She’s 16 in a world where 16 year-olds are married, often parents. The previous Team Avatar survived on the road for over a year, and I don’t think anyone on the team was as old (or as immature) as Korra. Hell, wasn’t Aang something like 12?
Did you all give up on the series? I thought tonight’s episode was pretty good. I enjoy the more plot-driven pace, and where this seems to be headed!
Korra is immature because she was kept locked away training in seclusion by a fucking committee set up by Aang to cloister the next avatar.
Notice that this desire to train and protect the next incarnation has only HARMED her work as an avatar so far. She is also intentionally a polar opposite of Aang’s character.
She is callow and immature by intention, it might be annoying but it isn’t writer oversight.
I’m enjoying it so far. I think the main plot is developing nicely. Korra knows which side she’s on now, so the conflict should take on more structure and begin to escalate now.
The screen time spent on Tenzin and his family will have a payoff later, I’m sure.
The foundation laid earlier with Korra opening the portal with the spirit world should also have a big payoff, maybe in the finale.
The comical sideplot with Bolin and Eska was getting kind of tired, but I loved that last shot of Eska in pursuit of the boat.
Yeah, the last two episodes have been very solid. Korra feels like less of a brainless dupe and more like the brash, albeit naive, fighter that she’s supposed to be. The way her relationship with her father has developed in these two episodes has been very well done.
Glad to see Asami back in the thick of things. The best action sequences “Legend of Korra” has had so far all featured a mix of bending magic and Future Industries-style tech, and the biplane vs fleet battle was some of the best we’ve seen. Also enjoyed that Verrick spent the entire episode inside the platypus bear.
Most of all, though, I’m loving the Tenzin/ Bumi/ Kya subplot. Kya revealing the photograph of Aang’s family was a tearbending-worthy moment.
So is Unalaq going to call upon dark spirits to attack the south and Korra will have to actually get in touch with her spiritual side to solve the problem? Maybe it’ll be shown that Unalaq was the one who engineered the first spirit to attack their houses so Korra could be manipulated into opening the south portal.
Because some ships and soldiers shouldn’t be able to stop the four-element Avatar, his gambit of flipping her loyalty didn’t work for crap, and I don’t think Unalaq is supposed to be so strong that he could personally take on Korra a la the Fire Lord. I know why they did it, but when you basically start the series with an almost fully powered up Avatar you have to have dramatic ways of actually challenging her because she’s so overpowered compared to 99% of the world’s inhabitants. Poor Amon…
This episode was almost Korra-less, but we still got some story development. Not too excited about the amnesia angle at the end, but I’ll withhold judgment until we see where they go with it.
I just saw that Eska is voiced by one of my celebrity crushes, Aubrey Plaza. Makes sense.
I was wondering what was the point of the side story with Bolin as an actor, and then we got the payoff with the pyrotechnic devices. I should have seen that development coming, but I didn’t, and it was nice to be surprised.
Almost a perfect episode, in my opinion.
It might not have had any action on the level of rocketjump Azula, but Varrik’s plot was wonderfully done, and it let Mako do things with Asami instead of Korra, with whom he has far better chemistry. The main negative of the episode is that I fear Korra’s amnesia is going to be a way to cheat her way to character growth, instead of a more natural progression from A to B.
My prediction:
It’s not just the detonators that were a clue here. Varrik’s also been using the same pyrotechnics to make the bombs look more dangerous than they really are.
Great backstory! I’m looking forward to seeing where they are going from here!
Yeah, that was really awesome! I was so into the story that it wasn’t until near the end when I realized it was a double-length episode. Now I want a whole series about Wan.
I was worried at first with the Aladdin rip-off start, nearly expected some diamond in the rough bit, but man it got better.
I liked this one as well, probably the best ep of the season thus far. For such active, dangerous lives, the avatars seem pretty long-lived, I’ve noticed.
I’m unclear on how bending propagated. Did the lion-turtles just stop making new ones, leaving the existing benders with their powers? And nice tie-in with Aang’s story, showing that they could always give and take bending.
This is what I got from it. They gave their powers to the villagers and sent them off into the wild for good!
Is it a coincidence that the two best episodes, last week’s and this doubleheader, were both nearly Korra-less?
Good episode. And they’re finally moving the ball forward towards the season arc after a lot of screwing around on a bunch of fronts with a bunch of 2nd tier plotting. Obviously Unalaq wants to bring back Vatu (sp?) somehow - that’s why he wants Korra to open the spirit portals, that’s what he’s been doing in the spirit world. And that’s why there’s all these pissed off spirits running around in Korra’s time – the big bad is already stirring them up. So I guess Korra needs to basically repeat this episode at the end - defeat and lock away Dark Spirit Dude.
Other thoughts:
I really love the art style change in the Wan flashback – the light thin lines, the flat shading, the watercolor look. Very well done, lovely. The Lion Turtle’s face looks like a wood cut. It all seems like out of a story book, which is appropriate and the obvious intent.
I agree with DSeid on the Alladin opener. Also the Spirited Away hot-tubbing. C’mon!
epbrown1, I’m unclear how everyone (well, benders, not everyone) got elemental power later. If the lion turtle’s gave everyone bending, then how come not every could bend in Aang’s time? And why was it said in ATLAB that bending was “discovered” much later, e.g. fire bending from dragons, earth bending from badger moles, if lion turtles were the “real” source of bending?
I hate some 3rd tier voice characters, e.g. the racoon-lemur-whatever spirit who eventually befriended Wan. Annoying! Is it the same voice actor as Varrik, another really annoying voice, who I think was also the referree in Book 1, and the announcer in the recaps? This show is getting like Scooby Doo – everyone is Casey Kasem! OTOH, Vatu’s voice was excellent - it’s been used before in the series but I haven’t placed it yet - as was Wan’s.
Yay, air bison steed! Yip-yip, Not-Naga!
In before Wan/Raava shipping and jokes about them “becoming one” and “coming together.” googles Oh, too late. Good job internet.
But seriously though, Wan absorbed the light spirit to become the Avatar. Maybe Unalaq wants to absorb the dark spirit to become the uh, Anti-Avatar?
Ooh, good notion, I like that a lot!
This falls down under analysis. In order for Unalaq to want this, he has to know about Raava and Vaatu, where Vaatu’s imprisoned and how the avatar was created. Knowing all that, he’d have to know Vaatu’s goal is destroying humanity in the physical world, and also know that Vaatu wouldn’t give his power to a mere human.
Yup, that’s a fairly fatal flaw. In Korra’s time none of this was known, so how would Unalaq know this? He’d have no reason to set his plot in motion and coerce Korra into opening the southern spirit portal. I’m picturing a workaround somewhat like General Zhao’s find of “an ancient scroll” that told him about the Ocean and Moon spirits — Unalaq found Ancient Knowledge and turned it to nefarious purposes.
Vaatu’s goal is destroying Rana to create chaos and darkness. Humanity is collateral damage, if that.
Rana only did so to beat her adversary at the end with Wan. Can’t you see Vaatu doing the same with Unalaq if the battle is lost?
Unalaq has to know something, otherwise it’s a pretty big coincidence he’s invading the south and trying to open the portal right before the convergence. Dude knows more about spirits than Tenzin, the son of the last Avatar. Communing with the spirits would be a good way to get an education about what’s going on in the other world. Maybe he doesn’t know all the details, but you gotta figure he knows something is happening.
Unalaq doesn’t seem to be the cackling villain type though. He probably has a not quite so evil plan. But usually in stories like this when a mortal messes around with ancient powers the mortal is screwed. Here’s another scenario that probably won’t happen: he’s jealous his brother is the father of the Avatar, so he’ll try to somehow steal the light spirit and give it to one of his kids (or himself).
When they talked about the convergence they made it sound like the two spirits were bound by some physical law to fight right then and there. No rain checks. So the whole business with opening the portal is unnecessary outside of story telling, right? Vaatu is gonna break out and find Korra no matter what. Or they’ll just teleport there or something, in which case Unalaq would need his own way in I guess.
The second fight will have to be different somehow than the one they already showed in the flashbacks.