Something tells me that the Avatar Comic Con Panel experts didn't do the Shipper Game for nothing. The whole audience thought that the Blue Spirit and Azula thing was disgusting, the creators were not that dumb to include that shipper. They knew that the audience would freak out. They are upto something and this is what I think will happen...

The Blue Spirit will return, he is too much of an important figure to give up. I think it will be??embodied by a different person this time. However, I don't know why. Maybe an anti-Fire Nation that is in the Fire Nation. Maybe...Kuzon? Who knows... But Zuko does not self-proclamate his double identity with the Blue Spirit. There is another person to it...one who has a well-defined reason and will make an interesting and complex story arc.

Ta-Da!!

They do have some resemblance...but I don't think they are the same. But maybe the Blue Spirit mask was influenced by the lion turtles, as people long before remembered them. Now??people don't because they are extinct or in spirit world, so Blue Spirit mask was drawn according to what they remember. Wan Shi Tong's??Library has the??only picture of them.??The man in front of the lion turtles is probably a past avatar....maybe Roku? Because the section the gang were browsing through were about Avatars. Maybe Blue Spirit-Noh-Lion Turtle has??deep connection or history with the Avatar.