With the popularity ofAvatar: The Last Airbender, it’s no surprise that the creators decided to make a spin-off, sort-of prequel series to the show in 2012 calledThe Legend of Korra.The Legend of Korrafollows the Avatar after Aang, a young woman named Korra from the water tribe. Part of the fun of this series is seeing Korra and the other new characters interact with the old favorites from the original show, bringing back the characters that fans know and love and getting to see what happened to them in the time between shows.
It doesn’t happen super often, but the main cast of characters fromATLAdo makecameo appearances throughoutKorra, each serving a slightly different role in the narrative (and some just being purely for fun). At one pivotal moment in the series, when Korra is going through a transformation and self-searching journey, she meets Toph, who becomes a sort of mentor figure to her. Toph, though she’s a child inATLA, is much older now, andKorraintroduces audiences to her children, who play really important roles in the show. However, it’s never confirmed who fathered those children, which has led to quite a few fan theories about who Toph might have had them with.
RELATED:This Was The Best Scene In Legend of Korra
Who Is Toph?
The audience first meets Toph Beifong inAvatar: The Last Airbender, where she is a young girl that Aang, Katara, and Sokka come across during their travels who agrees to teach Aang earthbending. Despite being so young, and despite the fact that she has been blind since birth, Toph was a very talented earthbender, and even went on to becomean earthbending masterover the course of her life. Since she is blind, Toph uses her feet and her earthbending abilities to feel the slightest vibrations in the ground, which meant that she could get a sense of where people were around her and navigate the world, as long as her feet are on land. She also uses this ability to figure out whether or not people are lying. She learned earthbending from the original earthbenders, the badgermoles.
Toph grew up wealthy and pampered by her parents, who were quite overprotective, but she constantly rebelled against them. Her personality is prickly, and she’s independent, sarcastic, and stubborn. These are traits that she carried into her adult years as well. When Korra meets her inThe Legend of Korra, Toph is living in The Foggy Swamp and finds Korra passed out. She brings Korra home and helps her regain her strength, reassuring Korra that she is an old friend of Korra’s past life - aka Aang. At the time, Korra was experiencing a block with her mental health and bending, and Toph mentored her into regaining some of that confidence back.
Toph’s Family in The Legend of Korra
InThe Legend of Korra, it is revealed that Toph had two daughters who are now adults - Suyin and Lin. Suyin got married and had a family while also founding the city-state of Zaofu, and Lin took over Toph’s position as Chief of Police in Republic City. Both daughters were powerful metalbenders, which is an offshoot of earthbending thatToph herself discovered, as metals can be found in the earth and are therefore technically part of the earth itself.
Because Toph herself had grown up in such a stifling environment, she took the opposite approach with her own children, giving them freedom to find their own paths. However, she became estranged from her daughters for a period of time after an incident in their youth. Lin had become a police officer as a young woman, but her younger sister Suyin was more of a rebel, and got mixed up in the wrong crowd. Lin caught Suyin trying to flee arrest after a robbery, andbrought her to Toph(who was still the Chief of Police at the time). Knowing the scandal that would occur if the Police Chief’s daughter ended up in jail, Toph destroyed the police report and sent Suyin to live with her parents. This angered Lin, as she saw it as letting Suyin get away with everything. Suyin and Toph made up many years later, but it still took Lin a while to come around.
Who Did Toph Have Children With?
Toph hid the parentage of her daughters from both of them, which was another thing that led to a certain amount of strife between them. It has been confirmed who Lin’s father is; two decades afterthe end of the Hundred Year War, Toph met a man named Kanto, with whom she had Lin. The relationship didn’t work out, and six years later, she had another daughter (Suyin) with an unknown man, who she also did not stay with. Because the identity of Suyin’s father is unknown, it has led to a lot of fan theories floating around about who it might possibly be.
There are a number of sequel comics to theAvatar: The Last Airbendershow that have been published, including one that follows Toph beginning a metalbending academy. In it, there is a character named Satoru that she meets that fans have pointed out looks a lot like Suyin, though there is no clear evidence he is the father. He’s not exactly a big character, and this theory is more based on vague resemblance than anything else.
The other rampant theory is that Sokka was Suyin’s father.Sokka died at some pointbeforeThe Legend of Korrabegan, so him being absent could be an explanation for why Suyin wouldn’t have known it was him. Fans have also pointed out that Suyin’s own children resemble Sokka a bit. It was established inATLAthat Toph had a crush on Sokka, but it was never reciprocated in any canon materials. The main reason this theory is unlikely is that it goes against Sokka’s character to have a child and be absent from their life. If he really was Suyin’s father, he would have been an important figure to her. While neither of these fan theories are likely true, it’s still fun to speculate, since the reveal of Suyin’s real father never happened.
NEXT:Avatar: The Last Airbender Fans Are Already Critical of Netflix’s Live-Action Series
