The Hardship of The Legend of Korra
The sequel to The Last Airbender is darker and more personal than its predecessor.
How do we move forward? How do we overcome the pain and trauma in our minds? What does it mean to achieve what is expected of us, and what does it mean to fail?
What does it mean to let go?
I wrote about my first run through Avatar: The Last Airbender a couple of months ago. It’s my most-viewed column here on Where We Are. To make a long story short, I loved TLA. It’s a stunning achievement. My post focused on how its melancholy aspects made the whole thing sing, and at the end I noted that I was excited for the chance to finally watch its sequel series, The Legend of Korra, when it dropped on Netflix.
TLoK is both similar to and completely different from its predecessor. The world is bigger and more modern. The industrial revolution that was just beginning to sprout in TLA is now in full bloom. There are radios and telephones and cars. It’s also a meaner world. While technology has given the villains more ways to exact their will, they’re also more surgical and psychological in their attacks on the protagonists.
This is the same setting as TLA, but more interconnected and looming. Progress has been made, but at what cost?
The Last Airbender is a story about finding your place in the world. The Legend of Korra is a story about pain, and about family.
Our new Avatar is the titular Korra, a young woman from the Southern Water Tribe and daughter of the tribe’s chief. Her elemental powers come more naturally to her than they did to Aang. Korra’s also older than Aang was when we followed his journey. She wrestles with romantic insecurities on top of her day job of saving the world.
She goes to join Aang’s son Tenzin (a delightful J.K. Simmons) in the sprawling metropolis of Republic City, an Asian neo-steampunk take on New York. The soundtrack mixes in touches of swing and jazz, but with traditional Asian instruments as part of the arrangement. The setting is an inspired bit of world-building.
It’s in Republic City that she meets Tenzin’s busy little family of airbenders, and where she encounters her first foe.
It would have been easy to make Korra a simple ass-kicking hero. And she is, in fact, an ass-kicking hero. But Korra also takes more than her fair share of defeats. The messianic hero is quite fallible, and that fallibility eats at her. It’s those failures that help her grow as a person, but they come at a cost.
There are four seasons of TLoK. They each focus on the threat posed by a different villain. Korra eventually defeats them all, but the first three inflict grievous trauma upon her in the process. They strike at the heart of who she is, as the Avatar and as her father’s daughter. The first enemy, Amon, seeks to eliminate bending from the world. The second, her uncle Unalaq, tries to weaponize the spirits for conquest. The third, Zaheer, is an anarchist who destabilizes governments and wants to end the Avatar cycle by poisoning Korra with mercury. All three of them nearly kill her.
All three of them take something from Korra at the end of their conflicts, whether it be her bending, her connection to the spirits or her sense of security, that she must regain. Zaheer’s poison festers inside her and weakens both her body and her emotional stability. By the time we move on to season four, three years have gone by and Korra is a shell of her former self.
The last villain isn’t some scheming psychopath or spiritual monster. Kuvira is simply a fascist, a conquering warlord with little regard for anything or anyone. She defeats Korra with ease during their first encounter.
Korra must first grapple with the severe post-traumatic stress that she carries with her before she can be a savior and leader once again. The depiction of PTSD isn’t schlocky or played for cheap tension. Korra genuinely struggles with her mental health. It gets in the way of her physical recovery and causes her to lash out at those she cares for. She’s hounded by a shadowy version of her younger self. It’s only after she accepts what’s happened to her and confronts Zaheer that she’s able to come to the people’s aid once more. It’s one of the most honest depictions of trauma in media, to say nothing of in a YA series.
Korra is not the only character grappling with pain. Generations-deep pain is present in most of the major families introduced over the course of the narrative. But it is through family that the characters find peace and meaning.
Tenzin reunites with his siblings and makes amends over the favoritism Aang afforded to him. Yes, even the Avatar wasn't a perfect parent. The Beifong clan, Toph’s descendants, feature heavily and have it out with each other. Brothers Mako and Bolin butt heads, but rely on each other after growing up on the streets. Asami, the non-bender member of the new Team Avatar, has to grapple with the fact that her father aided Amon’s scheme. Korra herself has a complex relationship with her parents, and things go haywire when her uncle tries to take over the world.
Learning to love and to forgive is just as important a theme as all the super-powered fighting. These relationships are intricately realized, and when all is said and done it is in family that TLoK seeks refuge from pain.
Much like its predecessor, TLoK is a remarkably mature series. Yes, it’s a show for young people. There are fart jokes and comic relief characters. P.J. Byrne’s goofy Bolin can be a bit much at times, for instance. But even those elements can be turned on their head. Bolin, often the source of comic relief, starts the fourth season by eating up fascist propaganda and helping to spread Kuvira’s will. It’s a ballsy writing decision.
The show also doesn’t shy away from the fact that its protagonist is a woman. There’s plenty of critique of gender roles here, and also does right by Korra by not having her fall into a bland badass woman trope. She doesn’t defeat her opponents with girl power. She doesn’t shrug off slights. She’s vulnerable and human, and also can snap your neck with a flick of her wrist.
But like its protagonist, TLoK can at times stumble over itself. Series creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko have created a sprawling world in which to play, but the pacing can be inconsistent and certain characters feel like they’ve jumped in from other cartoons (looking at you, Varrick).
Their boldness works more often than not, and all in all Korra’s story is a triumph. DiMartino and Konietzko also deserve credit for the subtle romance between Korra and Asami that takes full bloom at the show’s end. It’s about as much of a queer narrative as you’d expect to show up on a mid-2010’s Nickelodeon show, but it’s a touching bit of representation that was apparently planned far in advance.
Korra is not a perfect person, and that’s the point. She stumbles and falls. She’s hurt. It is that pain that serves as her greatest adversary, rather than any of the human or supernatural villains. In that way, The Legend of Korra is a worthy successor to the genius of The Last Airbender. This a raw, human story. It’s a story that will make you laugh and bring tears to your eyes. It’s hard to watch The Legend of Korra and not get emotional.
Who are we when we fail?
We’re ourselves. That reality is hard to accept. Doing so can set us free.
Images via Nickelodeon