Begins next Friday, in an incredibly quick return from last season. This will be the last season. I can’t wait.
So … anyone watch it yet? Kuvira has become quite the bad ass in three years.
That she has. Been hearing the theory she’s funding the bandits bandied about to expedite her ascension. What are your thoughts?
The only part about Team Avatar being fractured that upsets me is the rift between Bolin and Opal. While I fear it’ll be a long time before Korra reunites with Asami, I know once Korra gets her head back together she’s making a bee line for her best friend. Got no qualms with Mako’s exile to Earth Emperor’s Guardian.
I liked the opener. It felt off that the bandit could best the two airbenders in mid flight - I would expect them to easily dispatch that guy.
The Earth Kingdom seems really screwed. They have the rising prince who is a doofus and Kuvira who seems like a fascist. They haven’t had really good luck with their form of government - maybe a new one would be in order.
And Korra getting beat by some random person - she’s really off her game. Hopefully she isn’t emo for much longer.
Stowed Bob, if the Kuvira is not minimally using the bandits who she forced to pledge loyalty to her in that way it would shock greatly. Again, this show has done a great job with moral complexities. Does the greater good of a united Earth kingdom justify such? Is her in control worse than the self centered boy king or anarchy? Like Bone states, weak doofus or fascist (but one who likely does intend to be a benign dictator) … who do you root for?
Second ep, Korra Alone - WOW! I don’t know where they are going with this plot-wise and I love that fact.
And the last reveal? I did not see that coming.
A whole episode about PTSD and physical therapy. You know, for kids.
Since this is the last season one would expect some big event. Is Kuvira running the bandits, being vaguely authoritarian, and trying to kill or kidnap Prince Doofus enough to make her some uber villain? I figure they writers will have to make her kick some metaphorical kittens. They haven’t exactly done gray villains since season 1. Maybe she’ll invade Republic City. Do something to the spirits maybe?
I’m not looking forward to the inevitable Korra/Mako hookup. I’m amused that the theoretical but realistically 0% potential for Korra/Asami has survived this long.
Wild prediction: Korra will end up being the last avatar. Jinora will do some out of nowhere spirit non-sense to help end the cycle.
Two of three villians were quite grey. Zaheer made some very cogent arguments against the system as it stands and expressed a reasonable anarchist argument. He only went into clear villianry when it was made apparent that his goals justified some means worse than taking out an evil queen. The other Red Lotus members had a chance to explain their motivations and earn some of our sympathy, for a bit too. Yes, Unalaq a bit less grey …
Today’s episode is up, and there hasn’t been discussion here for a few weeks. I like that this season is a bit more human scale, and a bit less dramatically overblown so far. The previous talk of a grey-scale villain is spot on. Kuvira is just powerful enough, and just believable enough, to be threatening but not ridiculous. Though the 200 foot tall monsters are never really brought out before the season finales, are they?
I was wondering if I was the only one still watching this!
Probably should spoiler about today’s for at least 1 day after release …
[spoiler]She becoming a bit more tipped into full blown villian now. Oh well.
Happy they came back to the vision of herself in avatar state blocking her. They couldn’t just let that drop. They need to resolve what that is about.
Zhu Li is too obviously not really betraying Varrick. (And as a pince nez wearer I love her glasses!) [/spoiler]
Oh well, it took til episode 11 for the 25 story robot to come out and play 
I have not watched the two part finale yet but I’m not liking this season, the rate of technological growth in the Avatar world was a bit hard to swallow before but now it has gone coo coo.
I was really hoping against hope Kuvira would be a reasonable grey anti-villain, but she isn’t only Hitler she is psychotic Hitler. She is so far into insane villain territory it is silly.
I thought a person who was angry at how badly the Avatar and the gang dropped the ball and allowed the largest country in the world to fall into chaos, while she is off finding herself like a kid before college would have been compelling enough. Sucks.
Yeah, kinda wishing that Kuvira had stayed… well, morally ambiguous. You know, guys, it’s enough for a villain to be wrong. If you built your protagonist right, you could have a legitimate conflict of interest with both sides having a real argument and have that be enough for people to disagree with and antagonize the “villain”. It would have been enough if Kuvira was a little too imperialistic, if she insisted on returning all former earth kingdom territory to the earth empire. That’s a goal which, while not necessarily good, is certainly something you can relate to. Maybe play up the angle that the earth kingdom has been stuck ruled by a corrupt, disgusting queen for the last while, and then fell into chaos with nobody else helping. Make it about nationalism, which, while not good, is at least something you can understand.
I mean, the fact that we’re acquainted with the leaders of Zhalfu and that they’re “good guys” is enough to make the idea of nationalizing the city unpalatable, even though at the end of the day it’s kind of silly to have an independent city-state in the center of your country and entirely reasonable to expect them to rejoin the country once the chaos is over. Especially if they’re technologically advanced and prosperous. That, on its own, would be enough to craft a compelling narrative. It would make Kuvira a believable antagonist with a realistic, reasonable agenda, and inserted some moral gray areas around the concept of nationalism vs. independence, and Kuvira’s role. It would also make Sue’s attempt to stop Kuvira another great grey area, where we get to question whether one of our “heroes” is doing the right thing. But no, it’s not, because we know that Kuvira is enslaving people and sending them to gulags.
Don’t make Kuvira into Hitler. I mean, for god’s sake. There’s not even a gradual drop - right off the bat, we’re confronted with Kuvira making “reeducation camps” and basically gulags. With manipulating the locals into joining her with underhanded force, rather than by offering them anything. Why, exactly, couldn’t the bandits at the start have legitimately targeted that village? Why, exactly, couldn’t the help offered have been genuine, albeit with a real hook? If your bad guy is literally Stalin, you fucked up. The fact that this would still be a realistic, engaging conflict if she didn’t kick the puppy at every occasion (in this last episode, the very last shred of her humanity just went up in smoke).
At least the bending doesn’t suck as much in these last few episodes. God, the fight scenes have been awful in this season. I even made a thread about it.
I mean, I still like the show. It’s a good show. The characters are still good. But christ on a bike Kuvira is such a waste of potential.
Now here’s some food for thought - we’ve had completely irredeemable bad guys before. Hell, in The Last Airbender, Sozen and Azula were both basically completely evil, genocidal sociopaths with no redeeming values. But they worked. And I can’t quite put my finger on why they work, but Kuvira feels so flat.
So who watched the two part finale?
Me, I think they played Kuvira right, except at the very end. She was no Hitler. Stalin or Putin maybe. Genocide was not her goal, just something she would commit to reach her goal. And blame the people who died for having made her do it.
Not too much of a stretch to think of rapid technologic growth with metal bending in your tool box.
And yeah I’d call that ending a Korra-Asami hook-up after all.
The last eps felt very rushed (other than the money saving best of one).
Sorry that the show is over.
I honestly didn’t think that Bryke had it in them to go with that for their endgame ship. I was impressed.
But that’s not the history of Republic City. The origin of the city was that Aang and Zuko literally lifted the city out of the Earth Kingdom and placed it there, as a neutral place compromising on returning land the Fire Nation occupied after the 100 year war. This was agreed to by the Earth King, Zuko, and Aang. It is silly to think that the Earth Kingdom had any remaining claim on the land.
I loved the finale, and really appreciate the series overall. This is a show from Nickelodean that had super strong female characters, whose gender really didn’t matter in the world the show created. It had characters of all different races, it dealt with politics, spirituality, family, and many eastern themes of balance. Most of our main characters lived, but some didn’t. And the Korrasami confirmation at the end - that treated the relationship of the two really well over the last 2-3 seasons. I would love to see more from this universe. I can think with the rich history they can tell many stories in the past and future if they wanted to.
I never really understood* why so many people were doubting/questioning the intent behind the final scene but, straight from the Word of God:
So, well, dude, um… there you have it.
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- I think I actually did understand why, but I’m new around here, and don’t want to be pointing fingers at people.
I’ve only seen that scene in isolation, but to me it did look like they intended them to be a couple, but put enough plausible deniability in there so they could go “of cooooourse noooot… >.>” if a Nick executive asked about it.
Giant robots.
Lasers.
Explosions.
Hot chicks fighting each other with kung-fu magic.
Lesbianism.
Well choreographed action scenes.
My god, I’ve never felt so pandered to. Or at least, my inner 13 year old. I approve.
They did a good job reincorporating Asami’s dad into the action, even if it was so he could be a sacrificial pawn. I thought they’d leave that thread dangling.
I don’t think I’ve seen much of that around here. In the larger fandom, it seems there was a significant chunk of people who were annoyed at people pining for Korrasami and told them that all the clues they were seeing were being taken out of context (“they’re just friends”) or that they were being the stereotypical creepy lesbian fetishistic dudebros*. Now it’s down to damage control. Some of them even feel like they were betrayed or the creators were pandering to tumblr shippers and the story wasn’t supposed to end like that.
Some other people didn’t follow the fandom or pick up any of the hints and were blind sided.
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- I’ll admit to this as far as S3 goes, but when the letter drama started in S4 I definitely raised an eyebrow and laughed my ass off. I thought it was mostly bait, but they never brought Mako back into the fold. They talked and apologized, but there weren’t any sparks.
Sorry for the double post.
The shipping drama seems to suck a lot of the oxygen out of the room. What do you guys think about the series as a whole now? My opinion hasn’t changed much. I think it’s amazing on technical aspects (animation, art, music) with some flawed writing, probably held back from what it could’ve been by Nick’s meddling all the way back in S1. I bet having to end the Amon arc so suddenly short circuited everything.
My biggest problem is with Korra. She doesn’t seem like a fully realized person, she kinda falls into the generic hero prototype. She had a cordial chemistry with most of her friends, even Asami, except maybe Bolin in S1. Besides fighting, what does she do for fun? She became a little bit more spiritual as the plot needed, but not much. She hardly seemed like a complete Avatar, as least compared to Aang. She’s feisty and prone to angry outbursts. Never really got that under control, or addressed it much outside the “be the leaf” sequence in S1.
Might be one of those cases feminists complain about where it could’ve been a guy, but wasn’t – they didn’t address feminine topics, as far as I can remember. I’d say she trends tomboy, but I can’t remember a lot of situations where it would be overtly demonstrated and informed her character (e.g. maybe Asami offers to take her shopping, or one of the guys talks about wanting to raise a family, or show her interacting with kids – show her rejecting or redefining what femininity means to her). Korra being a woman allowed them to make her more emotionally vulnerable at parts without the audience questioning her masculinity, especially in this last season – but then again, they made Aang pretty vulnerable too. Then again, he was a kid, and I remember a lot of “Aangst” jokes. I dunno.
Other than the Korra issue, I dig a lot of the secondary characters. I especially like how they handled the Beifong sisters, Varrick + Zhu Li, and Aang’s kids. There might’ve actually been too many characters, the focus was all over the place.
As much as I may grouse about this, it’s still a really solid show, and the last few episodes kinda made up for it. Kinda.
I think I would’ve agreed with you through Book 2 (which is something of a mess anyway), but I thought the writers did a lovely job rounding out Korra’s arc over the last two Books. The core of Korra’s arc isn’t terribly complex, but there’s power in that simplicity, I think. It’s a tale of a brash youth maturing into an empathetic adult (much the way Aang’s arc could be boiled down to the reverse - a gentle pacifist learning to wield his power for decisive action). In both cases, what really makes these well-worn arcs work is how they are fleshed out - their gradual development over a long period of time, and the little ways they advance the development of the characters without losing the essential qualities of their personalities that make them recognizably themselves. No “Dark Willow” flips here.
With respect to Korra, specifically, we’re introduced to her in Book 1 as the polar (no pun intended) opposite of Aang (“I’m the Avatar - you gotta deal with it!”). Korra revels in her power - she loves being the Avatar, loves fighting, and takes action without forethought. The show takes some effort to show the positives and negatives of her attitude in Books 1 and 2 (the latter really emphasizing the negatives, as her hotheadedness allows her to be taken advantage of by Unalaq). By Book 3, we see a noticeably matured, less angry, and less instinctual Korra, who talks scared airbenders down from bridges and teaches Opal her first airbending forms. Although even this Korra can lose her temper at a moment’s notice, as we see in her interactions with Napoleon Dynamite and Lin Beifong. But she’s made substantial progress, symbolized most clearly in her relationship with Tenzin, which is never stronger than it is in this season (Tenzin’s own arc is worth discussing on its own, but I’ll leave that for a later post).
Book 4 sees Korra struggling with PTSD - which, as a side note, felt revolutionary to me almost even more than THAT ENDING (when was the last time an ostensible children’s show spent almost an entire season exploring a character’s recovery from psychological and physical trauma)? Of particular note during this recovery for Korra’s larger arc is the scene in which Toph points out that Korra’s enemies have all had reasonable goals and ideals, undercut by their fanaticism and the extreme lengths to which they are willing to go. This scene doesn’t really address Korra’s PTSD issues so much as her underlying character flaw - her hotheaded, us versus them approach to life has thrown her out of balance almost as much as her enemies.
Korra’s final confrontation with Kuvira is the culmination of this arc - not an epic battle, but a quiet conversation. With the beautiful backdrop of the spirit world behind them, she expresses empathy and compassion for Kuvira. Whereas Aang, the gentle airbender, defeated Ozai by embracing the power of the Avatar state, Korra, the angry young woman for whom firebending came as naturally as breathing, “defeats” Kuvira by convincing her to surrender.
I don’t know about you, but that felt like monumental progress to me.
As you noted, given that the same writers created Aang, the least traditionally masculine hero I can think of, I doubt they were terribly concerned about people questioning Korra’s vulnerability. That said, I don’t think there was any particular onus on the writers to address “feminine” topics with Korra - it was clear from the outset that they were more interested in subverting traditional gender roles than fulfilling them. Something obviously extended to a whole new (and, IMO, wonderful) level with the Korrasami ending.
Oh yeah. Korra featured one of the deepest stables of secondary characters I can remember on a scifi/fantasy series (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the closest that comes to mind right now). Varrick and Zhu Li were fantabulously fun, and I adored the family dynamics in both Aang’s and Toph’s descendents. Tenzin, Lin, and Suyin may be my favorite characters in the series when all is said and done.