forestofglory

I recently finished watching the fourth and final season of The Legend of Korra. Overall I enjoyed it a lot. I have many thoughts that I want share about it.


Spoilers

I’m not really sure how well Korra’s injury and recovery where handled. I liked that recovery was thing at all and I liked certain parts of the story line but there were things that gave me pause. My favorite part of that story line was the confrontation between Korra and Zaheer and his bit about acceptance of what had happened to her. But I really didn’t like Korra's line at the end about how she had to suffer to have compassion for others. Just ick! I’d like read some thought about this form people with disabilities.

Kuvera was good villain. I liked that she had straight forward goals (unite the Earth Kingdom) and straightforward means of trying to achieve them (military might). I also liked that she was character who put a lot of emphasis on personal loyalty, you could see how she was overdoing it and that was feeding her whole dictator deal. But she was really scary! I sometimes had trouble watching her because she reminded me too much of current events.

Toph showed up in this season! I’ve generally enjoyed getting to see characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender (AtLA) in Korra -- I think the show has struck a good balance between old and new characters. Toph seemed very much herself but older. I liked how the show handled her family and her relationships with them. When Lin was first introduced I was surprised that Toph had a daughter because she didn’t seem like someone who was interested in family life -- so I was glad when the show validated this by having her never married with two daughters who had different fathers, and complex imperfect relationships with both of them. I also liked getting to see her in action being badass. (I’m still annoyed about Katara despite Toph’s offhand remark about bad backs -- Katara fought so hard to learn to fight I don’t think she’s give it up that easily)

I’ve been hearing about Korra and Asami holding hands at the end of the show like was big deal for a while. But honestly there relationship just seemed really underdeveloped. I get that it was harder to get queer stuff into kids shows back in the day but I want them to interact more. I talked to a friend about this and they said that I’m just not trained to see relationships between women as having romantic connotations. So maybe it's that. However I would have liked to see more Asami in general. The show keeps referring to her as member of Team Avatar but she gets a lot less screen time than Mako and Bolin. However I did really like the story like about her father wanting to reconcile in this season.

I’m not really sure how I feel about Wu as a character. He’s maybe Jewish coded? And that made me a bit uncomfortable because he’s so often the butt of the joke. But I did like his overall character arc, where he’s clearly learning to be a better person. And I liked that he abdicated in favor of a more democratic system. I’m always pro more democracy in fantasy, since the genre seems far too found of monarchs.

A couple of thoughts about Korra overall: I was mostly happy with the variety of female characters in the show but as I said I wish Asami had gotten more screen time. The show did good job balancing characters from AtLA with the new characters. We got to see what many of or old favorites where up to now, and the characters felt appropriately powerful but they didn’t take over the story. I like stories that take place in the same world but at different points of time so really enjoyed the premise of Korra and mostly thought they did a good job showing how things had changed.

I also liked all the family in the show especially Tenzin and his siblings. (Come to think of it this season could have used a bit more Tenzin -- I would have liked more discussion of the new direction of the Air Nomads and cultural change over time.)

Even though I didn’t like Korra quite as much as I liked AtLA it was well worth watching, and I’m excited to have finally finished it. Now I can talk to more people about it!