to be of the same biological age as Aang, as both were biologically twelve years old (though Aang is chronologically older than her by one hundred years).
- Toph had the last line in the original series, saying, "Well, I think you all look perfect."
- According to the DVD commentary for "The Blind Bandit", Toph's Earth Rumble outfit, which she wore throughout most of the series, was influenced by European fashion styles.
- Toph is the only known individual capable of using both variations of seismic sense, as she was able to use the skill to feel vibrations as well as detect lies.
- She initially appeared as a vision by Aang in "The Swamp". She had no lines, but giggled and laughed as Aang tried to pursue her.
- Toph is a playable character in Legends of the Arena. She is unlocked through the use of a secret code ("metal bending"). Aside from her appearance and name, she is played just like any other character.
- Toph is the youngest known earthbending master in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
- Despite exclusively using Praying Mantis-style earthbending, it is possible Toph knows some very basic Hung Gar earthbending, at least in form only, since Master Yu gave her beginner-level instruction up until her meeting with Team Avatar.
- Ironically, Toph displayed great mastery over the Light Chakra when she overcame the illusion of the division between natural earths and refined metals by her insight that the forging process would always leave small natural impurities, despite having never dealt with light in her life.
- Toph is the first character, followed by Zuko and Asami Sato, to join a Team Avatar with a father who is antagonistic toward them and their allies.
- The three characters have also all had trouble earning their father's love. The major difference with Toph, however, is that unlike Ozai and Hiroshi, the actions of Toph's father were geared more toward paranoia and overprotection rather than directly inflicting pain on her out of some sense of morality.
- Toph and Katara are the only known people to have trained two different Avatars, namely Aang and Korra.
- Toph is known to hit people on the shoulder as a sign of affection.
- Toph is one of two known characters in the Avatar franchise to have had children with two different men, the other being Ursa.
- Toph is the only character to appear in the graphic novel series for both Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Director: Ethan Spaulding; Writer: Michael Dante DiMartino (2006-05-05). "The Blind Bandit". Avatar: The Last Airbender. Season 2. Episode 6. Nickelodeon. Avatar: The Last Airbender. Episode Tanscript.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ "The Chase". Avatar: The Last Airbender. Season 2 (Book 2). Episode 8. 2006-05-26. Nickelodeon.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ "8 Quotes by Toph Bei Fong". lessreal.
- ↑ "Synopsis of Avatar: The Last Airbender Episodes, "The Firebending Masters", Episode 13, Season 3". Nickelodeon.
- ↑ Director: Giancarlo Volpe; Writer: Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko (2006-05-26). "The Chase". Avatar: The Last Airbender. Season 2. Episode 8. Nickelodeon.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ Director: Giancarlo Volpe; Writer: Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko (2006-07-14). "The Library". Avatar: The Last Airbender. Season 2. Episode 10. Nickelodeon.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ Hedrick, Tim (writer) & MacMullan, Lauren (director). (September 22, 2006). "City of Walls and Secrets". Avatar: The Last Airbender. Season 2. Episode 14. Nickelodeon.
- ↑ Estoesta, Joann, Wahlander, Lisa, Huebner, Andrew, Scheppke, Gary, MacMullan, Lauren, Mattila, Katie, Ridge, Justin, Volpe, Giancarlo (writers) & Spaulding, Ethan (director). (September 29, 2006). "The Tales of Ba Sing Se". Avatar: The Last Airbender. Season 2. Episode 15. Nickelodeon.
- ↑ Hedrick, Tim (writer) & MacMullan, Lauren (director). (November 6, 2006). "Lake Laogai". Avatar: The Last Airbender. Season 2. Episode 17. Nickelodeon.
- ↑ Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Promise, Part 1
- ↑ Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Promise, Part 2
- ↑ Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Promise, Part 3
- ↑ Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Rift, Part 1
- ↑ Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Rift, Part 2
- ↑ Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Rift, Part 3
External links[]
