It’s time to put my grievances with “The Legend of Korra” to rest.
I was there when “The Legend of Korra” first aired in 2012, excited to see the sequel to a series I adored. “Korra” had the difficult task of living up to its predecessor, “Avatar: The Last Airbender”, a near-perfect series. For the most part, it did. This is a fine series with fresh characters, engaging plotlines and beautiful 1920s style animation. Yet, the second season is chock-full of issues that are hard to ignore.
“Korra” takes place 70 years after the finale of “The Last Airbender.” Korra is the next avatar from the Water Tribe. She’s fierce, hot-headed and aggressive. Halfway through the first episode, she beats up a couple of thugs, not thinking of the consequences.
Korra is nothing like our simple monk, Aang, and this show is nothing like “The Last Airbender.” For better, and for worse.
Season one was a solid season and had a lot of promise for the feisty avatar. There was a cohesive and deep story about the rift between non-benders and benders. We even got some flashbacks to Aang and other OG characters.
Season one was good, and then season two went off the rails.
[Spoilers for “The Legend of Korra.”]
It’s childish. The OG series, and season one, had pretty dark and complex aspects to it for shows aimed at pre-teenagers. Season two loses all of the depth and edge, opting for a plain good vs. evil storyline.
Yes, “The Last Airbender” had a basic villain with Ozai. But, we also had Zuko and Azula, who provided enough depth to where Ozai could be a basic villain.
Season two only has Unalaq as the sole villain, the “dark avatar.” The conflict of season two is light vs. dark there is no nuance, no ambiguity. That’s all it is.
Season two also ret-conned almost everything special about the avatar.
Did you like that the avatar was able to speak to all their past lives to gain wisdom? If you did, sorry because that’s now gone.
Did you like that the avatar was the bridge between man and spirit? If you did, sorry because that too is gone.
Now the only thing that makes the avatar special is they can bend all four elements. There’s also the avatar state, but they also managed to ruin that.
At the end of season one, Korra was able to access the avatar state. So the writers had her go into the avatar state every five minutes in season two, and she would lose.
The avatar state is supposed to be this insane power that makes them unbeatable. They also don’t use it very often because it makes them vulnerable. Here, we see Korra use it like it’s an on and off switch, and then she loses to some water tribe chief.
There was a pivotal moment in the finale where Korra summons the avatar state to become more powerful. This scene had no emotional impact because she had been in the avatar state for the past 20 minutes, and it did nothing for her.
Finally, the spirits and the first avatar.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s another origin story. Raava, the light spirit, also known as the midichlorians of Avatar. It was cheap and ruined the mythos. Believe it or not, we don’t need to know how the spirit world and avatar came to exist.
The biggest thing that could’ve fixed this season was not having the spirits be the central focus. Spirits have never been shown to act this way. They used to be animals tied to certain parts of the world for a specific reason. Now they’re just glowy blobs that show up randomly and attack people. They even cheaped the look of the spirit world.
They should’ve focused on the civil war between the North and Southern water tribes. It could’ve been “Game of Thrones” meets Avatar.
Now to end my rant, what started it all was Korra’s horrible attitude toward Tenzin and her father. She was being petty, ungrateful and a brat for a solid three episodes, and it was annoying.
Season two was a big letdown coming off a good season. Luckily, season 3 picks it back up, diving into some political aspects, a complex villain and new bending styles. Season four is also good. The villain is pretty much Ozai, if he were female and an earth bender, but we get to see a humbler Korra and Toph.
“The Legend of Korra” isn’t perfect, but they did their best with what they had. With that, I say, flameo hotman!
Featured Image via FanCaps