So, the first 3 episodes of Season 3 aired Friday night. Anyone watch yet?
I think it’s a pretty good start. The story picks up not long after the end of season 2, and the people of Republic City are dealing with the consequences of Korra joining the physical world and the spirit world. I like how they acknowledge some of the “easy” options and subvert them, such as Korra trying that spirit-taming trick she learned last season on the vines, and it backfires. And how they set off thinking it will be easy to gather the new Airbenders together, and then no one wants to join them.
The new villains (the ones that were being held in the special prisons) look pretty badass, though it’s hard to imagine them being a bigger challenge than what Korra faced at the end of Season 2.
When Mako shows up at the beginning and he and Korra start an awkward conversation, Tenzin (who is standing next to Korra) makes a face and sticks out his tongue in disgust and slides out of frame.
When team Avatar is on their quest for new Airbenders, the map view shows little “avatars” (heh) for the airship and the faces of the travelers. As they fail time and time again to recruit anyone, their faces on the map get more and more frowny.
Apparently a bunch of Spanish episodes leaked awhile back, so you might want to be careful reading about Korra on other boards. Doesn’t seem like many people here care anymore, or maybe they missed that it was airing so soon.
Good start, though I’m mostly just interested in the villains and how their back story intertwines with the main cast (and probably those from ATLA).
That was a dramatic villain treadmill reset. Go from fighting the embodiment of darkness to a motorcycle gang. It’s nice to see Korra doing something morally gray to get what she wants, even if she didn’t seem to realize it ahead of time. Still, the basic premise of media like this is the world can be markedly improved if you just find the right people and beat the crap out of them. I wonder how the Avatar would handle a systematic or institutional problem. Iraq? Corporate shenanigans? Too messy. But they do have a “problem that can’t be solved with violence” plot point with the resurgence of Air Benders, so that’s cool.
What’s up with the Earth Queen? Is her head that far up her ass? Doesn’t she know that corrupt rulers tend to get dethroned when they mess around with the Avatar? The least she could do is treat Korra with respect so she’s less likely to suspect you’re bullshitting her. I guess Avatars have been killed or failed, so maybe she thinks her plan with the air benders is just so brilliant it can’t not work.
Funniest parts were the Densa and Eska scenes. “Why didn’t anyone tell us we have a secret prison we could have been throwing people into?”
This is the best Korra season so far unless they drop the ball in the second half, right?
Been some fun action/fight scenes. I loved the world building for the metal city. I loved what they did with the Beifong family drama, Toph’s hands off parenting due to her strict upraising, and the different ways the sisters reacted to it. Korra calling Lin a bitter old lonely women was kinda rough, if deserved. I was hoping Lin would get a nice hit on Suyin even in her weakened state, oh well.
The whole thing where Jinora and now Zaheer can find people if they just think about it really hard is kinda bullshit, but yanno, keeps the plot moving.
The Earth Queen ate Bosco! She’s more evil than the four bending bad guys put together.
All the little flying spirits are walking heart attacks. And the baby bison learning to fly, hnnng.
A couple funny scenes, mostly facial reactions. I think the best was the metal artist kid thinking his piece was improved after it got smashed into a wall.
Zaheer is one smooth operator. I wonder how many IQ points he’ll shed when he finally finds Korra.
So what do y’all make of its switch to streaming online only and off TV broadcast? Is it indeed part of a long term strategy for Nick as its creators stated?
Meanwhile some great eps! Personally I think Su Beifong has ties to the Red Lotus that date back to her days before foundng the city. Zaheer lost no IQ points and Korra still don’t have too many but is less dumb than she used to be. We’ll see more Zuko before we are done and a rematch between the Beifong sisters too I think.
Not sure suddenly yanking the show off the channel mid-season with almost no warning screams “long-term planning”.
The treatment of this show this season has just been bizarre. Nick ordered a third and fourth season, then started broadcasting the third season two episodes at a time with only a few days heads up, and with no option for streaming episodes. Then with even less warning, switched mid-season to streaming-only, one episode at a time.
It’d be kind of interesting to find out what the actual story is. But I feel pretty confident long-term planning is the least likely possibility.
My sense is that they had toyed around with long term plans dealing a show that was doing well online and not so well on the channel. First pass went to a funky release approach but when that, predictably to some of us, failed to help it build numbers, they without notice went back to that other idea of stream only. Something they long term want to do with some shows … even if they hadn’t been sure this would be the one to start it off.
I wonder if next book will go the Netflix route and release all at once for binge streaming?
+1. The original run still is better by virtue of the Avatar universe being shiny and new but this is about as good as it gets as far as Korra potential goes.
My guess has also to do with why they had not managed to make restraints strong enough to hold her in avatar state …
They had counted on the avatar state being focused on preventing the end of the cycle of avatars … the energy being used to fight the poison. Korra was instead focused on revenging what she had believed to be her father’s death and ignored the poison. She knows that she was more motivated by a personal thirst for revenge and was willing to sacrifice future avatars and the world’s balance if need be to get it. Yes, logically fighting the poison would have resulted in the end of the avatar cycle, but she is still dealiing with the awareness that she would have been willing to sacrifice the avatar cycle for revenge. She feels unworthy.
I dunno, binge watched the whole thing. I liked it, but thought the villains needed more development. They were also a bit similar to Amon, and their plan to kill the avatar cycle why not simply fight Korra and get her to go avatar state and kill her? How was stopping the cycle of rebirth going to eliminate nations and leaders anyway?
I think with more development, maybe some flashbacks, the Red Lotus would have been a better villain.
Also I thought the new crazy powers for everyone thing was going overboard, the lava bender should have only learned this new power when the spirit portal opened.
Also couldn’t Aang fly without a glider? He kind of manipulated the air around him as I recall, also Azula had fire jets that let her fly.
I prefered that the “villians” had backstories that were not all completely spelled out but felt very real and deep. My filling in the gaps does a better job than lighting up every shadowed space. Yes, I could imagine complete episodes devoted to each of their backstories and their being wonderful stories … but I believe we are better off hungering for those stories than having them spelled out for us. Just my taste I guess.
The similarity to Amon seemed to me to be exclusively the theme of the entire Korra saga: the claim that the world has moved past the avatar, that the avatar is on the wrong side of history. That similarity driven in during her poison induced hallucinations.
Crazy powers for everyone? Lava-bending is the only real new one and makes sense that it would apply like metal bending … something that a few can master and that some who could master it do not know they can.
Aang could ride on an air bubble just above the ground but not fly by air power without a glider. As a fire-bender he could do the blasts out of the feet flying but the deal with Zaheer was that only that one previous air-bender flew by air bending.
Well, I’m excited about it. I haven’t been keeping up. I watched the first few episodes recorded on my TIVO, then my TIVO died. Now I can watch a few more episodes online.
I don’t know if the episodes were online before since I lost interest. But this has renewed my interest some. Thanks for posting the announcement.
I read the comic where it was revealed what happened to Zuko’s mother. I believe at the end of that, Azula had escaped prison. After that, I have not found out.
I think it’s interesting the way they’re setting up this series as an antithesis of the previous one. In the first series, Aang was reluctant to be the Avatar that was desperately needed by the world. In this series, Korra is enthusiastic and eager to be the Avatar in a world that apparently does not need one. Each season has given a different reason why the Avatar concept may be outdated.
This is laid out heavily in the final scene, where the air benders decide to be nomadic and travel the world to try and balance things out. I think Korra’s sadness at the end is the realization that with the air benders doing her job, and her physically unable to do anything, she is no longer necessary in this world.
I did not need an elaborate backstory for each villain, but at least Zaheer’s motives and reasons needed elaboration. I get it he is an anarchist, but again how does killing the avatar for good stop nation states?! It would have also been cool had they revealed Amon was part of the Red Lotus, but with their capture he decided to take on Korra solo in the events of the first season.
I’m talking about Zaheer suddenly reaches the next level of airbending, levitation. Two earth benders are now lava benders, the young airbender(can’t remember her name) is a astral projector. It was a bit much(and yes I know her power appeared last season). I could buy that opening the spirit portals was creating new sub-bending types but they didn’t explicitly say it.
Was anyone else wondering why fire benders that can do electricity don’t ALWAYS use it against water benders? Instant KO!
The avatar strives for balance which is not consistent with anarchy and disorder. In practive that means keeping the nations all intact and in line. Any avatar will be a force against anarchy … unless they can be kidnapped as a baby and trained to think of anarchy as balance I guess.
I would think shooting electricity with water around is pretty dangerous/risky for the firebender a well.