Oh, straight up: spoilers.
This is a “big moments” finale, but a lot of little elements pepper these two episodes as well. Grey DeLisle is all up and down it as the scorpion-spider-angler spirit and with her silliest voice as the memorable spirit mushroom. She’s not the only old school voice: we’ve got a little of both Irohs, and Jason Isaacs shows up as Zhao the Moon Slayer! The new guys are on point as well. And is it just me or is Bolin like the Chaotic Good version of the normally Chaotic Neutral Archer? I actually didn’t mind his romance wrap up; I thought it provided closure and made the “dynamic” between Bolin and Eska work, at the end. Similarly, I’m not mad at Mako or Korra for the triangle—amnesia, end of the world, emotional cowardice, I believe all their drama. Asami gets the short end of the stick though; dear Book Three: be all about Asami Sato, okay? Pema and the airbending kids are cute, cheering for giant monster battles and telling Saint Jinora to be careful. Then there are…bigger discussions.
I am one for three now on my big predictions. I thought Koh would be behind Amon, and I was wrong. I said Korra would open the Spirit Portals and make everything Ghibli Time, I was right! I am pretty happy to see that; with the increasing industrialization of the world, the addition of commonplace spirits adds a weird twist of the otherworldly, a new wrinkle into the complexity of the story. It seriously is a new spiritual age; this is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius and all that. The stars were right, the planets literally aligned, and the Avatar reunited the physical and the spiritual world after a great spiritual battle fought in the real world. My last prediction? It isn’t true—yet—but I think it will be. By the time Korra’s tale ends, I predict she will merge with Vaatu. I think Korra will put Raava and Vaatu back together in another season finale (or even the series finale).
I can’t help but wonder if the story of Korra and Amon was originally sketched out—even in the most vague terms, as a casual what if?—to be longer than one Book? What if the reason Unalaq is a waterbender—another waterbender after the last two bad guys being waterbenders—is because it was supposed to be Amon? It would have been Amon versus Tarrlok as brother against brother; it would have been Amon taking the Spirit Portals, and it would have been Amon merging with Vaatu. With the rather definitive ending of Book One, of course that was scrapped, and it became “Korra’s dad and his brother! Yeah!” Which is fine; tell a new story. I just can’t help but wonder if there is an older skeleton of an idea underneath it. You know, underneath the Resident Evil tentacle-head monster that Unalaq becomes.
Then I think of other good Anti-Avatars. Amon would be a great Dark Avatar; I’d actually be okay with a whole imaginary third season of Amon as the Anti-Avatar, spreading his message of revolution, of uprising and civil war, against Korra as the Avatar, with the four nations rallying and trying to restore balance to the world. Or in a wild dream, Azula as the Anti-Avatar, older, but like Grey DeLisle’s Ice Queen in Rule 63 Adventure Time—a cackling witch. Hey, there was that firebending old lady in the crystal caves we all had theories about; just sayin’. I’m dreaming too big, I know. I’d like to have see Amon wavering back and forth between moral greys, telling an ethically complex story. I am happy with what we get, though, because the change to come at the end of the episode is a big enough risk, a story that doesn’t need more distractions. There is enough going on that you don’t need to make things crazier; it is plenty crazy.
I’d like to see Korra get her past lives back. Or, if not her, then the next Avatar, at least. I understand the need for it. Getting out from under the shadow of the old show, finding your own paths, making the big plays… Ah! you cry. But I thought we didn’t need any more weird twists, they’d just be distractions from the real story! You just said that!—but the reincarnation cycle is a fascinating and integral part of the Avatar mythos. And a little fan service never hurt nobody. Send Jinora and Ikki on a spirit quest, have them search in the spirit world for Aang and Roku and Kyoshi! That would be a great arc—reincarnation matters to the story, I think. It is a good tool, and I understand putting it away, but put it in the drawer, don’t just throw it out. Or then—hey, maybe you do seem to close that door, maybe the next Avatar has to go on a spirit quest to get in touch with Korra… oh, I’m all a-flutter. So many notions!
What do we learn? Well, at least, what can we speculate. Unalaq uses “vines” and dark spirit energy and waterbending as the Dark Avatar, so it looks like the use of all four elements is in fact unique to the Avatar, thanks to Wan. I didn’t see Korra bend at all after Raava was pulled out of her, until she waterbends to “spiritbend” the merged Unalaq and Raava. After the big “Bohr atomic model” four element bending—the series short hand for “going all out”—the absence seems emphasized. But then, the climax was about Korra, not Avatar Korra. We see that the Avatar—at least—can go to a cosmic place and merge with their primal divine spirit self, because we see Korra do it just as Aang did. Aang became a Miyazaki Godzilla, Unalaq became a Devil Ultraman, and Korra became…well, without Raava or Vaatu to add otherworldly elements, Korra became a giant blue Korra. We’ve got Spider-Lin, WolverLin, Iroh Man and now Super Korra, flying through the Southern Lights. Sitting beneath the Tree of Time like Odin on Yggdrasil, or Buddha under the Bodhi Tree.
Speaking of blue people, I was really concerned for Jinora going Obi-Wan blue ghost or pulling a Princess Yue, especially when she zapped out of being…then I remembered that she wasn’t physically there, she was astral projecting. What did Jinora do? I hope we get to see later, like we caught up with “Appa’s Lost Days.” I am hoping that there will be consequences. Did she bargain with Koh? With Wan Shi Tong? Korra and Jinora aren’t the only ones on a spiritual quest, either; Tenzin gets over himself. That is the ultimate quest, along with Korra’s quest to grow up—which Tenzin can now help her do. Tenzin and Korra’s relationship is the core of Book One and really the backbone of Book Two, as well. Can’t wait to see what it is like in Book Three.
Mordicai Knode is ready for Book Three: Change now, thank you. His Twitter and Tumblr are ready too.
I couldn’t find a good .gif of Super Korra flying through the cosmic aether of the Southern Lights but I wanted to.
The amount symbology in the last episodes was great, and my favorite element, as the spirit world is precisely the place to employ it. One more reason to hate Unalaq was seeing where he sent Jinora… that place is BRUTAL, and the fact that she managed to hold on for so long where both his aunt and uncle succumbed within minutes speaks volumes of her spiritual strength and willpower… but it was still heartbreaking to see her kneeling motionless, knowing she was fending off despair. Tenzin did an incredible job on raising her, and calling her Saint Jinora is not an understatement AT ALL.
The Buddha was the first thing that came to mind when Korra sat inside the tree, and then with Tenzin’s explanation it made absolute, perfect sense that a tree growing smack in the middle of the portals could be nothing else than the World Tree.
Hooowwever, I’m of the thought that keeping the portals open is a terrible idea. The spirits are generally douchebags where mortals are concerned, and things weren’t exactly happy for the little guy during Wan’s time when spirits and mortals interacted freely. Mortals now have the edge with a proliferation of benders, but that brings back the Equalists’ point: benders are privileged. However, manifested spirits are different from spirits who traveled through the portals, and technology is advanced enough that mortals have weaponry to hurt spirits that try to bully mortals in their own turf: the physical world.
What Korra did was return the world to Mythic Time, and Mythic Time is the time of heroes and demigods; ordinary mortals get the short end of the stick during Mythic Times, so Book 3 has a lot to show and develop regarding how things progress.
My #1 concern moving into Book Three is that they may have shot themselves in the foot with Vaatu.
He really should have been the endgame and the final villain of the series.
But by introducing the Avatar Equivalent of Lucifer, the team is facing the same problem Buffy faced with the post-Glory villains: How do you top a god of evil?
I was pretty satisfied with the wrap-up. The plotline in Republic City — chiefly concerning Mako, Bolin, Asami, and Varrick — got tied off in an awful quick hurry and all thanks to Bolin not blowing it ENTIRELY at the 11th hour (but sold awful well by a great fight scene.) I was definitely expecting their C-plot to meet up with the A-plot (Korra) after the B-plot (Tenzin) did, but instead it just sort of… Ends, freeing Our Heroes to get in line with the last cycle of episodes.
Which is cool. Not everything in your story needs to have direct bearing on the finale, but I was surprised that more of the things that went down in Republic City didn’t influence the finale. It ultimately doesn’t matter whether or not Republic City gets involved in the war. Varrick’s battleship is only tangentially a factor in final conflict. It was fun and shed a lot of light on the world of Republic City and the non-Avatar parts of Team Avatar, but it really worked out in the end to just be something to keep those characters busy while Korra went on her spirit quest, wasn’t it?
Like I said before, though, the Bolin fight scene sells it hard enough that I don’t really mind much.
The most interesting thing from a production standpoint is that this last cycle of episodes was produced by the USUAL animation studio, the ones behind all of Book One, Studio Mir. The first half of the season, up until A New Spiritual Age, not counting the Wan flashbacks, are some other guys called Studio Pierrot. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that basically everything about the show hits its groove at the same time.
2. Al-X
I agree on the Spirit World being the right place for it: I’m a Dungeon Master (if you didn’t know) & I run a pretty “low magic” setting, but if the end up in a soft spot, or hallucinating, or whatever? I take that as an excuse to cut loose & go nuts. Same logic here.
I don’t know that I agree that it is a bad idea! I mean, it remains to be seen how the series will deal with the “rules” of spirits; I think that the common person may easily find they have more in common with spirits than either spirits or them have in common with benders (for instance) or spirits might provide a non-financial opportunity for people in poverty in a way technology doesn’t…I don’t know, but it does mean change, & change can be good.
3. James E
Well, Vaatu is “gone” in the loosest sense of the word; I mean, Jinora showed up & found Raava, yeah? I think, like I said, that we haven’t seen that last of that Evil Kite.
Anyhow, how to up the stakes? Plenty of options. Make it more personal, for one thing. Make the stakes smaller. Make the next fight one that can’t be won with punching or bending or blue kaiju. Or…well, I guess my point is I don’t need a “big bad” every season. I mean, conflict, yes, antagonists, yes, but there is plenty to see yet.
4. J. Mccaffery
Yeah, that fight scene really made the implausible chain of coincidences & easy resolution go down easy. A spoonful of sugar…
I don’t think the story over-delayed in Republic City, but I think it…was beside the point. Like, yeah, you don’t get a lot of Lin this season, sorry, she has a job! & yes, Varrick is a wrinkle, they smooth him out & get a ship in time to go…well, move from plot to plot!
Mir rules; these episodes look great. That said, I don’t buy the oft-repeated grumblings about Studio Pierrot– their stuff looks dang good & especially when you compare it to old Avatar episodes.
I’m basing my impression on how spirits have been portrayed in the Korraverse… they are fiercely territorial, mostly vain, and most don’t have a high opinion of humans, when they are not openly predatory. They also on average have powers that humans don’t have, other than benders, and are quite willing to use them to play pranks or cause harm.
I do agree that change is good, and maybe a new spirit+tech era will create a wonderfully weird world in Book 3, but there are risks that things can go on as in Exalted, where there’s prosperity but at the cost of having a supernatural ruling caste (the main peeve of the Equalists), or that they could go like in the Bas-Lag books, where the dominance of technology on the supernatural creates an entirely corrupt system. I doubt the latter will happen, Korra still being aimed at kids, but it’s still fun to speculate. :)
It’s not made explicit, but I think we’ll start next season learning that Korra’s already merged with Vaatu. The show made it explicit he can’t be destroyed anymore than Raava can, and where did Raava go when she was “destroyed”? Inside Vaatu.
I’m satisfied with the series overall, but then I always have been.
I like that the finale became more about Korra than Avatar Korra. While the finale episode of A:TLA was titled Avatar Aang, it was really about Aang and his values that led to the positive resolution of the Hundred Years War. With Korra disconnected from her Avatar Spirit, it was all about her and what she could bring.
I like the opening of the Spirit Portals. It feels like an imbalance has been addressed. I disagree with Al X that this means sucky times for the average folks. I think we will find that average folks are more than capable of handling the spirits, case in point Bumi. He’s Aang’s only child that wasn’t a bender, but he does seem to have an affinity for the spirits.
I can’t believe they got Jason Isaacs back, I thought they were just using some old voice files of Zhao. The mushroom was HILARIOUS.
6. Mordicai
A lot of the talk of characters being “off-model” (this came up a lot in regards to Asami in particular) didn’t really hit me — maybe I lack the eye for that kind of detail — but I was definitely distracted a few times by scenes of talking heads (the entire frame static except for faces talking in time to dialogue).
One thing I am pleased with is the show’s continuing prudence when it comes to using characters from The Last Airbender and their immediate descendants. The show’s premise is that Tenzin and Team Avatar are the principal cast– so I salute its really conservative deployment of Lin and Iroh the younger in this season. No cheesy appearances by Sokka’s kids or Suki’s kids or whoever. And somebody deserves a medal for resisting the temptation to make Azula the lead Fire Sage. Big ups to the Uncle Iroh voice actor for continuing to NOT oversell a respectful impression of Mako, too.
I think the idea is that Vaatu is dissipated and won’t reform for 10,000 years. After all, it’s the converse of what Vaatu intended to do to Raava, and we were told that it would lead to 10,000 years of darkness and chaos before Raava would have a chance to rally back. So I think Vaatu is effectively gone for good on a human timescale. True, Jinora was somehow able to reassemble the dissipated Raava, so some other entity might be able to do the same with Vaatu, but I don’t think that’s likely. After all, the Convergence was still going on when Jinora did that, so matters were still up in the air; the balance of the next cosmic cycle hadn’t been settled yet, so things were still sufficiently in flux that the outcome could be reversed. But now the Convergence is over, the decision has been made, and the spiritual balance of the universe for the next ten millennia has been established. That’s the cosmic timescale on which these matters operate. I don’t think it makes sense to expect that to be reversed a mere year or two later, the blink of an eye on a cosmic scale. Vaatu’s next chance won’t come for another hundred centuries.
Also, since the theme of the finale was about embracing one’s own identity and not being defined by one’s predecessors any longer, I think it would undermine that to restore Korra’s links with the past. So I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
@2: Well, the humans in Wan’s time were pretty rotten to the spirits too. So we can’t really say that one side is intrinsically worse than the other. It’ll be Korra’s job to keep the peace between the two populations.
@8: As I saw it, Raava didn’t go inside Vaatu; she was scattered to the winds, then Spirit-Jinora somehow drew her fragments back together and planted the seed of her inside Vaatu/Unalaq, perhaps to draw on some kind of spirit energy within him that was necessary to fully reconstitute her; and then Spirit-Korra drew her out of Vaatu/Unalaq and re-merged with her.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the finale while watching it, there were a LOT of things that didn’t sit well with me and prevent me from saying that Season 2 on the whole was good. Most of these issues are things from previous episodes that aren’t adressed properly, some are things only connected to the finale
These are the major issues for me (no real particular order):
1) Obviously Unalaq and Vaatu just being big bad evil. It’s just too one-dimensional for me. It’s especially weird that they used the yin-yang-symbol for the plane in the spirit world, when that is exactly not bad and good, but just two generally opposing forces.
2) The resolution to Bolin’s and Eska’s relationship was a cheap cop-out from the corner they’ve written themselves into. It’s perfectly possible to make fun of unfunny things – when it’s clear that in reality, those things are very serious. This was not the case here, the forced relationship was played for nothing more than cheap gags.
3)In extension, the whole progression (or rather, lack of one) of Bolin was disappointing. Nothing happened here, he just suddenly reverted back to Season 1 Bolin. Boooh.
4)The president’s decision to keep the Army at republic City didn’t make any sense and felt like it happened because the plot needed it to.
5) Jinora felt too much like a Deus Ex Machina…I hope we get some kind of explanation what she did, how she was able to do it, but I doubt it
6)It didn’t really feel likely for Korra to be able to defeat Vaatu just with energybending…okay, we don’t know much about it and it could be so powerful that even a normal person (like Korra was at the time) can use it to defeat powerful spirits, but eh…also, why did it have to be Korra to do it? Sure, because she’s the hero…but anyone else should have been able to learn energybending as well, shouldn’t they?
7)Also, on the whole season 2 delivers a lot of lore about the universe of LoK and AtlA that wasn’t even hinted at before and in some cases almost collides with the lore we have; it feels quite disjointed to me. The portals we’ve never heard of before, Raava and Vaatu, extensive energybending (and no energybending when all those lion turtles were still around?)
As a side note, it only makes sense for the Dark Avatar only to possess waterbending, as Raava had to get all four elements from the Lion turtles and could just save it, which Vaatu didn’t do)
That’s all I can think of right now :P
@10, But Korra was looking for Raava there before Jinora came back. IDK what Jinora did exactly, but I don’t think she reconstituted Raava.
11. Jineapple
Agreed, too “good/evil.” Which is why I think it wasn’t supposed to be, or if it was, that it could have been better by not being so. Making Unalaq be like “yes it will be an age of darkness but it will be an age of balance” wouldn’t have been hard.
I don’t mind the cheap exit on Boleska. I minded the problematic portrayals in the past, though.
Vaatu and Raava’s next battle is in 10,000 years but they’re rather hazy on how long it takes them to split apart from each other in the meantime. It’s quite believable that it only takes half that time for the previous loser to be reborn then spend the second half building up their strength until harmonic convergance.
It’s like the Calm in Final Fantasy X. Sin is defeated and the Calm arrives but it only lasts a few years at most before Sin is reborn, then it may take centuries before Sin is defeated again to bring the next Calm.
When Korra announced she was going to leave the spirit portals open, my immediate thought was, ‘And you thought Lin Beifong was cranky with you for starting a war …’ Lin is going to be so impressed by having her city overrun with spirits.
My take on Jinora’s contribution is that she’s still better with the peace and light aspects than Korra is. Despite her experiences as a child, Korra went right back to kicking spirit butt, which meant that Unalaq/Vaatu could hide Raava from her and nearly succeeded in overwhelming her. Then Jinora showed up with her portion of peace and light, freed Korra, allowed her to find Raava again, and enabled her to find her balance and disperse Unalaq/Vaatu. Korra is learning, as her final words to Unalaq/Vaatu showed. I’m quite happy with Korra taking time to fully get the hang of the gentler path, since one of the things that was convincing about Avatar was just how twisty Zuko’s path was.
I decided that Iroh belongs in this series as an anti-Unalaq – both were leaders in the material world, both were intensely spiritually aware, but Iroh renounced the material world for spiritual wisdom, and Unalaq gave up wisdom for power.
But what is it about having the Avatar born into an element that makes the leaders go power mad?? Kyoshi – Chin the Conquerer; Roku – Sozin, Azulon, Ozai and Azula; Korra – Unalaq, Amon, Tarlock, Varrick. Maybe if Aang had not wound up in his iceberg, the Airbenders would have tried to conquer the world.
As much as I enjoyed watching the ending, I found it amusing that in retrospect the thing that this finale reminds me most of is Axe Cop. So many things happen in such rapid succession without any sort of explanation that it almost brings to mind a precocious six year old on a couch shouting, “And then the bad guy gets all big, and he stomps some boats. And so Korra gets big too, and they wrestle each other! Then Korra is losing, so Jinora glows and Korra wins! Yay!”
Okay, here we go.
Love the spirit mushroom. Really. Just love it. I could go on forever about how cool that spirit mushroom is. I won’t, but I could.
While it’s nice to know what became of Zhao, it had a rather unfortunate side affect for me, in that it clearly showcased how Unalaq was not even remotely as interesting as a villian as Zhao was. It really brought home just how flat, one diminsional, and completely without any sort of reason Unalaq was. At least Zhao had a reason and a story for who he was and what he was doing. Unalaq was just evil so they could have someone be evil. Not to mention so someone could become a giant… thingy… or something. I’m not real clear on what happened there, actually.
Did I mention how awesome that spirit mushroom was?
Tenzin’s revelation in the fog, that I bought. It was sad, beautiful, and meaningful. I loved that.
Not as much as the spirit mushroom, mind you, but still.
Bolin, Mako, Asami, the twins… showed up. That was nice.
They weren’t as engaging as the spirit mushroom, if I must say.
Korra. I love Korra. I really do. But, I’m conflicted over giant blue Korra duking it out Godzilla style in Tokyo Republic Bay. Very conflicted.
It was just so overblown. Over done. It seemed silly and like fan fiction rather than the actual show. I know that probably won’t be a popular opinion, but it really was how it struck me.
If only they had spent more time with the spirit mushroom. That thing was so cool.
We did see Korra use bending without Raava: she and Tenzin both airbend to jump up to the hollow in the Tree of Time. That seems to be the only instance, but it does suggest that she could still bend all four elements.
I would assume that Unalaq/Vaatu had the ability to bend all four elements, but not the knowledge of how to do it.
i HATED seeing all the past Avatars vanish. i had hoped she would manage to save a few or at least Wan. idk thats just me tho. i hate when im reading a book and a very ancient immortal character dies. all that wisdom lost. sad face.
i was confused about what Korra did to the Vaatu/Unalaq hybrid tho. i thought she destroyed him but then why didnt he come out of Korra/Raava’s chest the way Raava came out of Unalaq/Vaatu’s?
@18: Wan got the ability to bend the other elements via the Lion Turtles, who used Raava as a medium to transfer the extra elements.
Unalaq, however, only had waterbending, and he and Vaatu didn’t stop by any Lion Turtles to pick up any additional elements, so Vaatu/Unalaq were limited only to waterbending and laserbeams.
Also note that even the Avatar has to learn how to bend other elements. Unalaq didn’t have the benefit of training.
And Raava didn’t need to be reconstituted; she was always inside Vaatu, just as Vaatu always exists within Raava. That is the nature of their duality –like the yin/yang mandala, there is darkness within the light as there is light within the darkness.
1) The finale seemed very rushed. Unalaq defeated Korra way too quickly and easily. Then it only took Korra, who is weak in spirit power, about 10 seconds to enter Titan mode (apparently that’s a thing now?). Then a little bit of wrestling and suddenly Vaatu was dissipated…
2) The fact that Avatars host Raava is what allows them to bend all the elements right? So once Unalaq extracts Raava, Korra should either be a non-bender or a normal water bender. Yet when Tenzin leads her to the Tree of Time, she appeared to air bend herself into the tree.
3) Korra dissipated Vaatu’s essense, but she didn’t imprison him, so does this mean that at that moment a new “Dark Avatar” was born? It would be cool if season 4 was full of battles between two fully realized Avatars.
I was trying to remember if Pema had her baby already, but unfortunately she did. How awesome would it be if Tenzin’s son was the new Dark Avatar?
@20
Laserbeams tho!
Can someone explain the Korrazilla to me? How is that possible? She had lost her conection to Rava and all past avatars. The image with the huge cosmic Korra, was the same used in TLA for Aang to master the avatar state, but Korra was not the Avatar any longer. Is she secretely a care-bear and she just needs to believe in herself to do anything? I was very disappointed with this. Also, why destroy the connection with the past lives? This was one of the more interesting apects of being the Avatar.
@24, To master the Avatar State, Aang had to center himself spiritually. The Cosmic Aang you saw in ATLA had literally NOTHING to do with Aang being Avatar, it was HIS OWN spiritual self, that needed to be centered to control the Avatar State. So Korra had to connect with HER OWN spiritual self to face off with Vaatulaq.
I liked Korra getting cut off from her past selves, it was becoming a crutch. They avoided this most of the first season by having Korra be spiritually inept and unable to connect with them. But they were a becoming a factor the writers were relying on WAY TOO MUCH for exposition, so I’m glad they’ve removed the temptation.
I’ll state again, having seen this episode, that I still disagree with the assertion that Unalaq was just “boring evil”. He did evil things, but he had clear motivations that were not just “I wanna be evil”, motivations that were even understandable, as Korra did at the end when she decided to keep the portals open.
If I have one disappointment, it’s that nothing was done about the revelation that Korra could control the outlook of the spirits with her own. I kept expecting for her to calm all the attacking spirits down, like she did in the spirit world, but they ignored that possibility.
@26. In TLA, the Guru explicitly says that those steps are required to master the Avatar state. The “cosmic Aang” had the eyes and tattoos glowing, a sign the aang was in avatar state.
If anyone could always have done this, how the air nomads were destroyed? Just get a few monks to become Monkzilla and the problem was solved.
Secondly, how is Unalaq not “boring evil”? He literally wanted to destroy the whole world.
How much better it would be if Unalaq really believed that the Avatar did not bring balance to the spirit world, but in fact separation. It could bring a whole new perspective to the show: has the avatar been wrong all this time? Shouldn’t humans and spirits learn to live together instead of apart? They could show that Unalaq is not the villain in the end and for example, Raava was manipulating the past avatars because she was afraid of what might happen if Vaatu was released.
Or they could have used what mordicai mentioned about Korra absorbing Vaatu, and both spirits finding balance within her.
Anything would be better than this senseless monster battle because they feel everything must be bigger.
The “cosmic Aang” had the eyes and tattoos glowing, a sign the aang was in avatar state.
He had the tattoos because he was air bender, they glowed because he was cosmic, that does not have to indicate he was in the Avatar State. Yes, the Guru said he had to center himself spiritually before he could achieve the Avatar state. This is NOT contradicted by Korra joining with her spiritual self to become KosmicKorra to battle Vaatulaq. Korra had already mastered the Avatar State(notice how WIDE her spiritual road was vs how narrow Aang’s was?) likely because her outlook keeps her from being karmically burdened like Aang did.
If anyone could always have done this, how the air nomads were destroyed?
Because they didn’t know they could? Because only the Avatar can do it? Because it’s an evolving story that must at some point present our new characters doing things that would have changed the course of the story if previous characters did it, and that’s OK because it’s a part of storytelling? This really is just starting to feel like picking nits, because there aren’t actual complaints to say about this.
He literally wanted to destroy the whole world.
No he didn’t, he wanted to reunite the spirit and physical worlds. But, OTOH, Ozai did, and I never hear anyone complain about him being “boring”.
How much better it would be if Unalaq really believed that the Avatar
did not bring balance to the spirit world, but in fact separation.
Considering he literally said that multiple times, I don’t know what more you want from the show.
Shouldn’t humans and spirits learn to live together instead of apart?
This was a lesson Korra took to heart by allowing the spirit portals to remain open. Did you even watch the episode?
Or they could have used what mordicai mentioned about Korra absorbing Vaatu,
It hasn’t been made explicit, but from what we’ve seen happen to Raava, this is exactly what has happened.
Petinent to the discussion of Cosmic Korra & Cosmic Aang:
Here are Mike DiMartino, one of the creators, thoughts.
I agree that Unalaq’s stated goals were to bring balance
to the Forceto the world, but it was quite never explained how 10,000 years of darkness seemed like a good way to get there; him using the term “Dark Avatar” made matter worse because it impied he knew that Darkness With a D what was going to happen, and really, it doesn’t sound like the greatest of ideas unless he was a perfect nihilist.What makes him a boring villain are not so much his goals, but his methods and his demeanor. I had hopes when he indeed looked wise and in harmony with his spiritual self, but once he started to bully his children around (I half expected him to spitir-choke them when they reported their failure to capture Korra), make snide, hurtful comments to Tarloq, and most of all, have a big cackling grin when calcifying the soul of a 10-year old girl, he lost all the nuances of his initial portrayal.
but once he started to bully his children around (I half expected him
to spitir-choke them when they reported their failure to capture Korra), make snide, hurtful comments to Tarloq, and most of all, have a big cackling grin when calcifying the soul of a 10-year old girl, he lost all the nuances of his initial portrayal.
OR
But despite the fact she bullied her only friends, made snide, disparaging comments to Ty Lee, and most of all, had a big cackling grin on her face as she tormented a traumatized and lonely sky bison, she remains one of the most dynamic villains in Avatar history.
Let’s not forget there wasn’t a lot of nuance in Azula either.
“My mother thought I was a monster. It was true, of course, but it still hurt.” – Azula at the beach.
Azula knows herself mean, and she enjoys it. She doesn’t pretend she’s noble and has lofty goals. She wears her ambition and ruthlessness with pride, but she reveals little by little that she uses it to hide her own crippling insecurities that in the end lead her to a nervous breakdown. Even in that naked agression of hers she displayed nuance, not so Unalaq.
True, Unalaq did not have two whole seasons to grow, but still his portrayal fell short of what he could have been, just by changing or adding small dialogues.
The interesting thing is, at least to me, is that if you wanna draw parallels, in reality Unalaq lines up more with Zuko, the jealous sibling who struggles, while Azula lines up more with Tonraq, the charismatic and skilled one.
I saw lots of nuance in Unalaq, but that nuance was lost, intentionally as he became more driven in his goals, he began to lose sight of what mattered. Azula, on the other hand, didn’t have a lot of nuance, until she’d achieved her goals, once she didn’t have her drive holding her together, that was when the nuance began to emerge, as you saw her damage.
You can also draw the opposite parallels: Unalaq, like Azula, is the ambitious sibling who stole the older sibling’s righful place, while Tonraq, like Zuko, is the disgraced sibling in exile.
But I don’t want to draw parallels, but judge Unalaq on his own terms as a character given traits deliberately by writers (as opposed to a real person who developed traits throughout a real life). I see your point about how he’d be losing nuance as his goal came closer, but whatever nuance he could have had went out the window by the time he says “You will never see your father again.” He never again wears the mask of the idealist spiritualist, and him saying that his goal is to bring balance kind of clashes with his knowledge that Vaatu’s reign will engulf the world in Darkness for 10,000 years. Even Eska realizes it’s a bad idea.
Or, depending on how you want to argue it, you could argue that Grey DeLisle’s portrayal, along with the animators, made Azula the “beloved” character she became.
(In the grand scheme of things, I’m like, half Azula & half Sokka.)
(Huh. J’ai pensé que le Libéria était un pays anglophone. Chaque jour, on apprend quelque chose de nouveau.)
It does, actually. All Avatars’ eyes glow blue specifically to indicate they are in the Avatar state. Aang’s tattoos glowed in addition to his eyes… because he had tattoos. Yangchen’s tattoos glowed blue in her Avatar state as well. Other Avatars who lack tattoos… don’t have glowing tattoos, because… yeah. But the blue glow of body parts possessed (and, at least in the original English-language version, the superimposed voice(s) — I missed that very much in other versions), indicates the Avatar state. Never once did Aang’s tattoos glow for any other reason.
Also the Avatar franchise needs to STOP with the whole “just go and repeatedly kiss on people who did not invite you to do so, and they will totally fall in love with you as soon as you do something sufficiently badass, because that’s what significant others are — human prizes for badassery, rather than partners with shared interests and goals and explicitly reciprocal tingly nethers.” It could be handwaved away, kinda, in AtLA (sort of — I still hated it, but despite the tinkly music of “now that you’ve trounced the enemy, I truly see you!” in the finale, Katara was definitely already a partner with shared purpose and had been all along) but here it is a step too blatant and the participants are a mite too adult for this sort of nonsense. Do not teach small kids this, it is harassment for crying out loud. Neither it nor the Stockholm Syndrome bit were funny or healthy. Save that crap for villains, not heroes.
(I have frustrations.)
Unalaq was a terrible villain.We can’t take a character and have him combine the (ostensible) worst parts of previous characters and use that to justify the writing of him.
AtLA was one of my favorite shows of all time — for a while it actually surpassed Buffy by leaps in my heart — but in the final season there were a great many narrative, pacing, and character problems, and these things have carried over into Korra. Ozai’s maniacal comet-induced world-destroying mission was a horrible shark-jump and turned him into a — yes, boring — moustache twirler rather than the rigid, sadistic, untilitarian, cold and creepy but mostly logical imperialist he had been. He wanted to hold on to his colonies; he wanted to mold his heir into his image by any means necessary; he believed fire was the superior element, as did his immediate ancestors. His BURN ALL THE THINGS turn made very little sense when held up against the antagonist he had been previously — a person who believed himself superior, and demanded perfection of others. It speaks to the excellent setup of the character previously that the finale still more or less worked. (It also speaks to a phenomenal, no-holds-barred special-effects budget.)
Azula was interesting because she was a female sociopath: Sociopaths tend to be charismatic (according to psychiatrist Adam Kotsko et al) as long as you don’t actually have to hang out with them (they are never sad, with no empathy bogging them down, and they are very effective, what with no empathy making them second-guess), and we don’t get too many on TV with double-X chromosomes. It was a new and successful treatment. She was a villain, not because she had some overarching goal beyond tormenting her brother, but because it floated her boat, and she was arresting to viewers because she was consistent, clever, and competent — thoroughly Rule of Cool, effortlessly living up to Ozai’s ideas of perfection. Further, she was never the primary antagonist; she was Ozai’s Lancer/Dragon (I’m not linking TV Tropes because I am a kind woman): a weapon to be deployed and a foil to Zuko, underscoring his character arc. She was what Zuko wanted and attempted to be, and then what he realized he did not want or need to be. (I did not like the Breaking of Azula, especially how it has played out in the comics that followed, but even so, in-show it worked. Sort of.) She did not have any lofty goals (or indeed any goals at all) that she seemed to switch every four seconds. For the bulk of the series, she didn’t need them. She wasn’t trying to change the world — she was the very embodiment of the status quo and the maintenance of existing power. She was Azula — she was actualized within herself, that was enough.
This doesn’t work in Unalaq. Unalaq went from wanting to religiously purify the strayed sheep he felt belonged to his fold to Destroying the Light for no logical reason whatsoever. (I am not convinced he knew that destroying the light was impossible.) He was explicitly aiming to take the world from humans and hand it to spirits — not nice spirits either. It reduces his spiels on “balance” to lip service.
This is a peeve of mine in children’s television — rather than acknowledging balance, this impetus to have clear-cut evil versus clear-cut good. Fear is just evil (Rise of the Guardians) rather than self-preservatory in proper doses, decay is just evil (Epic) rather than a natural and necessary part of the cycle of life and renewal in a non-Edenic forest, and now yang is just evil rather than the necessary push-and-pull, ebb-and-flow, give-and-take of life. It’s oversimplified and more than a bit appropriative. (Taoist yin and yang are male/female, hot/cold, wet/dry, rest/action, and so on, but explicitly not just good/evil — oh, and thanks for making the harbinger of 10,000 years of post-apocalyptic evil a Scary Black Man to boot)
This is the primary thing that is bugging me about this incarnation of the franchise — the Avatar being reimagined as the embodiment of one half (the “good” half) of an imbalanced dualist system (one or the other has to decisively win, they have to fight, the have to take turns) rather than the embodiment of a four-part (sometimes five) system of balance incarnated — four nations of people, children of their world, each embodying an elemental aspect of it, artificially split apart because of inherent fallible humanity toward the chaotic, where fallibility = lack of inner and outer harmony, harmony being the natural, original state. Here we’re getting the Avatar as light fighting against the inherent fallibility of human being where fallibility equals actual darkness (Wan fails to stop it in people, in his episode, and reincarnates as this sort of eternal war). So the Avatar is just light and righteous by default because Raava, rather than a human being who has to work for stuff. (Suddenly Korra’s sudden mastery of airbending in the first season looks even less palatable.) Basically they’ve switched out their Buddhism, previously so rich and meticulous, for Manichean Christianity, but flawed Christianity, because there’s not even the initial state of grace for regular people to fall from. We’re just nasty. ;P
Aang had to fight to bring his outer purpose in alignment with his inner values. Being the Avatar did not automatically make him a good person. People are constantly giving Aang advice as to how to be a better person. According to the advice Korra is given, she is already awesome internally and just needs to believe in herself more (despite how she throws desks at her significant other for disagreeing with her).
Aang neutralized a chaotic human (and politically, his nation, by extension) who was interfering with the world’s natural balance. Korra neutralized darkness, because somehow the world’s natural state is to swing wildly back and forth now.
Which, well, okay, fine, the show informed me very explicitly (and not at ALL snarkily) that everything has changed, and silenced the voices of all the old Avatars to do it, so I guess I have to just take it or leave it. (And cutting off the wisdom of the ancients is… SO NOT Eastern thought, is it.)
(Aaargh — I was so *annoyed* when the blocking and background music of the Unalaq/Korrazilla fight began to echo the Zuko-Azula agni kai. The Azula/Zuko showdown earned its pathos in a way this one did not — by that point there was sympathy for both characters and it was heartbreaking.)
@36, Korra’s hair is glowing in the Cosmic shot above, what, exactly, is that supposed to indicate?
I am very well aware that, in the physical world, glowing tattoos indicate the Avatar State. There is no indication this is true in the Cosmic world when they face their spirit self, because everything glows.
Let’s not freak out TOO much about that specifics of glowing tattoos– at some point the medium has to be accounted for, & in a visual medium like cartoons, glowing blue arrow tattoos are cool. That is the ultimate answer, there.
It’s just the outline of her body, in a medium where the artist is working in duotone. Aang shows a similar phenomenon around the armpits and collarbone.
I don’t even understand what the argument here is — are we meant to be assuming that Cosmic Glowing Korra is having a different experience than Cosmic Glowing Aang because of Aang’s tattoos? I don’t see any reason to belive it’s not the same exact thing. Aang was mastering/reclaiming part of what it meant to be the Avatar — what is the basis for believing Korra is doing something else?
Oh hang on, things are dawning on me.
Okay — I’ve decided — I do AGREE that it’s about Aang reclaming/ reopening/centering himself to acheive the Avatar State. I do not agree that it had “nothing” to do with the Avatar State. And I believe that the large blue-glowy-tattoo duotone Aang in the Sky was the Platonic Ideal, if you will, of the Avatar State, but small normal-colored Aang walking toward it as his goal on the shaky, disentegrating path was not in the Avatar State (so this is agreement). I do not believe that what was going on with Korra in this episode was significantly different (disagreement?) — I believe blue-glowy Sky Korra was a visual representation of ultimate Avatar-ness, FOR HER — a goal to be reached.
At any rate I realize this is about people assigning symbolism to visuals, and full agreement doesn’t have to happen. This is not the issue I have with the program, anyway.
@40. I also think that on “cosmic korra” the glow on the hair was just an outline, since the borders of the drawing are white, they used the white as “shadow” for her hair, which causes this confusion, because her eyes are entirely white, as they are with “normal korra” when she enters avatar state.
My problem, however, is not about colors or symbolism. My problem is with internal consistency in a series. Korra is the least spiritual person in all of Avatar series. Ok, she got a huge advantage because she was inside the Deus Ex Machina Tree, but if the giant blue spirit was something that was always possible, why would you care with the avatar? any large enough kingdom would have a guru that could turn into a huge blue monster that could destroy armies single handedly. Also, this brings a huge problem with the openning setting of TLA: the air nomads are clearly the most spiritual of the kingdoms, are honestly telling me that no air nomad since the beginning of time was not spiritually centred enough to enter huge blue monster state? If this in fact were a possibility, with a few blue monsters they could have easily defeated the fire nation invasion. Even if the fire nation had a few “blue monsters” or whatever, the more spiritual group would clear advantage. If Unalaq himself was so spiritually enlightened and knew things that were impossible for him to know, like the story of Raava and Vaatu and the harmonic convergence, why couldn’t he become a huge blue monster?
I’ll tell you why, because it was not made to make sense, it is a plot device. It is the old trick used abundantly in anime, the “Heroic Second wind” ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroicSecondWind, yeah I linked TvTropes, feel the hours slipping through your fingers). No matter how weak, battered, out of energy, with only 1 hit point and no mana left, she is the *HEEROOH* and she will defeat the bad guy, because she is good, she believes in herself and by god, her name is in the god damned title of the cartoon. That is my problem with cosmic korra.
On the matter of Unalaq versus Ozai, the difference is gargantuan. The fire lord wanted to rule the world, not destroy it. The comet that appears in the series finale was not something that was baked in the last minute, it was mentioned in episode 7 of the first season. The fire lord is not a gentle person, but his actions make sense, he wants to rule the world, so he will attack the largest points of resistance.
Unalaq on the other hand, says he wants balance and bring back the spirits, which is an excelent argument, but wants to do this by becoming a “Dark Avatar” (I still can’t believe he called himself that), destroying everything and bringing 10,000 years of darkness to the world. How in the name of Osamu Tezuka does that make any bit of sense?
@41 — In case this is not clear, I agree with you — I think *almost* completely. I do still think Ozai crossed a line, possibly unintentionally on the part of the writers, but there was a point in the last four episodes where he went from wanting to subjugate his enemies and bring the lands under his control (his goal all along) to just burning the Earth Kingdom willy-nilly like a crazypants. This did not work for me as motivation for him. But the series’ previous setup was sufficiently strong enough that I could benefit-of-the-doubt that away.
This here:
Is spot on.
Tangentially, I’ve been having this discussion elsewhere online, because there were a lot of people who thought Aang’s last-minute discovery of spiritbending was just as deus ex machina as this conclusion. I would disagree; for me, Aang’s solution felt both earned by the character and well-planned by the writers because 1. Aang had been looking for a way to defeat Ozai without killing him for some time — goal clearly stated and pondered on, 2. references to the lionturtle had been seeded throughout all along, mostly in statuary, but in a way that felt the opposite of accidental, and 5. bringing in a fifth element, so to speak, brought the traditional alchemic Western four-elemental system into line with the Eastern system, which has traditionally had five elements, in a way that felt smooth, and reflected the detailed attention the creators had been paying to the philosophical elements of the producion all along. The ending of this season of LoK on the other hand felt like randomly assmebled pieces and devices. (Or a rough outline of a more intricate plan.)
@42: “I would disagree; for me, Aang’s solution felt both earned by the character and well-planned by the writers.”
Exactly. Those are my feelings as well.
Let’s face it: lion-turtle and energybending are a deux ex machina. In fact, I’d be willing to say that the creators always solve everything by DEM. But that, in itself, isn’t inherently bad. It is just a narrative resource, and just as every narrative resource, it can be well used or not; the problem is that this one has been traditionally misused. It is easiest to use it wrongly, but ATLA’s series finale felt right precisely for those reasons you mention. Aang’s conflict in those chapters aren’t in how to solve the problem, but how to do it in a morally correct way. He is not trying to simplify things for himself: he is treading the hard way, the right way. He is working hard to earn his happy ending, an we as an audience feel that he deserves it because he is doing it for the right reasons. That emphasis in the ethical side of the conflict, which is something rarely seen, in children or adult fiction (and, by the way, reminds me of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea stories) is what sets Avatar apart and marks it as one of the greatest animation series I’ve ever seen. Compare it with Korra’s season 1 finale, in which the titular character gets her powers back just because she feels bummed, and you’ll see that not even deus ex machina are born equal.
Regarding your previous comment, I agree almost wholeheartedly. I am not an expert in Taoism or eastern philosophy, but even considering that, my thoughts during “Beginnings” were tinged by a definite sensation of “You know what, despite how awesome is this, I’m pretty sure yin/yang doesn’t work that way… and I’m not a great fan of manichaean black and white”. Also, I agree that the last incarnation of Ozai as cackling villain doesn’t quite fits his general character, and helds together thanks to the setup. Where I have to disagree is with Azula. See, personally I think the humanization the Azula was well handled, thanks mostly to its timing. When that element of characterization is introduced (in “The Beach”), Azula is in her apex. She is victorious, and she has been already for an entire season. Even considering her supernatural competence and the superb work of miss DeLisle, she was at risk of becoming boring. Victory doesn’t sit well to villains, specially when, after all, aren’t THAT complicated and have been around for a while already. Slowly introducing elements that show other side to that villain, without removing her pure, unbridled evilness (she is awkward in social interactions, she feels unloved by her mother and resents her brother for the love he received and she didn’t) helps in keeping audience’s interest on her. As a result, her breakdown may seem a little extreme of a result, but it fits what we’ve seen of her and her evolution from her beginning (her obsessive search of perfection, and her dynamics with family in the series’ flashbacks).
Of course, that’s just my opinion.