Legend of Korra - A New Season Begins

A "first impressions" of Legend of Korra - Book 3: Change...

Legend of Korra’s latest season, Book 3: Change, premiered just this past weekend. And while I had intended to post a “speculations and predictions” post last week, I failed to do so because time got away from me and I didn’t really like what I had down. But I want to post something Korra-related anyway because it’s a great show and the new season is shaping up to be interesting. So let’s talk in detail about what happens. I’ll bold or italicize any text that gives away spoilers (can’t guarantee I’ll remember that the whole way through) but let’s see where we go.

The new season takes place literally only a couple weeks after the events of the previous season (as Korra herself says in an argument with the President of Republic City. Since then, the world has seen some significant changes and Korra is having to deal with that while the public is slowly losing trust in their Avatar to “fix” their “problems”. What problems you might ask? The spirit world has basically merged with the physical world and this is causing some unusual side-effects around the world.

First, and foremost, is that we have strange new vegetation growing all over Republic City (vines, trees, etc). Basically, a new wilds like back from when the first Avatar was alive. This is a massive inconvenience for the people of Republic City and Korra (who struggles to figure out a solution to this issue). Another strange new side-effect, seemingly random people from around the world are gaining the ability to airbend (people with no ability to bend previously, this is not in addition to already existing bending powers). Among these include out favorite uncle, Bumi.

Due to various disagreements, Korra is basically strong-armed into leaving Republic City but uses this as an opportunity to help rebuild the Air Nation with Tenzin (the way they set out to make the Air Nomad lifestyle seem appealing is actually pretty hilarious). Doing so introduces us to a new character, Kai, who turns out to be a thief who has just gained the ability to Airbend. Despite his shady past, Korra and Tenzin bring him along anyway because they’re desperate for people at this point.

But this opens up a new alternate plot as well since random people are now gaining the ability to Airbend. It isn’t just good people, but some notoriously bad people as well. A criminal named Zaheer is introduced who has a vendetta against both the Order of the White Lotus and the Avatar, but we don’t know why just yet. His story involves him (thus far) freeing various associates to organize a gang to hunt and kill the Avatar. Ironically (according to the aged Fire Lord Zuko) one of these four is a sister to a man he had hired to kill the Avatar in his youth (remember Combustion Man?). More on this in a bit. We’ll call this “Plotline C” to avoid spoilers in later parts of this post.

If that wasn’t enough to keep the Avatar busy, we also FINALLY LEAVE REPUBLIC CITY and visit OTHER AREAS AROUND THE WORLD! I’ve been wanting this for something like two seasons now and it’s about time we finally see how the rest of the world has changed. Where do we go? Ba Sing Se, home of the Earth Nation Queen (daughter of the former King from Last Airbender). With her being his daughter, you’d think that things would be just fine in Ba Sing Se and that Team Avatar could find the reported Airbenders with ease. Wrong. As it turns out, the Earth Queen (can we call her Mother Earth?) is a lot more like Long Feng than her father as she secretly orders the Dai Li to obtain the new Airbenders for her army against their will, lives off taxes in a style befitting an more sinister monarch, and rules more with an iron fist than with kindness. She is not a good person in any sense of the word, and it seems like there are plenty in Ba Sing Se that either want to believe otherwise or have been brainwashed into doing so (the latter wouldn’t surprise me). We’ll call this “Plotline D” to avoid spoilers later in the post.

So we have a lot going on and this is only on our third episode thus far. I guess now it’s review / first impressions time. My overall assessment is I really like all the different ideas at work here because each individual plot on its own is very interesting and I certainly WANT to see more. But I’m also under the impression this may be too much plot for the amount of time this show gets to air. We only have 22 minute long episodes and a season averages about 20 episodes (at best) meaning that we have to cram these four different, yet connected, plots together in a total runtime of approximately 440. Certainly more possible than it was for the Last Airbender movie, but this all comes off as more complicated than the first season of Airbender.

In short, while everything looks and sounds cool and keeps me interested, I think Korra might be juggling too many different ideas at once and rather than slow down for character development and focus on one idea at a time, we’re aiming for more of a kitchen-sink approach to storytelling. Fuck pacing and characters when we could just throw all of our best ideas at the wall at once and hope that enough sticks to make a coherent narrative worth 440 minutes of everyone’s time. Much to the credit of the writers and creators of this show, I can’t think of anyone with the talent to pull this off as effectively as them, but this might be much, even for their skills.

If I were directing this or in charge of this production, a few suggestions or ideas I might incorporate would be have all of “Plotline C” be a separate mini-series in between seasons. The plot of that is good enough on its own with its own set of characters that we can introduce these new villains in their own maybe 5-minute webisodes to promote the show without taking away from the main-shows airtime. Then end this mini-series with the last prisoner escaping and their hunt for the Avatar begins (because you know she’ll escape or even having this plotline would be pointless. Plus think of the fanservice for some of the characters involved in this that haven’t been on the show until this season. Not a bad idea to help narrow the show’s focus.

But I still like a lot of what’s happening here. Of the new characters, Zaheer, the Earth Queen, and Kai are all interesting, but there are likely to be more new characters and we are only just getting started on the story at this point in time, so we’ll also be seeing more FROM these characters as well.

The standout of the season thus far is Uncle Bumi, who is just gained Airbending himself and his initial reaction to it is hysterical. But I should also point out that this season is working to build the Asami relationship with Korra, which has been long overdue since their only connection is being ex-girlfriends of Mako (the least interesting character in the group). Making them friends who actively antagonize Mako in their spare time is something I can get behind because it makes all of them just that much more interesting.

The supporting characters (Mako and Bolin for example) also have their own subplots taking place that introduce new characters and give us an interesting breaking from the main storyline. But I won’t go into too many details because they’re not AS important, and because I want to save SOME surprises for when people inevitably watch the show. Consider me sold on the new season, but I’m still reserving judgment to see how long this season can actually juggling all these different ideas. If they pull it off right, more power to them. If not, I won’t brag for calling it, but I’ll definitely be around to pick up the pieces and point out where it all started to go wrong.

Coming soon: Review of “Rogue Legacy”, Review of “Transistor”, Review of “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”, a personal post or two, and maybe some game or movie discussions of people are interested. Heavily considering a character digression in the near future because I have some ideas of who to go over. We’ll see what comes up. See ya next time.